Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears On WHCR 90.3 FM’s Rhythm and Soul Radio 

March 18, 2025

Marko Nobles: Once again, we are joined by the mayor of New York City, Mayor Eric Adams. Mayor Adams, good to see you, sir. How are you? 

Mayor Eric Adams: Quite well. Great seeing you also. I look forward to a nice little chat.  

Nobles: Yeah, absolutely. Let's get right into it. Let's start with this week because this week is Mental Health Week in New York City. So talk about that and the importance of creating Mental Health Week here in New York City. 

Mayor Adams: It is so important when you think about it. That was something that I tackled immediately when I came into office. You know, brother, in January and February of 2022, I went into the streets, and we saw encampments everywhere in the streets, people were living on the side of highways, under overpasses, in the subway system. This just was unbelievable how we normalize people living on the streets. And I said no to that, and I went out and visited some of them. 

You know, we saw people inside these tents and cardboard boxes with drug paraphernalia, human waste, stale food and, you know, just schizophrenic behavior, bipolar. And when I came back the next day, I sat down with my team and told them we have to, we have to address this. And this has been so important for me. And there's been a lot of pushback over the years when people just felt that people had a right to sleep on the streets. And I think that there's no dignity in walking past our brothers and sisters who are falling on hard times. And so we went on a real push. We closed down many of the encampments.  

We removed 8,000 people off our subway system. But we also not only dealt with those severe mental health issues, and not everyone that's homeless is dealing with mental health illness, but there's a substantial number. But we also zeroed in on just overall mental health. We created something called Teenspace for our young people, where they could get around the clock counseling and mental health services by using their phones.  

You know, thousands of young people have signed up on this, many of them Black and brown people, children, which is really so important to us. We have also really invested now $650 million in, you know, the street homelessness, because we want to tackle it head on.  

And we introduced this great program, Bridge to Home, with New York City Health and Hospitals. New York City Health and Hospitals will offer a supportive home-like environment to patients with serious mental illness. So there could be a proper hand-off instead of getting someone with mental illness, [taking] them to the hospital for one day and putting them back out in the streets. We want to have a real transition that can make sure that they take their medication and get the support that they deserve. And so this is some of the things that we have been focusing on, because this is a real issue. And it seemed like it got even broader after COVID. And mental health, we want to roll out our various initiatives.  

Nobles: The issue getting broader after COVID, the effects of COVID, recently there was the five-year remembrance event of COVID-19 that you and your predecessor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, participated in. 

Mayor Adams: Yeah, it's so true. COVID devastated many people. I was with a young man the other day who talked about how he went from having a home to being homeless after he lost family members during COVID. And it was that transition. Bill and I were together last week when we talked about how COVID, I think it was Friday, we talked about how he handed off to me what he did during COVID. I think the coordination of the two of us, we were able to zero in on how do we deal with COVID in a real way.  

And it was devastating for our city. And so that's why yesterday, us celebrating one year of our behavior health blueprint during a short time helping hospitals, just really has maximized inpatient psychiatric care. And we knew that this, it was important that many beds were even closed during COVID. And we can get back, get those beds back open and give people the care that they deserve.  

Nobles: You talk about mental health and mental illness. From many perspectives, it's a wellness issue, but it's also a public safety issue. We saw during the administration, we saw reductions in crime on subways and in the streets, but there was an uptick, like what is the beginning of the year of activities on the subways that were due to mental health issues or some people, you know, falsely blaming it on the immigrant issues that we've been seeing and that sort of thing. So being able to tackle the mental health issue certainly will help hopefully with the public safety issues as well. 

Mayor Adams: Well said, you know, well said. Our current mental health system is, you see someone dealing with severe mental health, and they carry out a violent act, you take them [to the] hospital for one or two days, you give them medicines, and then you let them go back out. It's a revolving door system until they do something so destructive that we then arrest them and place them on Rikers Island.  

