Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears On WHCR 90.3 FM's Soul Lounge Primetime

May 6, 2024

Curtis “DJ LeRoy” Archer: All right. Well, I'm thinking that I want to actually introduce you to who I call The Nightlife Mayor. That can only be live from the republic of the BK, my mayor, Eric Adams. Bring him up, man. Come on!

Bob “NightWatchman” Ponce: Welcome.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thanks, brother.

Ponce: Welcome, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: Good to see both of you. I should have the term NightWatchman also. I did midnights for about 10, 12 years. That was my favorite tour.

Ponce: There's something about the city at night. New York is one of the only really night cities in the world where things are still going on. There's a whole economy. There's a whole rhythm that happens at night so. I love that.

Mayor Adams: And that's so important because people don't realize revitalizing our nightlife is crucial to our economic development. When I go and stop at one of these establishments late at night and stop in the kitchen and talk to the chefs, talk to the dishwashers, the bus boys, the girls, the waiters and really call people to patronize these businesses because low wage employees are in many of these businesses, and if we don't have it thriving and popping, it really would impact our economy.

You can't be a mayor that's a 9:00 to 5:00 mayor. You have to understand that there's people who work mornings, afternoons and overnights. I need to be able to communicate with all of them and say, "I see you, I support you, and I need to create an environment where you can do your thing as well."

Archer: Absolutely. Mr. Mayor, I got to give you some propies, some serious propies. Why? We're talking about the lowest unemployment rate for African Americans, 7.9 since 2019, baby. Yes. Bravo.

Mayor Adams: Yes. We know we have more to do. We witnessed over my time in office a 24 percent decrease in unemployment around African Americans. We knew we had to be precisioned on how we did it because what we found historically, we asked people to come to us to find out about employment. You may not have a MetroCard to come to you. We said, let's go on the ground, and that's what we did. We started doing hiring halls in the community, Brownsville, Harlem, Bronx, Staten Island, and people started to come. If you build it, they will come. We built it, and now people are coming and realizing that there's employment out there for them.

Archer: Absolutely. NightWatchman, what you got for the mayor, man?

Ponce: We remember there was a show that probably slightly before our times, it used to start out saying, "There's eight million stories in the naked city."

There's eight million stories, but there's also eight million agendas, eight million opinions, and a bunch of different special interest groups that— You have nonprofits that have budgets the size of small countries. You have unions, you have real estate. How do you manage all those expectations because everybody feels their agenda should be the first one? How do you approach that?

Mayor Adams: I love that. First of all, I got to push back on you a little when you said there are eight million stories. No, there are 8.3 million people, but there are 35 million opinions.

Archer: Absolutely.

Ponce: Absolutely true.

Mayor Adams: One must fully understand that you will never really satisfy everyone. You have to have what are the core values, what are the core items that are important that you need to focus on. That is what I built my entire administration about. People want to be safe, they want to be able to have their children properly educated, and they want to be able to house themselves. I wrap everything around that. If you stay there, even if you have some misunderstandings on those complicated things, least people can be able to talk about those things in a safe place, in a place that they can live, and they know that babies are being prepared for the future.

Archer: Absolutely. Mr. Mayor, you know what? At first, I was not going to give you some props because I was coming home one evening. I noticed on my block right there on Community Board 9, like, yo, what are these containers, man? Where's my parking spaces? Yo, what's up? What's up? However, and I also, because I think I mentioned that my son works in your administration for Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi, right?

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Archer: I said, "Yo, James, what's up, man? How you do this to me? He said, "Dad, take a step back, and these are for rat mitigation." True, I had seen a number of rats right here. As a matter of fact, I'm adjacent. I have a street that divides me from your first deputy mayor, so yes, rats are a real thing here in Community Board 9. Major props with the containerization program, no rats. My wife who was the first to see rats. She said, "Hallelujah."

Ponce: Okay. They're not all gone yet, but there's no question that it's had a great impact. I'm down the block from a school where those containers were set up, and I can tell you before the containers, it was just a mound of garbage, and it was like rat heaven. It definitely makes a difference, and so we tip our hat to you.

