Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears On WABC’s “Eyewitness News At 5:00”

January 17, 2024

Sandra Bookman: As we've been reporting, a violent day here in New York City, several people stabbed. Of course, it is just one of the topics that we want to ask New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Bill Ritter: And the 110th mayor from New York is at City Hall right now. Mr. Mayor, thank you for joining us. Really a serious thing, I assume you saw the briefing by the New York Police Department at One Police Plaza. So many people stabbed in the last couple days, including three today in Queens, one in Brooklyn. What can you tell us about what you know about what happened?

Mayor Eric Adams: The investigation is ongoing. The police commissioner and his team briefed me earlier this morning actually, and they are looking for a suspect that's possibly involved in all of these incidents. And we're going to bring him to justice, and I'm going to allow the detectives to do their job and what they do so well. At this time we believe we have a potential facial and we're going to continue to seek him out and find him.

Bookman: Mr. Mayor, you know, recently you and the city Police Department talked a lot about the fact that major crime is actually down here in the city. The issue is, though, when you have a situation like we had today with the string of stabbings, the other day the man on the subway simply trying to help, he was killed, didn't go home to his family. So, the perception still is that crime is serious and a lot of people are still scared. And for many people, perception, of course, is reality. What do you say to people about that?

Mayor Adams: And you're correct. The goal of public safety is not only statistical data. Yes, we have five of the major seven categories of crimes are down, double‑digit decrease in shootings and in homicides. But when you have these chilling events such as the incident that took place on the subway system or a random act of violence, it does shake our confidence.

And we know that, and that's the role of the police department. That's why we want the omnipresence, the visual presence of that uniformed officer. And we want to continuously tell people that we have a real solid grip on those who are committing crimes. We must put in place those incidents that don't allow repeated offenders to return to our streets and those who are dealing with mental health issues.

Ritter: Today and the last couple days the people, the victims of that stabbing in both Brooklyn and Queens, the victims were regular, everyday people.

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Ritter: Last night we saw you talking with much emotion, Mr. Mayor, about the two cops who were shot yesterday, by a man who had roughed up his mother, and then she called cops and he grabbed the cop's gun and shot them, this close — you said, this close — to two cops being killed

Mayor Adams: It just brought back some terrible memories. January 20th, 2022, days into office in that hospital hearing the loud cries of Officer Mora and Rivera's family. That just impacted me at the beginning of my role as the mayor. And I thought about that yesterday.

Heroes don't wear capes, they wear blue uniforms. If you saw what happened in that room and the action those officers took, it's just really why it's imperative that we give our police department the support they deserve. And then look at the Supreme Court ruling. Both Officer Mora and Rivera were responding to a domestic violence type incident, and this incident yesterday was a domestic violence, he was assaulting his mother.

Ritter: Should there be a counselor of some sort, Mr. Mayor, to come to these domestic violence cases with your officers?

Mayor Adams: And there's more than just a counselor, we need to… We always follow up with something called a DIR report, Domestic Incident Reports. We do follow through, we have officers assigned to the commands that go out and look at these cases.

And then we need to give people the support they need. You know, when you look at the number of assaults and homicides, many of them are related, family members that are related, and this is a real national issue. That's why the Supreme Court is wrong for making it easier or determining to make it easier for people to get access to firearms that are dealing with domestic violence incidents.

Bookman: Mayor, I want to shift to another issue that you have said over and over is a national issue. Recently, Governor Hochul said that the state, $2.4 billion to the City of New York to help with the existing migrant crisis. But she was clear, she repeated something you have said often, the feds have a responsibility here to offset those costs as well.

Mayor Adams: So true. And I cannot thank the governor enough for just being a real partner around these issues of public safety, transportation, how do we get people back on our subway in general, but specifically the migrant and asylum seeker issue. National crisis, and it's on the backs of cities across this country: Chicago, Denver, New York City, Los Angeles. It's just wrong. It's not the right thing to do.

And we knew we had a problem after returning from Washington around the seventh time, and we put a plan in place not to allow people to stay in our shelter system. We cycled out over 60 percent of people who came through our system from 168,000 drastically decreased down because we're doing it right and we're managing this crisis the way other cities are stating we're doing a darn good job here.

Ritter: What are you going to do with that $2.4 billion? Because a lot of people, you know, Mr. Mayor, last week criticized the way the city handled coming out of the tent city at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn.

Mayor Adams: Criticism comes with the territory. I'm the mayor of the City of New York, I have an obligation to address these problems. People did not elect me to just talk about the problems, they elected me to fix the problem.

I identified that problem in November, and we don't want to open up Floyd Bennett Field or Randalls Island. But the fact is we're out of room. We are getting thousands of migrants and asylum seekers each week, anywhere from 2,900 to 4,000 a week. That comes out to 16,000 a month that we have to house, make sure they're fed, make sure they're taken care of, educate the children.

And this is not something that the migrants should be blamed for, this is something that our national government needs to fix with a real decompression strategy and to fund this.

Ritter: We thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, especially for the information about these crimes that have happened today. I think a lot of people are quite disturbed, and we appreciate you taking time to explain what's happening.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Take care.

Ritter: All right. Thanks, Mr. Mayor.

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