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Transcript: Mayor Eric Adams Appears Live on 1010 WINS

June 20, 2022

Brigitte Quinn: Joining us live on 1010 WINS news line is Mayor Adams. Mayor Adams, thank you so much for being here.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. It is great to be on with you.

Quinn: Mayor, I'll understand if you're a little groggy speaking with us. I know you've been saying that this is something that keeps you up at night. The Supreme Court may be ruling as early as tomorrow and making it easier to carry a concealed weapon here in the city. Obviously gun violence is a huge issue for New Yorkers. We just had this shooting in Harlem this morning. Can any of your policies, the city's policies, make it tougher to carry, to get more guns off the streets?

Mayor Adams: And that's so important. And yes, it does keep me up at night. I say it over and over again. And it is extremely important for the Supreme Court to make the right decision for not only New Yorkers, but Americans. I was in Harlem last night until around 2:00 am in the morning after nine people were shot. One person lost his life. We are going to continue to zero in on removing guns off the street. We have removed over 3,000 guns thus far. We're going to continue to go after those shooters. And I'm happy to hear that the court system is picking up some of these cases, but we have to move even further to ensure dangerous people go to trial and the determination if they are guilty, they serve time. We're going to do our job as the police department, but we need our partners in the criminal justice system to help us.

Quinn: Mr. Mayor, I do want to talk about rent and I want to talk about vaccines. But while we're on the topic of crime, we talked with you on Friday about having cops do single patrols on the subways to keep riders safe there. Pat Lynch of the PBA wasn't kind, in response, he said this is going to make it harder for cops to protect themselves and riders. He says it's going to worsen the exodus of cops. What do you say to that?

Mayor Adams: Pat has an awesome responsibility of protecting the rules and regulation of his members. And I respect that and I work well with Pat Lynch. Some things we agree on, some things we're going to disagree on. But let's be clear, not only the days when I was a former transit cop, we had single patrol. But that existed all the way up until there was an assassination of two officers that happened in Brooklyn. And as an overabundance of caution, they did the dual patrols. That's when that took place. Transit always had assignments that were single patrols. During the midnights in the overnight hours, we are going to make sure that officers are put in a safe place. We're not going to do anything that's going to jeopardize the safety of officers or the safety of the public. This is a strategic way, it's not a blanket that every assignment is going to be a single patrol. There's going to be a well deployment of police. Something that I've often stated, we are not deploying our police correctly.

Quinn: And Mayor Adams, I guess, to put an umbrella over it, when it comes to the streets being safer, the subways being safer, which, if any, of your policies would you say are getting any kind of results in making New Yorkers feel better about being here in the city?

Mayor Adams: Well, a combination. Number one, our neighborhood safety team. As I indicated, over 3,000 guns we removed off the street with the combination of the neighborhood safety team and the other community form of precision policing. We also should really thank the men and women of the HRA and the New York City Police Department and other entities of removing those who were living in the subway system. New York City residents talked about having the encampments in the subway system. First week, only 22 people took us up on our offer to go into safe haven and other housing. Now we're up to over 1,300 people who are no longer living on our subway system for the in safe haven environment.

Mayor Adams: And then how we're deploying our personnel. If you look at our parades, you are really seeing a difference of not having five, six officers standing on this corner for peaceful parades. They're being used to have the omnipresence that is needed to build back the confidence that our city is safe. And so you are seeing from the 30% decrease in shootings and homicides in April and May, you're seeing a result of what is happening in our city. We have an over 30 year, close to a 30 year high in arrests for those who are carrying guns. You're seeing the real activity of our law enforcement apparatus, as well as preventing crime.

Quinn: Mayor Adams, want to talk about rent, the guidelines board meeting tomorrow. And it looks like we could see an increase of anywhere two to four percent for two year leases, maybe as much as six. What do you say to New Yorkers who say, “I'm not going to be able to afford this. I have to move. I have to get out of the city.”

Mayor Adams: We want New Yorkers to be here and live in the city. We know that inflation is devastating everyday hard working New Yorkers. As you know previously, we were hearing numbers upward of nine percent. We raised our voice and advocated to state this is unacceptable. And we are hoping that the Rent Guidelines Board, an independent board, will make the right decision for those New Yorkers who are struggling, and then also look after the small property landlords, the small property landlords who are also really devastated from inflation. And that is very important as we make this important decision for New Yorkers.

Mayor Adams: So we are doing our job to put money back in the pockets of New Yorkers, earned income tax credit, as you know, helping with the childcare vouchers, as you are aware of that and really looking at how do we help New Yorkers during this difficult time. And so our call was to not go to those high percentages of nine percent, what we believe would have decimated New Yorkers, but to ask them to come substantially lower. And we believe the Rent Guidelines Board, they heard the cries of New Yorkers and heard the cries of our administration, and hopefully we can find a rent increase that they appear to indicate they're going to be doing, but to do it in a fair way for both those small property landlords and everyday renters.

Quinn: Mayor Adams, last but certainly not least, all those little New Yorkers who are about to get COVID shots. I understand the city is making a number of places available. But how do you persuade parents to get their kids vaccinated? We had a study that said some 40% of the parents are saying, let's just hang back and wait a while. We'll see how it goes.

Mayor Adams: To really show the data, show the information, vaccine is about to come out for children under five. We're going to be aggressive in getting the information out. We want to spread facts and not fear, we think it is crucial as we have taken vaccines for smallpox and other diseases that we have to face. We think it's crucial that we give the parents the information they need so they can make the right decision to save their children as well as ensure that we don't have the widespread pandemic impact that we had in the past.

Quinn: Alrighty. And we've been getting out the word of the vaccination sites and the websites. And Mayor Adams, we thank you so much for speaking with us today.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Enjoy your day. It's a beautiful day out there in New York.

Quinn: It sure is. Thank you.

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