Archer: Yes, indeed.

Mayor Adams: We did a real analysis of the rodent problem. I hired a rancher. Commissioner Tisch was focused. Everyone tried to containerize our garbage, because believe it or not, when you go across a globe in every modern city and you talk about plastic bags, they’re saying, "Plastic what? What are y'all talking about?" We had a real mission. Brothers, they told me it was going to take five years. We had a fancy study done, they said, "You can do it in five years." I said, "Like hell we are. We're going to do it in two and a half years."

We rolled out an aggressive plan because when you set a goal and a timeline, people fight to meet that goal and the timeline. We can't be just esoteric and say, "Well, let's hope ideally we can do something." No. We started out with our food industries, these local stores, restaurant, then we moved to chain stores. We're going to be moving to buildings and then we're going to get a cheap container for small houses so that they can use them also. We're going to transform this city. It's going to deal with our rodent issue and it's going to make it a cleaner city because nothing could traumatize your day and life more than your interaction with a rat.

Archer: Yes.

Mayor Adams: If you pull up your toilet seat and a rat pops out, you would never again want to be in that restroom.

Archer: Mr. Mayor, just the graphic of that, man, I'm taking a step back.

Oh my God, definitely major props on that. Like you, I am a product of New York City Public Schools. We did have on Soul Lounge Primetime your chancellor, we love him, David Banks, talk about a great selection. Bob, what you got to say, buddy?

Ponce: Well, David Banks I think he's the foremost educator in the country, and I've thought that for years. When we saw him picked as chancellor for the New York City schools, we were like, "Okay. You got the number one draft pick there." How is that going? What have been the objectives, and how do you feel you are on that mission to transform New York City schools?

Mayor Adams: I love you use the analogy "number one draft pick" because anytime you try to rebuild a team, Team New York, you have to make sure you get marquee players that you can build the team around and the right coaches, the right farm team. All of that goes together. If I could just take a step back for a moment, what did we inherit in 2022 which has been overshadowed?

I want to talk about why all of our successes have been overshadowed in a minute, but we inherited a city where we had a 40 percent increase in these major crimes. Employment and jobs availability was hurting. The independent financial experts didn't see that we were managing our city correctly. Our children were not reading and learning at the level that they ought to be. Tourism was nowhere to be found for the most part. No one wanted to get on our subway system. We were not building the housing so that people could remain in the city. As you were talking about some of the trash, our children in foster care were not getting the services that they need.

Now go two years. Two years. Two years later, more jobs in the city of New York in the history of the city. More affordable housing built in one year in the history of the city. More people that were formerly homeless moved into permanent housing in the history of the city. More people who needed vouchers received vouchers to go into homeless in the history of the city. Bond raiders, those independent financial experts, they raised our bonds because they saw what we were doing. We saw a double-digit decrease in shooting, double-digit decrease in housing.

Then when you look at Chancellor Banks, we said it is not good that 30 percent to 40 percent of our inmates at Rikers Island are dyslexic. We need to be detecting this dyslexia ahead of time. He put in the first in this nation dyslexia screening for all of our children, and he changed the reading methodologies that everyone is now saying he was a visionary. The state has embraced it, and we believe the national government is going to embrace it. At the same time, 62 million tourists, the fourth largest number of tourists in our city's history. When you start looking at what we have done in two years, we're outpacing the state in reading and math. We're ahead of the entire state in doing so because of the team we built.

What does that team look like? That's the most significant part of this. People look at me as being the second Black mayor of the City of New York, number 110, but they're missing Sheena Wright, the first woman of color to be a first deputy mayor. Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom, the first Trinidadian. Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi, the first Indian. Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, the first Filipino. Deputy Mayor Almanzar, the first Dominican. Ingrid Martin, the first African American chief advisor. You go through the list. Eddie Caban, the first Spanish speaker to be the police commissioner. First women police commissioner, first woman fire commission.

We changed the face of the city, and we put people in power that was not only diverse, but they had the ability because of their personal narratives to turn the city around, and now you're seeing a byproduct of it.

