NYC Mayor Eric Adams Talks Sense on Policing and Public Safety

“I refuse to succumb to those that believe you have to decouple public safety and justice,” Mayor Adams said during a recent interview.

Mayor Eric Adams, Governor Kathy Hochul, MTA Chair & CEO Janno Lieber, and NYPD Chief of Transit Michael Kemper at the Fulton Transit Center on Friday, Jan 27, 2023 where they announce a decrease in subway crimes and increase in customers’ feelings of safety. January 27, 2023. (Photo: Metropolitan Transportation Authority)

“In his State of the Union address this year, Joe Biden’s big headline-making line was when he said ‘It’s time to refund the police’ — it got big applause,” began journalist and editor Bari Weiss on April 24, 2023. “It’s what everyone was talking about.

“Was that the Democratic Party, or the leadership of the Democratic Party, admitting that it let things go too far?” wondered Weiss. “And that all the talk, at least on the progressive wing of the party, about defunding or abolishing the police was foolish and has actually made the poorest Americans more vulnerable? Did you see that as a watershed moment?”

Weiss, formerly of the New York Times, now runs her own popular independent media outlet. Her question, directed as it was towards NYC Mayor Eric Adams during a recent one-to-one interview, was a sign of the times in many ways.

That New York City’s Mayor sat down with Weiss, an independent journalist, was perhaps one of those signs. Mayor Adams is another.

“Yes, I did,” Mayor Adams responded. “But I also felt that that was the second level of the watershed moment. The real watershed moment happened when…