He is NOT gonna see crime in the same view as some progressives might in the ‘Big Appple’
There are gonna be bumps down the road….
Big cities have big city crime…
“I have an assault in progress,” he flatly told the 911 operator. “Three males.” He ended the call by giving his name: “Adams. Mayor Adams.”
Later that day, the Democrat delivered his first speech to New Yorkers and then bounded out of City Hall for an unscheduled press conference at a Manhattan hospital where a police officer was being treated for a gunshot wound.
It was just a sign of what would follow during his first month in office. The events of recent weeks have already turned crime — and the question of what to do about it — into the single biggest issue facing his administration and has drawn in President Joe Biden, who will visit New York next week to discuss gun violence with Adams.
The incidents and Adams’ response are also stirring up fears that some criminal justice reforms of the past decade could soon unravel.
It was inevitable that the new mayor would be focused on policing. He made combating crime a cornerstone of his campaign last year, winning over moderate Democrats by addressing the wave of violence the pandemic seemed to be bringing. But it’s been a series of high-profile and deadly incidents this year that have grabbed headlines and given momentum to Adams’ policy platform.
By Jan. 14, Adams seemed to be consumed by the issue as he headed to police headquarters to announce the arrest of an armed robber who fatally shot a 19-year-old Burger King cashier. Four days later, he spoke at the vigil of a woman who was shoved to her death in front of a Times Square subway train in a random attack. And just 24 hours after that vigil, Adams attended a late-night briefing in the Bronx after an infant was struck in the face with a stray bullet….
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“Doesn’t matter to me if it’s a police officer shot, or if it’s a baby shot. I’m going to stay in these streets until this city is safe,” the mayor vowed, days before two police officers were shot and killed this past weekend.
The former 22-year NYPD veteran has likened himself to a “general” tackling the city’s crime wave head-on — an approach that supporters say is critical to showing the public he’ll make good on his campaign mantra that the “prerequisite to prosperity is public safety.”
But detractors fear his tough-on-crime persona and pro-police policies are a sign that years of hard-won reforms starting in 2013 when Michael Bloomberg was the mayor are at risk of being reversed. That year a landmark ruling found the NYPD’s use of stop and frisk was unconstitutional. Now, nearly two years after the murder of George Floyd forced a national reckoning on race and policing, the city is talking about putting more officers on the streets, protecting the police department from budget cuts and possibly even reinstating a legal version of stop and frisk.
Some say New Yorkers elected Adams because they trust that his background will enable him to achieve the challenging balance between justice and safety.
“He has a unique position where he’s lived it. So he’s not going to be brought up to speed by police chiefs, nor is he going to be lectured by advocates,” Republican City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli said in an interview. “And I think that’s what made him a popular choice for a large segment of New Yorkers.”
One of the mayor’s most controversial plans is his decision to revive the NYPD’s plainclothes unit that was disbanded by former Mayor Bill deBlasio after the division was implicated in multiple police-involved shootings and the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner.
This week, Adams delivered a major speech outlining his plan to combat gun violence, days after two NYPD officers were fatally shot in Harlem. One officer died on Friday, and the second officer died Tuesday. They were the fourth and fifth cops shot this month….