Archer: Absolutely. Major, major props, mayor, because, like I said, you have actually a cabinet that looks like New York, that looks like America, for God's sake. Certainly, NightWatchman– Oh, I also have to say that NightWatchman and I, we do have a common thread. Like I said, New York City public school. I'm a product of Stuyvesant High School. The old building was on 15th Street, right?

Mayor Adams: Mhmm deep deep deep. 

Archer: NightWatchman's father attended Stuyvesant as well. That's what we got in common.

Mayor Adams: Wow. Wow.

Ponce: And City College.

[Crosstalk.]

Ponce: No, no, no. Unfortunately, he passed about 10 years ago. He is the product of that upward mobility chain of starting out at Stuyvesant then going to City College, which is our great public institution and still is. That upward mobility works and is obviously an important part of New York's ecosystem of being able to have an educational system that creates a pathway toward uplifting yourself and your family.

Mayor Adams: Love it, love it, love it, love it.

Archer: You know what? I have to say, Mr. Mayor, one of the things– I want you to give both an explanation. City of Yes. I want to know about small business and I want to know about housing. City of Yes.

Mayor Adams: I love that. I love that. First, I think it's important to lay the foundation of what City of Yes is about. Do you know we have 59 community boards in our city where a lot of this housing stuff goes through for ULURP and all of these other technical aspects. Out of those 59 community boards–

Archer: I'm going to ask you to stop and explain ULURP for our listeners inside baseball, so just tell us why do you love this.

Mayor Adams: I think the best way to explain it is that when you want to do projects of building that is not as of right, meaning that you want to increase the scale, the size, you have to put it through the community board, the board president, and the mayor's office through planning to determine if the project can go through. What we have found out that out of the 59 community boards that's part of that decision-making or the area of the city because our city is broke down into community boards. Out of those 59 community boards, nine of them have built more affordable housing than all the 50 combined.

Archer: Wow. Wow.

Mayor Adams: That has created an oversaturation of new housing in certain communities, and it has led to gentrification, over-placement, high pricing. It has just led to a different structure in our city. What are we saying? We're saying, every community should build a little more housing so we don't overburden other communities. Because we have communities in this city that has access to good schools, access to good health care, access to good quality food, access to good transportation, but they're not building any affordable housing.

The zoning laws have been racist. They prevented building higher to prevent people from coming in, and we're attacking that front and center. When your son goes away to college and come back home, or your family member decides they want to go on their own and leaves the home, they should have a place to live. We have a 1.4 percent vacancy rate where people have to leave the city because there's not enough apartments, and that drives up the cost. We have an inventory problem in this city.

Archer: Absolutely. Okay. Now, that's the overall view in terms of let's say what you learn in that process, maybe. In terms of, let's say, tackling that and using your City of Yes for affordable housing, what is your vision?

Mayor Adams: We want to go to the community boards and say, "Okay, here's your parcel of geographical areas in your community. Let's build more housing that we don't change the character of the community, allow people to build higher." You may have, for example, a store with needed transportation, but there's only one level. We'll say, "Let's build two floors on top of that to get more affordable housing there."

You may have a house where you want to add a kitchen to because your loved one, or your grandmother, your mom decides that, "You know I'm getting up in age. I want to live with my loved ones," so now, let's give you the ability to do that and create that housing, that extended families because the families are extending more. We're saying, let's look in your community and see how do we remove those old zoning rules that did not allow people to do this so that we can start building to house New Yorkers within that community, and that is the goal of the City of Yes.

Archer: Mr. Mayor, would you say that– Okay. Certainly, we know that COVID has revealed, especially, let's say, to the real estate market that, you know what? I can actually work effectively remotely.

Mayor Adams: Without a doubt.

Archer: Seeing that, and that, let's say, the real estate industry has to maybe make some adjustments, but you also see this apply to certain office buildings that may be lying 80 percent vacant or unoccupied using that same zoning technique to change.

