Transcript: Mayor Eric Adams Appears Live on 1010 WINS' "Morning Drive"

January 6, 2023

Lee Harris: WINS News time 8:15. As promised, Mayor Adams is joining us now to discuss the crime stats report for 2022. Mayor Adams, thanks for joining us this morning. What did you like about the report, and what bothers you about it?

Mayor Eric Adams: First of all, thank you and happy New Year's to you. When you do a real analysis, we realized when we came into the administration in January, we were trending in the wrong direction. And we knew it was going to take a while before we can deal with the over proliferation of guns on our street and gang behavior, that it was really driving the crime in our city, and we did. The last six months, we sent the trend in the right direction. We're seeing a decrease in our major crime areas. In the last month alone, we saw a substantial decrease in everything from shooters to homicides to robberies, grand larceny. And we must continue that and I'm not going to be happy until every New Yorker is actually safe, based on the numbers, but most importantly feels safe in their city.

Harris: Now, overall, there was a 22 percent increase in crime even though some of those major categories were down. How big a role do you think bail reform played in the overall increase?

Mayor Adams: Yes. When you look at the overall year crime, that first six months as we put in place various initiatives to go after dangerous people — it was just crucial. And we started to see the turnaround after the next six months with the different gun units that we put in place. But when you look at — in Albany, we mostly focus on the term, over and over again, bail reform. It's so much more than that. It is a criminal justice system that is bottlenecked, too many recidivists, too many repeated offenders are allowed on our streets. We believe that roughly 1,600 people are driving a large amount of our violent crimes, and our goal is to go back to Albany and really partner with our lawmakers to go after those recidivists and push those initiatives we think are important.

Harris: Now, you have been talking to people up in Albany. How much pushback are you getting on your efforts up there?

Mayor Adams:  Well, there's different energy in 2023. We learned from 2022 that we've allowed the narrative to be hijacked, that we did not push through some successful initiatives. I had an amazing year in Albany. There were a list of things I needed, such as childcare dollars, earned income tax to put money in the pockets of everyday struggling New Yorkers, NYCHA Land Trust, and some other important initiatives. The leadership in Albany gave me those things. They knew New York City needed them. And we allowed the one area that we disagreed on to become the highlight. We're not going to do that this year. We're going to go and sit down together; that's what the meeting was about yesterday. We're going to work together to deal with public safety and many of the other issues that New Yorkers are facing, particularly around our economy and building more housing in the city and state.

Harris: So in summary, what would you say to New Yorkers who still feel the city is unsafe despite the progress you're making?

Mayor Adams:  Yes, we can respect and understand that. I know that the public safety initiatives must be actual numbers, but there also must be how people are feeling. And we knew we had to zero in on the homelessness crisis that we were facing that contributed to the feeling of being unsafe, particularly those with mental health illnesses. That's why we removed the encampments of our subway system. That's why we removed the encampments off our streets and put people into shelters so they could build a pathway to housing. So we must make sure we have a clean, safe city where people are actually seeing the indicators that they're safe in the city. And that's my focus.

Harris: All right. Thank you for joining us this morning, Mayor Adams, and let's hope 2023 is a better year than 2022 here.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, and happy to see you again.

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