Transcript: Mayor Adams Calls in for Live Interview on WBLS' 'Open Line'

April 7, 2024

Fatiyn Muhammed: Today we have a very special guest for the majority portion of our broadcast to speak with us and our listening audience. We will probably get first half of presenting questions to our very special guest who I'm going to introduce in a minute. Then we'll open up the phone lines and allow our callers to also present their questions or comments to our special guest. Let me go ahead and introduce our special guest.

He is the New York City mayor, Mayor Eric Adams, who is currently serving as the 110th mayor of the New York City since 2022. A retired NYPD police captain. He served in the New York State Senate from 2006 to 2013, and served two terms as Brooklyn Borough President, the first African American to hold this position. Good morning, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Eric Adams, my brother. Welcome back to Open Line. How you doing, Mr. Mayor?

Mayor Eric Adams: Quite well. All you have to do in my introduction is say, Dorothy Adams' baby boy. All that other stuff is not important. Nothing special.

Muhammed: Nothing special.

Mayor Adams: Especially people that are in the city. Good to see you Ron, Sister Austin. Just really I've been on the show for so many years, when you think about it, throughout the years of how often we got on during the days of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement and answering calls, and interacting with the listeners. It's really good to be on. Jennifer, how's that future baseball legend? Hope he's doing well.

Jennifer Jones Austin: He's doing well. He's recovered from Tommy John. He's hitting 97 and he spins about 2,600. We'll see where God takes him. We'll see where God takes him.

Mayor Adams: I love it.

Jones Austin: Thank you.

Muhammed: I love it. I'm looking forward to going to some of these Major League games once he gets drafted and makes it to the pros. Folks, let me just give out that number-

Jones Austin: From your mouth to God's ears.

Muhammed: There you go. Let me give out that phone number so we can start lining up our phone calls. Then Jennifer, Professor Ron Daniels, and myself will present some questions to Mayor Eric Adams. To reach us here on Open Line, you can call us at 212-545-1075. Again, 212 area code, 545-1075. Mr. Mayor, there's a lot, a lot to discuss dealing with the city business in New York City from congestion pricing, homelessness to migrant crisis housing, your proposed budget cuts, and then the New York City Council identifying over $6 billion in additional funds.

City crime stats above ground and in our New York City subways and policing, and how the NYPD uses social media to get out information, and how they have responded to some of their critics in the recent weeks. As we did here on Open Line when this happened, we offered to you, Mr. Mayor, and the family of slain NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller, our prayers and condolences. That's where we will start there.

Mr. Mayor, let me start here and then we'll go around. Last month you announced the boosting pay for 80,000 human service workers with $741 million cost of living adjustment. With this significant investment in wage enhancements for human services workers, how do you envision this initiative impacting the overall well-being of New York City residents, particularly in terms of access to essential services like housing, food and healthcare, Mr. Mayor?

Mayor Adams: It is so important. All of the initiatives that I do has come from years of just my personal experiences that I saw how of the city has betrayed working-class people. I just took notes over 30-something years. When I came into government, I came with a blueprint. You could look at when I ran, and after getting elected and start ticking off and checking off the things that I said we were going to do and we did. The human service workers is something that's really personal for me because my mom was a human service worker and she was never able to make enough to provide for my five siblings and me.

I just saw that was a problem. When I ran for office, I met with the leaders of the human service workers' groups and organizations and I told them, I said, when I get elected, God willing, I am going to go after how you have been underpaid. These are the men and women, overwhelmingly women and a substantial number of the woman of color, they provide all these different human services and they were underpaid for so many years. Now we're bringing their pay up.

You can't have a person providing for individuals when they can't provide for their own families. I must say that Sister Austin was very much an advocate for this. She spoke with Sheena Wright, my first deputy mayor, and they were part of the negotiation. Everyday people understand this work, understood how important it was to make sure human service workers were paid a salary that they could provide for their family as well.

Muhammed: Appreciate that. Sister Jennifer.