Mayor Adams: Yes, and that's so important. We had some real victories up in Albany. I really want to thank the governor, the speaker, the majority leader, and all of those elected officials that have really stepped up, my brother, Assemblyman Gibbs, and others. One of the big victories that we walked away with is that we can now convert a lot of this empty office space into housing. We have about 138 million square feet of empty office spaces. There's no reason this should be made empty. Prior to the changes in Albany, we were stuck with the two cumbersome process to convert into housing. Now we have an opportunity to do so so we can match that need.

Archer: Excellent, excellent. Now, we looked at City of Yes for attacking affordable housing. Tell me about small business. How do we use that same acronym?

Mayor Adams: It's so important. You know where we are hurting these small businesses? We're hurting in the retail space. We have to reuse these retail spaces. What we said is that, let's look at these antiquated rules that are on the books that don't allow certain retail spaces to take place in various communities. They got restrictions on typewriters. Who the hell use[s] typewriters?

We're saying these rules of what you can't do because you just pointed out accurately that many people are working from home. We should not have all these restrictions on doing a home-based business, and that is what we're looking at with small businesses because many people are moving to the place of having their own small businesses. Even when they occupied full-time work, they still are trying to transition to having their own business.

Then we need to give folks access to capital. That's something that Commissioner Kim has been great at doing. Our Small Business Opportunity Fund. We have put millions of dollars into small businesses and want to add that with my brother, Michael Garner is doing, my chief diversity officer. We are looking at the billions of dollars we have in MWBEs and making sure that we are looking at those 1,900 certified MWBEs, and give them access to some of the city business that has all often eluded these small businesses.

Archer: You know what? I got to say, Mr. Mayor, of course, one of the best-dressed men on the planet, even though, you know what? He's from Chi-town, but we'll give him some props, Michael Garner.

I also got to commend you in terms of your selection of the commissioner of SBS, Kevin Kim. Good dude, smart dude, and also responsive. We're going to actually be working together and doing some, let's say, career and job fairs in northern Manhattan. I'm really, really excited about that.

Mayor Adams: First Korean to hold that position just shows you what diversity looks like and the benefits of having that diversity.

Archer: Absolutely. I have to also say that– tell me this. Now, certainly, we know on the state level, we have the office of cannabis management, but I noticed that you have a comparable component there on the city level out of SBS. Tell me about that.

Ponce: First of all, let's give him props for Dasheeda Dawson. Again, another first-round draft pick. Absolutely.

Mayor Adams: Love her. Extremely talented. She knows the balance of not undermining the cannabis industry and the dreams of allowing [those] who were impacted because of heavy-handed enforcement. She understood you want to make sure that we regulate without harming the market. That was another victory we got from Albany with the help from Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar and her energy around the Smoke Act. We're starting now. We have the tools to target the illegal shops that have really permeated our communities. We now have to choose to go about enforcing and moving them down. We're excited about that.

It was so important that this market didn't get out of control because we found people were targeting young people around vape products, around illegal products. There's some places that they were selling everything other than cannabis. Now we can go in and do the enforcement that we need with the sheriffs.

Archer: Perfect. Perfect. NightWatchman, what you got for the mayor?

Ponce: Obviously, the biggest thing in the headlines right now is what's going on the college campuses. This is not an isolated thing here, it's happening all over the country, but in particular, it's happening at Columbia and at City College, our preeminent institutions. There's, obviously, a balance between the right to peaceably assemble and there's a line where you cross. Tell us a little bit about your interactions with those institutions, and how do you balance those rights, the right to assemble and protest versus going beyond that and property damage and potential violence.

Mayor Adams: It's so important. I think that's the uniqueness of my role now as a mayor of the city. The totality of my life and just the diversity of it because I protested. I don't know if there's to be mayors that have ever protested. I protested for dismantling of apartheid. I protested when hospitals were being threatened to close. I protested those questionable police shootings from Amadou Diallo to Zongo. I have protested not only as a civilian, but I have taken off my uniform at the end of my tour and joined protests. I've also protected protestors.

It's important that that is what democracy is about, is the right to protest. I encourage people to use peaceful protests to raise their voices, but you can't cross the line. You cannot go from protests to destruction. What we saw playing out at the Columbia and what we started to see of destruction of property, of doing things that I found to be hateful in nature. You don't call for peace and then call for destructions of individuals.

