Transcript: Mayor Eric Adams Calls in Live to WCBS 880

October 28, 2022

Paul Murnane: As we've been reporting this morning, another subway crime story in the news. As of just this morning, a man was stabbed on a subway platform in Harlem.

Wayne Cabot: Joining us live now to talk about this and many other issues facing the City of New York is the mayor of the City of New York, Eric Adams. Mr. Mayor, good morning.

Mayor Eric Adams: Good morning. How are you this morning?

Murnane: Well, we appreciate your time. It's good to talk to you. We wanted to bring up the subway stabbing incident that we had this morning there in East Harlem. And I know that you have said of subway crime, and other crime in the city, that there's a narrative, it does end up on the front page. But listen, this is what people talk about, and people are genuinely concerned about how safe the sidewalks and the city transit system are. So what is new on that front and what's your reaction to what happened this morning in East Harlem?

Mayor Adams: And I agree, our subway system must be safe, and it's imperative, and that is why we implemented several phases of our subway safety plan. We're going to continue to weed out those who are using our system that are violent, and dealing with mental health illnesses. I like to constantly state that, when you do an analysis of 2019, 18, 17, the times we have large number of rioters, we have 4 percent less than index crimes, and 17 percent less in over 10 years. They have 3.5 million daily riders, six felony crimes a day on our system. We're going to get rid of those six crimes, but when you do a real analysis, you know that the law enforcement entities are doing an amazing job down there of 5,000 arrests this year, 750,000 station inspections, 1,000 new officers. And you're seeing police are there, I'm on a train just about every day monitoring, talking to officers, and we're going to continue to go after those violent people that use our system.

Cabot: And Mr. Mayor, about the police, the NYPD union says it's being crushed and it badly needs more officers. Why do you think there's been an exodus of officers and how do you plan to change that?

Mayor Adams: Because large classes. This happens all the time when you have large classes. If you go back over 20 years ago, we were having large classes enter the police academy, and now they've reached their 20 years, their retirement time, or the 21st year, I left after my 22nd year, that's what happens. But one thing is exciting, is that we don't have a deficit of people, I should say, of citizens, who would like to be cops. We've found that one of the problems that we were facing is that we could not produce the test fast enough. I had the police commissioner and DCAS get together and now we're going to be doing the test at the police academy on 20th Street, and we're able to turn out more classes. We have a large number of young people in this city that are looking forward to wearing the blue uniform and serving and protecting the City of New York. We're going to continue to keep our numbers at the optimum level.

Murnane: 10 years on now from Superstorm Sandy, there are some pretty breathtaking things on the table, including a series of flood protections and moving people away from their waterfront locations, and taking more land and putting that between homes and the water. Do you have the clout, does New York City have the will, the money to do what we need to do to protect ourselves from storms of the future, like the one that we endured 10 years ago this weekend?

Mayor Adams: Yeah, no, so true. And it's not even storms of the future anymore, those 10 year storms seem to be coming every year. We know how hard we were hit when we received Superstorm Sandy, we lost 44 of our neighbors, that's going to always impact us. And I think that it was a warning sign, it was not just a storm. 

So we are really asking for help on the city, state, and federal level. On the city level, we're doing our job. We're going to continue to put a shovel in the ground with some of the major projects that will protect our coastal infrastructure, and also move towards insuring that we do everything from recycling, using, or turning to storage methods, electrifying our vehicle fleets, and some of our buildings.

But we need help on the state level also, to ensure that we can expedite the projects faster. And that is something that we'll be pushing through. Senator Comrie is introducing a bill to do that as well. But this is the $8.5 billion initiative that we have underway, and that money must come from the federal government. New York sends $21 billion to Washington D.C. in taxes, without getting any of that money back in a manner in which we should. So we're looking for a designated fund to do these projects through FEMA and through other allocation with the infrastructure bill.

Cabot: Then you have what Texas has been sending here, and that is the migrants. Two questions: are those bus loads still arriving in the same numbers? And what's up with the shelter on Randall's Island, how many people have gone there so far?

Mayor Adams: Well, the first question, not at the same level. We only received one bus, I believe, two days ago. As you know, we did a speech laying out what we were experiencing here with the migrants and asylum seekers, what we were doing about it, what needed to be done, and what help we needed from the federal government. And at the top of that list, our call to the White House, we wanted to ensure that we had a decompression strategy at the border. That strategy was put in place by Washington, and so we saw that we immediately went from receiving anywhere from 10 buses a day down to one, as I indicated. And that has even decreased, we believe it's going to continue to decrease.

But we do need help with those who are here, we need a national policy on immigrants. There's no reason someone arrives in the country and can't work for six months. These are not just individuals who don't have many of the types of experience in employment such as professionals, nurses, doctors, engineers. They should be allowed to deal with the job shortage problem we're having, the employee shortage, I should say. And so we believe a national policy on immigrants can help us in many different ways, but we have done an amazing job. Dealing specifically with the HERRC, we don't go into exact body counts, but that was our insurance. We had an uncertain situation on the border and we wanted to make sure we were prepared, and that's exactly what the team did.

Murnane: If we do not have as much of an influx, can we maybe move around things a little bit, relieve some of the pressure in the other shelters and maybe move some people out there to Randall's on a temporary basis? And if we don't have a lot of people that are going into this thing that went up with some cost and a lot of effort, are you prepared for the flak that you might face, that the city spent all this money on this tent city out at Randall's Island and they hardly used it?

Mayor Adams: No, I think just the contrary. You don't buy car insurance and complain if you don't get into a car accident. We built the HERRC for insurance. We opened two HERRCs, 55 emergency shelters. This is what real leadership looks like, preparation. Can you imagine if we would've continued to receive the flow we were predicted to receive, up to 100,000 migrants if the president did not respond, can you imagine if we would've received those numbers and would not have been prepared to house them? So we understand you must make these tough decisions and be prepared. Can't panic, but preparation. This administration has shown its ability to navigate a crisis, from COVID, to monkeypox, to polio, how we're dealing with crime, decreasing homicides, decreasing shootings. That same method of handling and managing crises is what we did when 21,500 people showed up at our doorsteps and stated they needed care. Not only housing, but healthcare, education, food, clothing. No child slept on the streets of the City of New York because we moved in the right manner and we were prepared.

Cabot: Mayor Eric Adams, we thank you for your time, for making yourself available, we thank you for answering all the many questions that we laid on you this morning. We appreciate that.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Take care.

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