Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears Live on WBAI's "City Watch"

December 31, 2023

Jeff Simmons: Now we're going to move right along and have the mayor join us and get his thoughts on the year that was and the year to come. Mr. Mayor, welcome back to WBAI City Watch.

Mayor Eric Adams: Hey, thank you. It's good to be back with you. Many years on this station, go back to my days of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care.

Simmons: Well, and happy holidays to you. It's the final day of the year; obviously, a lot of folks, Mr. Mayor, are headed to Times Square tonight. I wanted to start off by just getting an update from you in terms of security and preparations, if there any credible threats, so our listeners can know what's going on in New York City today.

Mayor Adams: Well, we're looking forward to bringing in the new year, 2024. And we did a briefing on Friday, really talking about that there were no credible threats at the time that was facing New Yorkers. We should always keep in mind that you deal with lone wolves. They are known to just react on their own, like we saw last year, we had an individual that assaulted two police officers. And so we are going to have the right police complement out there to bring about a safe bringing in of the new year.

Carlos Menchaca: Mr. Mayor, good to have you on today. And you know, we're in a moment of reflection, so we've got to ask: what are you feeling? I know you had a big press conference, but for our listeners here today, what are your biggest achievements and the biggest regrets for 2024?

Mayor Adams: Well, you know, the achievements in my eye and the teams' eye are many. You know, when you look at the number of units of housing that we brought in, the number of individuals dealing with FHEPS vouchers, what we have done around recovering our economy. We have more private sector jobs in the history of the city.

And I think it all just sums up to one big sound bite: crime is down, jobs are up. It's what I ran on and promised. Public safety, we saw a decrease in five of the seven major crime categories since I've been mayor, 13,000 guns removed off the streets of the city. Shootings are down double digits, homicides are down double digits. And so we're really pleased by what we were able to do.

And some major initiatives from the development of Governor's Island to Willets Point development housing in that area, wanted for years, and we were able to accomplish that.

And so, you know, the success is many. [Now], think one huge success that many people don't see and understand is the handling of 161,000 migrants and asylum seekers. What an awesome task the team was able to accomplish. 50 percent of those migrants and asylum seekers were able to be self sustaining, over 50 percent, I think we're up to about 57 percent.

And we've done it better than any other city. People have come from all over the country and looked and saw what we were able to accomplish, and without real help from the national government. And we need more help from our state to do this.

And so my biggest regret was the trip that I took earlier this year going down to the Darién Gap, I wish I would have done that earlier. It would have given me a real view of the large number of people who are coming here and the challenges that we were going to face.

I went to El Paso to meet with officials there, but I wish I would have gone earlier to Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico to get a better understanding of it.

Menchaca: Yeah, and I was there, and I remember listening with you on one of the segments of that, and there was a lot of revelation that I even got from that, from that moment and that trip that you took.

All of this, you know, I described you earlier on the show, on the top of the show as a bull. You have the incredible power in your personality and in so many ways not only impressive but the list of achievements are connected to that.

You have a lot of other things that are going to be taking your attention, like these investigations. Do you feel in the next two years in your final first term that those are going to be a distraction, and how are you anticipating those?

Mayor Adams: You know, and that's a good question. That's a question that people often ask. And I don't know if it's from my dyslexia or it's just from the life that I've lived, I have this excellent ability to compartmentalize things and I don't allow the many challenges that we face to spill over in the various areas of our lives.

All of us have things going on in our lives. If we do a real analysis, it could be, how do I raise my children, how do I deal with a major illness that I'm experiencing, how do I deal with the troubles I'm having with keeping a roof over my head. We all have faced the experiences.

And that is no different than being a mayor. And every mayor I spoke with and every book that I've read about mayoralties and other executives, you know, crises come, and you know, you have to be able to continue to move forward and forge ahead. And if you look from the date that this review took place, you have not seen this city or this administration slow down. We're continuing to forge ahead. We have a great legal team that is going to be as cooperative as possible.

You know, federal governments do their reviews when there's an allegation made, but I've always followed the rules, I'm clear on that. You follow the rules, you abide by the rules. We keep our records straight. And we continue to forge ahead, as I have to manage this city and I'm prepared to do so.

Simmons: You know, Mr. Mayor, the Daily News had an editorial yesterday that acknowledged that the mayor of New York cannot control international migration patterns but yet you've gotten scant help from friends in Washington. It's made it much more difficult to be able to address the asylum seeker crisis here in New York City.