I think that there's some legitimate concerns on both sides of this issue. It needs to be resolved. Is it going to be resolved through Mayor Adams? I doubt it very much. I need to create the safe environment that people can protest without the destruction of property and harming individuals. We're seeing some of that play out throughout the entire country, but we wanted to make sure here in the city that if our colleges called us and asked for our assistance due to what they saw on their grounds, we would be there to provide them the necessary assistance.

Now, here's my concern. I said this at the beginning. Something was strange about some of these protests that were taking place. I was really concerned about that. It wasn't until I asked my intelligence division to do an analysis and say, "Do we have outside agitators embedded into the call that these students are participating in?" To my dismay, we found out we did. One of them, her husband was arrested for federal terrorism charges because of her actions. They were professionals. They participated in training. They participated in the takeover of the Hamilton Hall on Columbia. We found that over 40 percent, close to 48 percent, almost 50 percent, I should say, were not part of the student population.

Archer: Wow. Wow, agitators. Got you.

Mayor Adams: Right. An organic movement from students, we should all welcome that because the dismantling of apartheid happened because of what we did here in this country and internationally. Change is protest. Change is not remain in silence. We hurt our movement when we use violence to call on that change.

Archer: Yes. Absolutely. Mr. Mayor, I know some people will say, "No, no, no," but I'm going to say thank you for absolutely successfully, let's say, mitigating what was happening on Columbia without any violence. There was no, as I say– because you and I have a certain age, so we certainly do remember Kent State.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, brother. Not only Penn State, keep in mind, when I looked at what happened on the same day that they went in to resolve the Columbia issue, they had to go to CUNY. At that scene, because I use drones to watch what's happening on the ground. I use other video because I want to make sure these officers are acted properly. The same day that they went to Columbia, there was a fierce action and activity that was happening at CUNY. Bottles were being thrown, garbage, containers were being thrown, other objects were being thrown. It was a high level of discipline that I told my commanders we cannot succumb to that type of activity.

You and I both know what happens when there are major disruptions in our country. Our community is burned down. We know what it's like to have Brownsville burned down, Harlem burned down, South Bronx burned down, South Jamaica, Queens burned down, along Jamaica Avenue. We know what happens when there are these major disruptions. We're just starting to build back our communities that were the victims of some of these protests. We know what happened in Detroit. We know what happened in Chicago. We can't afford to have major violent disruptions in our cities because we are impacted by them.

Archer: Absolutely. Mr. Mayor, I definitely want to also say whatnot that unlike other mayor's from the past, you have a background and history in law enforcement, okay?

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Archer: Including, of course, starting a 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. Would you say that, as mayor, that your relationship with, let's say the PBA, is one that's maybe better than it has been in the past?

Mayor Adams: Without a doubt, and all the unions. I'm the mayor of the city, and I have to negotiate with unions around contracts, around services. You don't dismantle your advocacy on who you were and what made you because I'm still the same cat. You have to add to your abilities because you're the mayor of the city. The mayor of the city means that I have to be in a room with the entire constituency. That's why I spent many years in my Sikh community, my Buddhist community, my Muslim community, my Christian community. That's why I speak to all of my union members because that's the role of the mayor of the most important city on the globe.

No one argues about the status of New York. We are the most important city on the globe. When we get it right, the country gets it right, and the globe gets it right. Relationship with the unions, the police unions, the COBA, the correction officers unions, probation, all of these law enforcement officers. I'm going to make sure the officers do their jobs professionally, but I have to foster that they're going to trust that I'm going to give them the tools they need to do their job.

Archer: Absolutely. Go ahead, NightWatchman.

Ponce: Well, I wanted to ask you– You started at the top of the broadcast. You mentioned that there are many opinions and many agendas you have to deal with, and you had to prioritize. I wanted to ask you, what are your priorities? What are the top three biggest challenges you feel the city is facing right now?