Jones Austin: I so very much appreciate the investment in the human services workforce and the opportunity to work alongside your first deputy mayor and others on your team. Your chief advisor, Ingrid Lewis Martin, and your chief of staff, Camille Joseph Varlack, Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom, Deputy Mayor Ana Almanzar on this critical issue, and so many nonprofit workers and leaders in the field who got to partner. Thank you, mayor. Thank you for that critical investment. Means a great, great deal to me and so many individuals and families out here in New York City. Can't thank you enough.

The issue with the human services workforce is, I guess it's indicative of what's happening across the city of New York. We've heard recently about several hundred thousand persons who have taken flight, who've left New York because of the unaffordability, childcare unaffordability, housing unaffordability. Learned from our chancellor just this past Thursday that the numbers of children who are in New York City schools has dropped significantly because people are leaving, because they can't afford to live here. Then as Brother Fatiyn referenced, crime numbers are up. Looking at pre-pandemic numbers, they're higher than they were pre-pandemic.

We had Mayor Ras Baraka who said to us, "We can't just look at pandemic to now look at crime because crime across the country went up during the pandemic. We have to look at pre-pandemic numbers." The numbers are up. You inherited a lot of issues. You came in during a world crisis. How do we get the city back on the right foot? You've got some cuts to childcare that people are very much concerned about, that they believe it's going to lead to more people taking flight. What's the game plan? How long is it going to take? What are your key initiatives to right this?

Mayor Adams: A great question. I think the first thing we have to do is to see how we are trending. Let's go back to January 1st, 2022. January 1st, 2022, we were dealing with COVID. We had a 40 percent increase in crime. We had a real problem, devastating problem with tourism, which is a major economic driver in our city. Our bond ratings, the independent financial experts just stated that we weren't the place of investing at the time. Our children were not learning at the levels that we wanted to. Childcare, as you just mentioned, was through the roof.

Our children were not getting summer youth employment. We were not doing full school program. There was a host of things that we walked into that we knew right away we had to hit the ground running. Two years three months later, let's look at where we are. Crime is down in the city. Double-digit decrease in shooters, double-digit decrease in homicides. People are back on our subway system. 4.1 million riders. We get an average of about 6 felonies a day out of those 4.1 million riders. In March, that we just came out of March with a 24 percent decrease in violent felonies on our subway system.

We see our children are outpacing the state in reading and writing because of the work that Chancellor Banks is currently doing. Independent financial experts looked at how we are managing the city. They raised our bond ratings. This is allowing people to invest in our city because they have a level of safety that their money is going to go a long, long way. We went after affordable housing. We put more formerly homeless people into permanent housing in one year. In the history of this city, we put more people in housing using the voucher program in the history of the program.

We are watching tourism, 62 million tourists are back in the city spending their money as we want them to spend their money. You are seeing all these indicators that we have accomplished in the city in two years and three months. That's the interesting thing about it. People told me it was going to take me five years to turn around the city. In two years and three months we have done that. We had three, I like to say, major issues in this city that we are addressing. One, we need to talk about violence and recidivism of the person who shot Officer Jonathan.

This person had 20 prior arrests. The person who was in the car with him was just arrested last April for a gun charge and he's back out there committing the crime again. This revolving door of people with 20 arrests or more is really hurting our city. 38 people that assaulted transit workers were arrested over 1,100 times. 542 people who were arrested for shoplifting in the city were arrested over 7,600 times. There's a pattern here of a small number of people committing a lot of violence in our city, and the affordability issue of the city is real.

It's an affordability that's in the entire country. Bread costs more, milk costs more, housing issue costs more, but if we don't build more housing, we're going to always be at this deficit. We have a 1 percent vacancy rate. That's why we've been pushing Albany to get a housing deal, and the city council, our partners, to allow us to build more. We had a racist housing policy in the city where certain communities are not building any affordable housing, and that is our blueprint. Our blueprint is going after public safety, keep the city safer every year.

Continue to educate our children, because anytime you go to a community, the two questions that people ask, how safe is the city, how good are the schools? Those are the top two questions that they ask. Our blueprint is to stay in those directions. Then to make sure that we can build affordable housing in the city because that's what the top people say is no longer affordable. They're moving to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and other areas of the city. We've got to keep the city affordable. That is what our major focus is at this time.