You know, as we were getting into the presidential race as it stands now and given the administration's response or lack of regarding your calls for more aid, do you see yourself supporting Biden for reelection?

Mayor Adams: Yes, I do. I am going to continue to support the president. I made it clear that when we choose presidents and our national leaders, we're not doing it simply for one incident. Biden was there when I reached out to assist with some of the violence we witnessed in our cities across America. He came, we had a great conversation here. And we needed a real ATF leader, and he was he was able to move forward who do so to really coordinate our violence effort. And many other incidents he was there.

We disagree on this incident. And if you go back to April of last year, I was the lone voice out there talking about how this is going to impact cities. That conversation has changed. We have built the coalition, more and more are joining the coalition. I have been joined with the mayor of Chicago, with the mayor of Denver, who are looking at what is happening to their cities both financially and how it impacts their delivery of services.

And we should be clear: this is not about being anti-immigration. It is about what is happening to the migrant and asylum seekers is unfair as well as to the taxpayers of the city. It is wrong to create this environment. We need a real decompression strategy. The national government should pick up the cost of this and not place it on cities, which is a $12 billion, three‑year cost to our city.

And we need to allow people to work. There's nothing more anti American than telling an individual they can't work. And we're seeing a byproduct of this failed policy. It is impacting our entire city and other cities across America. And you know, the Republicans in Congress have held back real immigration reform, and it's time for us to do that so we can allow people to pursue the American dream.

Simmons: You know, and the impact of that fiscally is astronomical. You've had to make some tough and controversial fiscal decisions, and you continue to get some pushback from unions and councilmembers. Your preliminary budget for the next fiscal year is right around the corner. What can we expect?

Mayor Adams: And you know, when you have the pushback from, you know, union members like Henry Garrido— who is a friend, you know, and I don't want to lose track of that— and Michael Mulgrew, who was a real partner during Covid in education. That is their job. That's what they're supposed to do.
That's the beauty of our democracy, that you're going to have a different level of advocacy where people are going to voice their concerns [of] what they believe is what their constituency needs. And so I do not take that personal. Henry and I, we spoke, he shared with me what his concerns were. And we are going to sit down and navigate through these turbulent times.

What we do know is that we have a $12 billion hole in our budget. And you know, as a former council person, I'm sure that you can respect that, you know, a $12 billion hole in the budget, we only have 30‑something billion that you can really move around out of the $106 billion budget that we have.

And so every delivery of service in the city is going to be impacted, everything from police, to trash pickup, to some of the great services we put in place in our school system, to older adults that we want to continue to support. This is going to impact every delivery of service in our city, and it is really troubling that our cities and other cities across America are going through this national problem at this magnitude.

Menchaca: Mr. Mayor, I 100 percent not only understand it but we're going to be watching that in this next year and we're going to hopefully do some really good reporting so we can get a sense and get it out to the community.

Let's talk about some council veto proof bills that are on your desk. There's a few criminal justice measures such as banning solitary. You know, you talked a little bit about this as idealism colliding with realism. Explain what that looks like for you and how you can kind of talk to the people about how this is going to all shake out.

Mayor Adams: And when you think about it, I am the pioneer of criminal justice reform. I was one of the ranking members on criminal justice in the state senate, I visited many of our correctional facilities across the state. I've looked at everything from being one of the cosigners in the Rockefeller Drug Law reform package, banning handcuffing pregnant women to hospital beds.

I mean, when you look at my record, and oftentimes now that I'm a mayor, many people who don't really understand the history of the city don't realize that I was one of the pioneers and leaders around criminal justice reform, from stop and frisk reform to being endorsed by many of the victims of police misconduct. And so I know what criminal justice reform looks like, because I have been one of the authors of the book, when you talk about criminal justice reform.

But let's look at these two pieces of legislation, and this is where I talk about idealism colliding with realism, because public safety must be at the cornerstone of whatever we do. First, I have always made it clear over and over again, I do not support solitary confinement. No one should do that. That is inhumane and it should not happen. I support punitive segregation.

If this bill was in place, what you saw, the gentleman who stabbed two victims at Grand Central, after he was arrested, he went into Riker's Island and he slashed another person. With this bill in place, that dangerous individual would have to stay in general population. You could not remove him out of general population.

And when you look at what the victims of assault inside our correctional facilities, over 80 percent of them are other inmates who are just trying to serve their time and go home, and they become victims of extremely violent people who have been violent on the streets and then they go inside and inflict violence on intimates who are there.