Mayor Adams: The migrants and asylum seekers. 191,000 came into our city. Many people equated their arrivals and the actions, they equated it to, well, this is what the mayor did to us. The mayor's giving migrants and asylum seekers more than what they give every day longstanding New Yorkers. He's giving them American Express cards to go and buy Gucci bags. The narrative was just out of control. There are four points to it that people need to realize. Number one, it's against the law for me to stop the buses from coming into the city of New York. I can't do that. It's against the law.

Number two, it's against the law for me not to give them three meals a day and a place to stay. I would be breaking the law if I did that. It's against the law for me to allow them to work. I cannot even allow the overwhelming number of them to volunteer and give them a stipend. If they want to come and say, "We want to clean the streets, remove graffiti, and do services for the city, just give us a stipend." The federal government said, "You'll be breaking federal law, Eric, if you do so." With that, it came with a $4 billion price tag. We only got about 180-something million out of that $4 billion from the federal government.

Governor Hochul has been a partner, but we need more help from the federal government, and lastly, we need to allow people to work. If you parole people into the country, you should say that you have the ability to work. We have a shortage of all these jobs, everything from lifeguards to food service workers. You name a job, and we have a shortage. Let's let people work. We're dealing with population decreases in other parts of the country. Many of my mayors and governors are saying, "Eric, we will take some of the migrants and asylum seekers because we have a population problem, but they got to be able to work. We don't want to take and have them just sit around all day." That is one of the top challenges.

The second is that we have to really deal with our housing crisis, and that came to the City of Yes conversation that you were talking about. That's extremely important. Lastly, we must make sure that we're proactive in allowing our children to develop their full personhood by giving them the tools they need so they can be productive citizens. That is the best anti-violence, the best anti-poverty, that's the best anti-mental health issues. You give these young people the tools they need, they will be on the pathway to success and not on the path of destruction.

Archer: Absolutely. Go ahead.

Ponce: You also mentioned your relationship with the governor. Curtis and I were talking before the broadcast, and we contrasted the last mayor and the last governor and how that was a strained relationship that I personally think it hurt New Yorkers in many respects, especially when the pandemic hit. Tell us a little bit about how you've avoided that problem. Not only it seems to be a good working relationship with the governor, but obviously you have a good working relationship with the legislators having come from that arena. Tell us a little bit about how those bridges are formed and how that helps impact the results for our city.

Mayor Adams: That's a great observation, and you're right. Governor Hochul has been a real partner for me on so many fronts. No one thought she would be able to get the mayoral accountability extension for Chancellor Banks in the budget. We were able to do that. We were able to get cannabis enforcement. We were able to get housing. We had to raise our debt ceiling to go after some of these major projects that we have to do. She pushed that through. So many other areas, she has been amazing.

It was about a conversation. It was about respecting her role as the chief executive of the state, and she respected the role that I have as chief executive of the city. It was many of my visits up in Albany, sitting down with Speaker Heastie who stated, he represents the City of New York and he was not going to allow anything to happen that will be detrimental to the city. For Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, [she] heard from her members how important these issues were to New York City residents.

Everyone knows what we went through in '22 with the migrants and asylum seekers. They know how devastating it has been to our city, and they said, "Let us help alleviate some of the other areas. If we can't stop the flow, we can at least help to give you access to other resources."

Archer: Yes, yes. Mr. Mayor, I do remember that this president who we had, I think he was 45, that he did not believe in the climate change. He thought it was a Chinese hoax of some sort. I do understand that you have a division set up to really mitigate and really address that. Tell me about that, what you're doing on that front with resiliency.

Mayor Adams: Let me tell you something, if anyone believes climate change is not real, all you have to do is just go Google the UAE and the rain that they received. Those visuals are unreal. We are really focused on approaching climate change through several different layers, education, legislation, and employment. This green economy, something that many of us shy away from, is going to produce millions of jobs, billions of dollars of economic stimulus. We want to make sure our young people are ready and trained, everything from battery installation, solar installation, electric vehicles, how to design, how to repair them.

We're really leaning into the employment aspect of this because there's some great opportunities. Even our brothers and sisters who are incarcerated, you don't have to do time. You can use time to learn a skill that won't put you back on that revolving door of learning the skills you need when you get out. These are jobs of the future.