We have 51 percent of our inmates at Rikers Island are dealing with mental health issues, and 18 to 20 percent of them are dealing with severe mental health issues. And so we don't believe we should be treating our jail system as a psychiatric ward. I strongly believe as we close the four, as we close Rikers Island and open four more jails, I believe one of those jails should be a state-of-the-art mental health institution where people can get proactive, professional, humane treatment, not only those who are accused of committing violent actions, but just everyday people who want to get proactive action.  

But we can do it in a humane way instead of just incarcerating individuals. So it is a public safety issue. When you see people being shoved to the subway track, when you see people being randomly assaulted on the streets, all of this is, for the most part, overwhelmingly is attached to those who are dealing with severe mental health issues.  

Nobles: You mentioned your belief that of the four new jails being opened, you believe one of them should be more of a state-of-the-art mental health facility. What becomes the barrier for actually having that happen? I know there's a lot to take place to kind of implement some of the things you wish to do, but share with the audience what some of those barriers are to get from, you know, what you think is the right thing to do to actually being able to have it happen. 

Mayor Adams: Well, the thing about this, brother, is idealism colliding with realism. The bill was fought when it was first passed that it [had] to be closed by [2021], and we had to build four more smaller jails in four of the boroughs. Staten Island is the only borough where we're not building one. And the four more jails that we're building started out costing us around 8 billion dollars. Now the number has basically doubled to about 15 or 16 billion dollars.  

And what it is calling for is to house roughly 3,700 people. We now have an inmate population at Rikers of over 7,000 people. So we're going to spend almost 16 billion dollars to build four jails that will not house the current population we have. That makes no sense. You can't have just idealism as policies.  

We got to have policies that's rooted in realism. And so what I'm saying is let’s decrease the prison to inmate population. We have to expedite the court cases. But at the same time, those who are dealing with mental health illness should not be incarcerated if you get the services they deserve. I have to get the City Council to see how foolish this is to keep down the same route just because it was passed in 2027. I cannot change it. They have to change it. And it's important for them to put it in place. I'm sorry, this law was passed in 2021ish, around that time.   

Nobles: You mentioned the City Council has to take the action to make things happen. In this climate where we're at right now, I would think it might be harder to get the City Council to work with you on certain things that you believe make sense as members of the City Council are actually going to be running against you and looking to get into your seat.  

How do you manage continuing to work on behalf of the city knowing that you have to work with City Council? Some of them are opponents of yours, literally.  

Mayor Adams: Well, and that's well said, you know, we were always trying to figure out why was it always just so difficult and challenging of getting work sometimes through the City Council. And now it seems as though because there were some political agendas that were associated with it. But that's the reality of the day. I must just continue to work for the people of the city and not allow politics to get in the way. And I'm hoping that the City Council will do the same.  

The question becomes what's best for the city, not what's best for our own political agenda. And what's best for the city is not to close Rikers with a 7,000-person population and talk about putting them into four small jails with a little over 3,000. That just doesn't make sense. And so we need to put all political partisan politics to the side and focus on what's best for the City of New York. 

Nobles: Well, as we talk about jails, I don't want to leave it there. I want to talk, you know, talk a little bit about public safety and some of the successes of public safety over, you know, not just the last few months, but the last couple of years that you've seen during your time in office.  

Mayor Adams: You know, when you think about it, I inherited a city that was moving in the wrong direction around public safety. When you added to the fact that we were dealing with employment issues, we're dealing with housing issues, we were dealing with all of those rivers that feed this sea of violence. And I had to dam each river.  

And so we started by making sure that we put in place a good law enforcement team that went after guns in general, but also some of the things that lead to disorder. We removed over 20,700 guns off our streets [since the start of our administration]. We removed over 1,000 guns just this year. But we also went after some of the tools of disorder. And those illegal ghost cars, mopeds, scooters that were being used for robberies, snatching, grabs, and all of those things that feed crime. We took over 80,000 of those illegal vehicles off our street. 80,000. Just think about that number for a moment.  

But we also were proactive in our approach, going after justice-involved young people, putting them on a pathway of employment, invested in our foster care children by paying their college tuition and giving them life coaches until they're 26 years old. We've increased employment in the city. We have more jobs in New York City in the history of the city. We broke that record 10 times in the history of the city, more jobs.  