And so if someone commits an assault on our street corners, we take them out of general population and place them someplace where they are confined until they are given their due process. That should be the same inside a correctional facility. We should not treat inmates, correction officers and staff, who happens to be predominately black and brown, we should not treat them any differently than we treat every day citizens.

And I think the intention of the bill is misguided of not understanding the inner workings of how do you control dangerous individuals inside jail. You don't have to sit them inside a cell, but you should place them somewhere where they're out of general population where they're not going to harm innocent people.

And the second bill that we're looking at, it is going to require police officers to document every interaction and service that they do with the public. So, what are we saying? We're saying if Eric Adams' son or daughter's missing and that police officer takes that photo and walks around the community and asks, have you seen this young person, each person that police officer speaks with, that officer is going to have to document who they are, the reason that he stopped and spoke with them.

Now, if it was only one person, then you could say, okay, that would take three to five minutes, and pushing it on a phone with an app, which has not been developed yet. But if you have to speak to 20 people, that's 100 minutes; 40 people, that's 200 minutes. Those are minutes that are taking our police officers off patrol.

We should be doing patrol not further documentation. We already have a body‑worn camera which that interaction is collected. We already have other mechanisms that we use to document it. We should not be tying up police actions, they should be out interacting, welcoming with the public in a very friendly way. This is what we advocated for, and not this process of having them document more and more data.

Simmons: So, Mr. Mayor, I know we've got to let you go. Final question for you. Obviously, we all make our resolutions for the new year. I'm curious what your personal New Year's resolution is and if you have a resolution for the New York City media that covers you.

Mayor Adams: [Laughter.] My resolution is a nonpolitical one, it's really just spending more time with Jordan. You know, he has been really patient throughout the years. I've been doing this for over 30‑something years from my days of being in 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, to my advocacy with the Black United Front as a young man, to coming up as a state senator; and you know, being the first Black borough president; and now, the mayor.

You know, it really impacts your personal lives. And I want to spend more time with the family, spend time with him. He's a young man now, and you know, eventually he's going to start his own family. And so my resolution is just to really carve out more time with him and just watch a football game, or, you know, travel [inaudible] and enjoy each other's company.

And you know, I think a highlight to the media, there was a Black reporter at one of our off topics, Mona Davis, who writes for one of the African newspapers. And she raised the lack of diversity of reporters in One Police Plaza and City Hall building, and why shouldn't we open it up?

And I stated that, you know, she's right, we should do an analysis of it. We did it at One Police Plaza, we expanded the space so more reporters can get there. Let's say we should do an analysis of it.

The next day there was a reporter who wrote a story, who stated that we're trying to limit access to City Hall and only allowing one reporter in at a time, something like that. And a viewer reached out and said, what press conference were they at? That is completely different from what you said.

And I think the resolution of the media is, let's take our personal feelings out of the coverage. Let's cover the news. Every reporter can't be a columnist. A columnist's job is to give his or her opinion. But we should cover the news.

You scan the papers and you scan all of these reports and you're not seeing the Ws that we have put forth in the city. The city has recovered in two years, what many people stated it would take four to five years, everything from safety, to jobs, to housing, to using technology to run our city better and smarter, to investing in our young people, from dyslexia screening, all the way around to the many things we have done, lowering of the cost of childcare from $55 a week for those who make $55,000 a year down to less than $5 a week, increasing earned income tax credit, partnering with Albany to do NYCHA Land Trust and putting money in NYCHA and making it part of our program.

I mean the victories are here, but you find it difficult to find them because it's not being reported. So, my resolution and hope for our New York City media is as you cover what you consider to be the scars of the campaign, remember that the campaign has a face, and that face has been a great progressive face of moving our city forward.

So, let's not highlight only the scar, let's highlight the beauty of the face of a city that's recovering, with all the challenges, from Covid to migrants to the crime issues we brought down. And then look at other cities and see the difference of what's happening in New York and what has happened across America.
New York is alive and well, but as I stated from the start, crime is down, jobs are up. We continue to navigate through these crises that we're facing.

Menchaca: Well, on that note, may you get your wish and that you connect with your family and have some of that downtime. I think that's an important thing. And as elected officials, we...that's the first thing to go sometimes. And so, I wish for that for you and for all the electeds that are leading our city in this 2024. Thank you so much for joining us today, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your service as a former council person and a pioneer in the immigrant community. You know, your voice is deeply missed. And I look forward to getting back on the show with you guys.

Menchaca: Right on. Thank you. Thank you. Happy Holidays.

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