Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears on NEWS12

July 7, 2025

Julia Burns: Perfect, so first of all, you know, on the heels of the primaries looking ahead to November, do you feel that Mamdani is a good fit for mayor and how do you feel that your vision for the city differs from his?

Mayor Eric Adams: Well, I think this is going to be an important time for New Yorkers because we're so diametrically opposed to how to do the job. From experience, it's clearly my level of expertise, to my support of police and not to defund the police. My understanding that those who commit violent crimes should be on Rikers Island. He wants to empty Rikers Island. 

My belief that small businesses like bodegas and supermarkets are important. He wants to do government stores and put them out of business. My belief that the financial ecosystem, we need billionaires, we need low-income workers so that we can have a combined ecosystem. He doesn't believe that. I think that we should not be taxing communities based on their ethnicity. He believes differently. 

So New Yorkers are going to be able to say, who are we as a city? And there's a clear dividing line of who I am, my success, and this experiment that an academic elitist is going to try to bring to the city.

Burns: Great, great. And over the weekend, obviously with this gorgeous weather, people celebrated the 4th at beaches and at pools. Unfortunately in the Bronx, there was a shooting at one of the Cortona Park pools and there was a brawl in Central Park. 

Now that summer's in full swing, is the city doing anything to ensure that families, that children going to these public parks, these public pools can enjoy their summer safely?

Mayor Adams: Yeah, and when you do an analysis and you look at New York City, we had I think one shooting on 4th of July. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th were the safest 3rd, 4th, and 5th in recorded history in the city. You look at other municipalities, I think Chicago had over 50 shootings. Clearly, we're moving in the right direction. We went the whole day without a shooting until about 11:45, that we had that shooting. 

So what Commissioner Tisch has been able to do is deploy police at the right hot spots, make sure we utilize our manpower appropriately, and coming up with real solutions of dealing with violence. And we're seeing the results of that. Last 6 months, lowest numbers of shootings and homicides, again, in the recorded history of the city. 

And the city is booming, you can feel it. Broadway had the best 12 months in the recorded history of the city. Our hotels have recovered from pre-pandemic levels. People are back out on the streets in our restaurants. You can't even get a restaurant reservation nowadays. So we're moving in the right direction and we have to continue that success.

Burns: Building off of that, moving in the right direction. Is there a secret ingredient? Is there anything you guys are doing differently to see this success or is it just building upon what was already there?

Mayor Adams: Building the right team, learning from errors and mistakes, and making sure that we're very clear on our message. And the foundation is public safety. That's the prerequisite to prosperity. If you have a safe city, everything can grow from that. Then you can have actually the opportunity to reflect on what else you want in your life. 

Many people are thinking about bigger ideas and greater things because they're safe. That was my primary goal. I said public safety is a prerequisite to prosperity.

Burns: And going to Brooklyn now over the weekend, I think the NYPD said they were able to seize, I think it was about 39 of these mopeds, saying most of them weren't able to be traced, the license plates and things like that, to keep drivers, pedestrians safe. What's your take on these mopeds?

Mayor Adams: Well, no matter what town hall, adult town hall, older adult town hall, no matter what event I attend, they always come up. What are we going to do about the mopeds? And so we have destroyed 100,000 illegal vehicles, dirt bikes, four-wheelers, illegal scooters. 100,000. Amazing numbers. Many of these items were being used to commit serious crimes, and we zeroed in on it. 

Also, we just lowered the speed limit of scooters to 15 miles an hour. In addition to that, we have an entirely new unit that is going to be trained to focus in on those guys that are riding on the sidewalk, going across traffic lanes, disobeying signs. We're going to zero in on them, and that is going to continue the success that we've seen thus far.

Burns: Great. A few weeks ago, we covered a story in the Bronx, very tragic, a two-year-old boy whose father was accused of throwing him into a body of water. There's been some pushback. The community is wondering why an Amber Alert wasn't sent out. People are wondering if the NYPD, the city, is going to take this as a learning curve going forward of what they could do differently, getting messages out about missing persons, missing children going forward.

Mayor Adams: Whenever you have a tragedy of this magnitude, first my heart goes out to the family. A mother that loses a child like this and a dad that reportedly committed the act is heartbreaking. And we're going to do an analysis to determine if there's something we could have done differently. 

What I am asking of the community now is just to lift the family up in prayer, give them the support that they deserve, and we're going to make sure that this person is brought to justice and held accountable for his actions.

Burns: A few months ago, you made an announcement with Operation Padlock that the next phase of this initiative is going to be getting legal storefronts in these businesses that were padlocked. Can you tell me a little bit more about that and what the vision is going forward for this?

Mayor Adams: We did this at a pizza shop in Queens. The goal was those illegal businesses that were housing illegal cannabis shops, they had to close down for a year. And so now that year is up. We're asking them to reopen, but reopen with legitimate businesses. 

And storefronts were herded. But because of the foot traffic has returned, because our tourism numbers are good, now we're seeing a comeback on our retail spaces. And we want these retail spaces to be used for legal businesses and not illegal ones.

Burns: Great. And I guess lastly, I would just say, you know, to the voter watching this right now, what do you want to say to them? What message do you have to them coming up in November?

Mayor Adams: That I hear them. You know, many people are concerned about the affordability issue. And I heard them not only this year, but I heard them year one. And I knew I had to make the city safe and I knew we had to find creative ways of putting money back in the pockets of everyday working class people. 

We put billions of dollars back in paying off medical debt, paying college tuition for foster care children, lowering the cost of child care from $220 a month to less than $20 a month. And Axe the Tax for the Working Class, no income tax for low income New Yorkers. Those are real solutions, not an academic elitist approach to these real problems. 

As mayor, I gave them the real solutions. I heard what they stated when I ran for office. We delivered on that and we're going to continue to do so for the people of the city that I love so much.

Burns: Amazing. And then just lastly, going back to the pools, you know, with these issues that we saw over the weekend, I know that lifeguards don't really have the training to do that kind of crisis management. 

Do you think that there could be a possibility of increased security at New York City parks and pools? Do you think that there could be increased public safety training for lifeguards to handle those things? Do you see any growth in that area?

Mayor Adams: Yeah. We don't want lifeguards. We want them to save swimmers. It is the job of the police and the PEP workers, park enforcement officers, to keep this public safety part of it. We don't want to ever have lifeguards put themselves in harm's way. So we do a proper deployment of police, a proper deployment of PEP officers. 

When you look at the millions of people who are at our pools and our parks, you're going to have— sometimes people drink too much. Sometimes people do what's wrong. But again, hats off to the Police Department. What they did over the weekend is just remarkable. 

Traditionally, this is one, this could be one of the most violent times of the year because of the cookouts, the drinking, all the other things that come with festivities outdoors. They ensured that people could celebrate our nation's birthday in a peaceful way.

Burns: When it comes to next weekend, maybe not a holiday weekend, do you think that there's room for preventative measures, whether it be maybe police stationed at certain parks that are very popular and things like that? Are there any preventative measures you think the city or NYPD can take?

Mayor Adams: Yes, and that's what Commissioner Tisch is talking about. We have a large number of officers who are doing desk duties for the summer months. We're going to see a greater number of them doing time out at some of these hot spots that have been identified.

Burns: Great. Thank you so much. I think that's pretty much everything I have. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Good to see you.

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