We decreased unemployment in the Black and Hispanic community and decreased it across the entire city. So what you saw was a full-frontal approach to being proactive and stopping people from going on the pathway of criminality, but also reacting to some of the criminal behavior we saw. Our subway system is at its lowest levels when it comes down to public safety.  

Our violence on the street has decreased. We're moving in the right direction, and it's because of the accumulation of all the things that we did together.  

Nobles: You mentioned putting people to work, and one of the things that we see is the job rate is at its highest in New York City in a long time. I think those numbers just came out Friday. So I guess that is one of the markers for you to say, you know, we are on the right path?  

Mayor Adams: Yeah, without a doubt. You know, when you think about it, it's clear that, as you indicated, that the Department of Labor put out the numbers for jobs. We're at almost [4.8] million jobs in the city. This is the highest number of jobs in the history of the city. We have broken our own records ten times. You know, when we first broke it, we continued to break it over and over again. Tourism has increased. We have the fourth largest tourist [numbers] last year in the history of the city.  

And so you're just seeing a healthy environment and healthy economy. And, you know, how you determine how well you're managing the city is by independent bond ratings, S&P and others. They have increased our bond rating when I first came in office, and they have leaned into continuously to say that I have managed this city with my team throughout some serious crises like COVID and [230,000] migrants and asylum seekers. Do you know out of those [230,000] asylum seekers, we have moved… over 190,000 are no longer in our care. They've taken the next step on their journey.  

And so when you add this to the job, and I said 4.7, it's actually 4.8 million jobs. When you add this to the job success, our going out and reaching people to give them employment opportunities, you're just seeing all of the damning of all of those rivers that was feeding the sea of violence. We've damned them one at a time, and that includes housing as well.  

Nobles: You know, you mentioned the asylum seekers, the migrant issue. So I want to go back a couple of weeks because you along with some of the other mayors of large cities in the country testified before Congress about the sanctuary city policies.  

And in essence, going against what the Republican administration would want and saying that these people do deserve due process, which they were not, which many of them have not been getting based on the ICE raids that we were seeing, you know, a couple of months ago, a lot more. Certainly, they've lessened because of some pushback. But, you know, talk about now this process of upholding sanctuary city policies, you know, in the lieu of what the federal government is looking to do. 

Mayor Adams: Yeah, and I think it's so important when we talk about immigration to separate myth from reality. And, you know, we were hearing a lot of noise in the city about what ICE was doing, what ICE was not doing. And I just want to be clear on some top line issues.  

One, New York City law does not allow the law enforcement community or any city agency to collaborate with ICE for civil enforcement. That's deportation and other civil enforcement. The law does not allow that. What the law does allow us to do is to collaborate with ICE in any criminal enforcement. We are allowed to do that, which I support. I strongly support the fact that this is the city that immigrants have always been a part of the city and part of this country. And so those who are here pursuing the American dream should be allowed to have their children go to school.  

They should be allowed to go to houses of worship, they should be allowed to go to the hospital if they need care and call police if they are the victims of a crime. That's what we should always allow to happen. That's why we have this sort of pseudo-title of the sanctuary city. That's what the hearing was about. Sanctuary city is not an actual law anywhere. It is the accumulation of the rights that whoever is in the city should have access to city services while they're in the city, no matter who you are. That's documented or undocumented. You should be able to have the city services that your tax dollars are paying for.  

Where I draw the line is if you are committing a crime, if you're burning a woman on the subway like we saw that horrific action, that was the person who snuck into the country and came back in again. That person must be taken into custody and after they serve their time, they should be deported.  

In any other violent act, like some of these violent gangs that you're seeing, we will collaborate with all of our law enforcement agencies, including ICE, to go after dangerous people. It doesn't matter if they're documented or undocumented. Dangerous people should not be allowed to harm innocent people in this city, and I'm going to continue to say that over and over again.  

Now, what has happened over the years, ICE is another law enforcement agency, just as Homeland Security, just like the FBI, just as any other federal law enforcement agency. We have criminalized the agency and I think it's the wrong thing to do. We don't have to participate in civil enforcement, which we don't, but we should not be treating a federal law enforcement agency as the enemy. They're not the enemy.  