Second, we're the first city in America to have what's called climate budgeting. We are looking at every aspect of, when we make these budgetary decisions, how does it impact our climate, and how do we do a better job to make sure that we address the climate issues that we're facing?

We have been very successful. We're building an entire new college on Governors Island with a partnership, thanks for the help from Mayor Bloomberg and others. A real help in really teaching these environmental issues and doing the necessary research. The education also include what we're doing with our children, how we really educate them the importance of taking care of our environment. I like to say we have two mothers, one gave birth to us, the other sustains us, and we have to make sure we take care of the one that is sustaining us.

Archer: Absolutely. I definitely have to then say, Mr. Mayor, because I think you brought it up before in terms of, let's say, public safety. We certainly do know that this is still, and correct me if I'm wrong, still the safest big city in the US bar none, but we still have to do a little bit more in terms of, let's say, going to the source of mental illness because they're out there. They're doing it.

Mayor Adams: That is what I was saying. As successful as we have been in this city, despite all that we've come up with, we've had a level of success, but there are three issues that's overshadows our success. One of them is dealing with the recidivism problem we have. When you look at Officer Diller and many victims of violence in our community, you find that these are the same small number of people.

The person who shot Officer Jonathan Diller, he was arrested 20 times before. The person who was in the car with him was arrested in April of '23 on a gun charge. He was carrying an illegal gun. There was another gun found in the car. We believe it was his. We're going to prove it through DNA. These random acts of violence, do you know only 542 people who are arrested for shoplifting, they have been arrested over 7,600 times in our city?

Archer: Wow.

Mayor Adams: Even on the transit system, the 38 people who attacked transit employees have been arrested over 1100 times. It's about recidivism. We have to address that. The second is random acts of violence.

Archer: Wow. Yes.

Mayor Adams: When you punch a woman in the face no matter how safe the city is, if that gets reported, people tend to be shaken, and it impacts their confidence in this city. These random acts of violence are having a real impact on how people feel. The numbers will be low, but people don't feel safe with these random acts of violence. The last issue in the trilogy is what you just stated, severe mental health problems. If we don't address that–

We have not really fixed what we did years ago. There was a real push by advocates to close psychiatric wards. When they closed those wards, they moved people to the streets. There was no real support system in place. You see those with severe mental health issues are now living on our streets. They were living in our subways. The Rikers Island has now become the modern-day psychiatric ward. Brothers, do you know 70 percent of the inmates on Rikers Island have mental health issues?

Archer: No, I did not know that.

Mayor Adams: 70, seven, zero. Everybody's talking about closing Rikers Island, the building. We should be closing the pipeline that feeds the building, and that should be our focus. We don't have a state-of-the-art psychiatric facility. Oftentimes in government, there's a knee-jerk reaction, something is done bad, we go to the far extreme. We need to develop a state-of-the-art psychiatric ward where you can put people who need the care. A lot of family members call and say, my son, my dad, my husband, my daughter need help. We need to be able to give them the help that they need, and the way we can do it is to have a psychiatric facility that we all can be proud of.

Archer: Yes. Yes indeed. Mr. Mayor, like I said, we talked about your relationship with the PBA and the police in general. I also want to commend you on your selection of Edward Caban. He came up to a reception when he was first hired to Harlem, and you just feel that there is something special about him. I just want to say, would you say that he's a police officer's police officer?

Mayor Adams: Yes, he is. He's a people police officer. They underestimate his depth and respect that he receives throughout the entire city. You could go in any community you want and you will see the love that he receives. He's authentic, and that's really what our team is. Our team is made up of authentic, caring people, and he really personifies that. I enjoy his company. I enjoy how he connects with people, and he's not afraid to have that type of connection.

Archer: Would you say that since you've been in office that, let's say, our numbers on uniform services have gone up, stayed the same, or reduced? Tell me.

Mayor Adams: There's real fear because, historically, we've had large police classes that are reaching the 20-year mark. There's a fear that if we don't keep pace, we could lose that. Not only are we looking that in the police ranks, but we're looking at all of the public safety institutions. We're having a problem with district attorneys. A lot of district attorneys, we're losing because of the overwhelming paperwork that has been attached to their jobs. We're losing probation officers. We had code red on correction officers. Many of them are about to retire. We have to find ways to bring in or retain.