All law enforcement agencies, federal, state, and city should come together to keep people safe and we'll draw the line on those civil actions that we don't want, but we should not be drawing the line when it comes down to keeping New Yorkers safe. And 80 percent of New Yorkers agree with me on this position. 

Nobles: I'm going to kind of wrap this up, but I do want to ask a question, that kind of relates to that last part you said in terms of 80 percent of New Yorkers agree with you on that particular issue. And it's a question about perception, because there's a lot of perception based on things that have happened over the last couple of months, whether it's charges, whether it's a perceived alliance with the current president of the United States, which some people may say, oh, he aligned himself with the president and as a result, the charges are being dropped, or even things like going to the inauguration on Martin Luther King Day, as opposed to going to certain Martin Luther King events, celebrating his legacy.  

A lot of people have a perception about all those things. So I just wanted to give you an opportunity to kind of share your thoughts, what you feel is the truth that needs to be shared about things of that nature, because there's a lot of perception out there in terms of why is he doing that? Why isn't he doing this? And he's not responding, so there must be something wrong, or it must be true that he's aligned himself in this way, because he's not defending himself, or what else? 

Mayor Adams: Well, I don't know if, and I thank you for that question, because I appreciate it. And I don't know if I'm not defending myself, just the opposite. It's not about defending, it's just being honest. And political season is also silly season. During campaign season, it's silly season. And that's when silly things happen.  

So these accusations of, okay, the mayor is now taking a different position now that Trump is in office. Go back, and I ask people all the time, particularly reporters, when they ask this question, I said, tell me what I've been saying now that I was not saying back in 2021, 2022, 2023, prior to the election.  

Tell me one thing that I'm saying now that I was not saying then. No one can find it, I was always talking about dangerous gangs [that] should be removed from the country. I was always talking about collaborating with all of our law enforcement entities. Nothing’s changed. And so when people say that, well, you went to the inauguration on Dr. King's birthday, Dr. King's birthday is not celebrated in Brooklyn. It's a national holiday. And even Dr. King stated that it's time to put partisan politics to the side. President Trump is the president. 

It's not that I'm aligning with the president, I'm aligning with the policies. I agree on policies around public safety. Those areas we disagree, I'm going to be clear that I disagree. But the governor of the State of New York has gone to Washington several times to meet with the president. Senator Schumer just aligned with the Republican Party to prevent shutting down government. This is adult time. This is not childhood time where we're upset that the person we wanted or voted for didn't win. And so now we want to go in our corner and stomp our feet and pout and be angry. We got a country and a city to run.  

And the thought that the mayor of the largest city in America should not have a relationship with the president of the United States is just silly. This is the same thing. I went to visit Biden before getting in office. Once I won the primary, I was invited to the Washington White House after I won the general election. And he had a private meeting with me in the Oval Office. And we had a larger meeting with other law enforcement people. I invited President Biden here to New York City.  

We came and we coordinated around law enforcement issues. And so when people say a person that has been in this public life for over 40 years, I was extremely active as the police officer while I was in the Police Department. I criticized and pushed for police reform. I was always independent as a state senator, as a borough president. And so when someone looks at your life for over 40 years and wants to rewrite your history and your contribution to the city, it's insulting. 

And so some of this stuff is just too silly for me to try to defend. Just the silliness of the campaign season. And this is an opportunity for those who have known me for over 40 years. They need to be pushing back and say, we know this brother. This brother has been steadfast, has been committed. This is the same Eric Adams of 1984 that [is] Eric Adams of 2025. Same person. And I know that. And people who really know my heart, they know that as well.  

Nobles: With that, thank you for taking the time. We talked for quite a bit and we could talk for a lot longer. But hopefully we will do this again. We've been blessed to be able to have a little bit of a series going. And so hopefully we'll be able to continue this series and talk more.  

Mayor Adams: Thank you, brother. Good to see you. Take care.  

Nobles: Good to see you. Thank you. Take care. 

###