We're losing school safety officers. The numbers are very low. When you look at the classes that's coming in, we are going to put in new classes. We've allocated money for that, but we are having a problem filling the last class because we don't have enough qualified candidates to do so. We found ways to take the barriers out of the way, but we need to make sure we fortify our public safety institutions so we can continue to be the safest big city in America.

Archer: Absolutely.

Ponce: I want to ask you a question about congestion pricing, which was an idea that was started by Mayor Bloomberg. I thought it left with him, but evidently, it's come back and it's due to be implemented. I guess my question is, what are the real benefits of it, and are there unanticipated issues or problems we might run into when it gets implemented?

Mayor Adams: Yes. The first order of business that people must understand, that congestion pricing is not controlled by the City of New York. The state made a determination that it was going to be implemented. The state turned it over to the MPA for the most part to do how the implementation is going to be done. The federal government added their authorization as well.

I would've hoped that this is impacting our city streets, so I would've hoped that the city of New York and the city council and the Mayor's Office would've formalized the entire plan to do so. We didn't get a chance to do that, but we were able to fight for some real recovery like $100 million to go to areas outside the congestion pricing zone to get some relief. We were able to look at shift workers, low-wage workers. We were able to look at some city employees. There were some things we were able to get, but I think that it should have been up to the city to make this determination.

Now, what are the benefits? We have a real congestion problem particularly in our central business district that has an economic price tag attached to it and sending traffic for a long period of time. The emissions. They are definitely impacting not only the central business district but the environmental area. When you look at Manhattan, Manhattan has some of the best transportation going in the country.

Archer: Yes, it's true.

Mayor Adams: Cross-town buses, cross-town trains, north and south trains going all the way across from one avenue to the next. If there was ever a place that we should say people should be using public transportation, that is probably one of the places to do it. We need to make sure that the money that is generated, is predicted to be a billion dollars a year, we need to make sure that money goes into a lockbox and just go to improving our transportation system.

Archer: Nice.

Ponce: We won't blame you if it messes up.

Mayor Adams: Brothers, I got to go see Jackie Rowe. She's upstairs. This is not a one-and-done. I really look forward to just check in. It doesn't have to be long, but we would love to check in and let you know some of the updates that we're doing to keep the Harlem community aware of what's happening.

Archer: Mr. Mayor, you're telling me that you're coming back to the cookout? Is that what you're saying?

Mayor Adams: Yes, we are. We're going to make it a regular. We're going to make it a regular.

Ponce: I got one final question for you before you go.

Archer: Go ahead.

Ponce: In doing our little research, I didn't know that you had written a book about healthy eating. Tell us a little bit about that journey and how that's impacted you and how does that impact your outlook on the city and healthy eating?

Mayor Adams: Well said. We should probably do a whole show just on that. I was hit with a healthcare crisis. Little did I know, my eating habits, they were feeding my health care crisis. I think it's important that many of us don't know how closely food is attached. The doctors told me that my late-stage diabetes was attached to my dinner. They said it was attached to my DNA. Little did I know, it wasn't my DNA, it was my dinner.

When I changed my eating habits, I was able to reverse my vision loss, my nerve damage. I had an ulcer. That ulcer went away as well. My blood pressure, my cholesterol all normalized. I shared that journey in the book, and I shared the journey of how our eating habits came about. It's a light reading, very entertaining, very informative, and is very helpful to help people empower themselves by looking at food differently and our relationship with food.

Archer: Perfect. Mr. Mayor, thank you so much.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Archer: Please say hello to Jackie Rowe. Tell her Curtis said hello. Okay?

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Archer: NightWatchman, take us home.

Ponce: You've been listening to Soul Lounge Primetime on WHCR 90.3 FM. Our Voice of Harlem also live streaming on YouTube and Facebook. You can always find us on Monday nights with the most interesting guests. Certainly today, we had a good one.