Muhammed: All right. Professor Ron Daniels.

Professor Ron Daniels: Mayor Adams, I'd like to just stay on the area of public safety. It's one of the areas that we work on with the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, and of course, watch your career over the years. You probably know Ron Hampton, the founder of the- one of the former executive director of the National Black Police Association. We focus on this issue of reimagining policing and public safety. I wish you would speak to, because I think people don't often clearly understand some of the steps that have been taken when you have incorporated working with people like Andre Mitchell with Man Up!, and Erica Ford with the LIFE Camp, what that collaboration means in terms of your strategy for public safety.

Mayor Adams: It's so true. Brother Daniels, I can remember probably over 30 years ago listening to folks like you and others who were really hammering out what public safety should look like, proactive and reactive. It can't be all reactive. Policing is not public safety alone. There's more components to that because there's many, I like to say many rivers that feed the sea of violence. What we focus on is, how do we prevent violence? By preventing violence, go to the end results of the violence. That is looking at who's incarcerated, looking at who's fallen through the cracks of our system.

We look at several issues. Number one, 30 percent to 40 percent of the people in Rikers Island are dyslexic, like I am dyslexic. We knew if we could give people the services they need if they're dyslexic or learning disability, then we will prevent them from going on the pathway of violence, and we did just that. We're doing dyslexia screening in our public school system. We are giving people the services they need beforehand. Foster care. You see an overwhelming number of our young people when they age out of foster care, they are either victims of crime, commit crimes, or find themselves homeless or mental health issues.

We went in and invested in something called Fair Future where you have foster care children are getting life coaches until they're 21 and we're paying for their college tuition and giving them a stipend. We have witnessed more young people enrolled in college from foster care system in the history of this city because of the excitement of that. The same with Summer Youth Employment. 100,000 Summer Youth jobs. Advocates have been calling for this for years. No one was willing to do it. We did it.

When you look at what we're doing around full-year studies for our children during the summer month, our Summer Rising Program, 110,000 young people focusing on public housing, NYCHA do this, et cetera, to get them the learning laws that we lost during the pandemic. We are moving into that area to keep them there. Then investing in our city workforce. People don't realize I have over 300,000 employees. Many of them were not given a suitable contract. We settled 94 percent of our union contracts with them giving a 96 percent, 97 percent ratification rate.

When you lift up working people, you prevent some of the violence, you prevent some of the problems that we are facing. Then making sure we have a police force that's respectable and that's held accountable. It's misgiving. We're shortening a period of those who are brought up on disciplinary charges to make sure bad cops don't stay in our system. We are also making sure that they are getting the proper training to keep the city safe because public safety adjusters, they go hand in hand and they're a prerequisite to our prosperity. We have to be safe, and it has to be done in a respectable manner.

Muhammed: Mayor Adams. Folks, our phone lines are filled. We are definitely coming to the phones. I want to present this question to Mayor Adams is some parts to this. Mayor Adams, I was looking at the New York Civil Liberties Report. It says that the NYPD stop-and-frisk incident surged to 16,971 last year in 2023, marking the highest figure since 2015, and a significant rise from the 8,947 stops recorded in 2021. This increase has disproportionately affected Black and Latinx communities who compromise of 89 percent of those stop, with Black New Yorkers alone who represent 20 percent of the city's population making up 60 percent of the stops.

Nearly 70 percent of those stops were founded to be innocent. Also, and I've worked with you and known you for years, when you was first in the NYPD and part of the fraternal organizations, the Guardians, and then 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, who spoke up about police misconduct, and that there needed to be accountability. Then, of course, we saw the New York City Council last year come out with How Many Stops Act. You vetoed that. Then, of course, the New York City Council overruled that.

My question is to you, Mayor Adams, with the NYPD stop-and-frisk numbers hitting a near-decade high in 2023, disproportionately affecting Black and Latinx New Yorkers, and amidst rising concerns over police misconduct and effectiveness of broken windows policing, how do you plan to address these racial disparities and communities' growing apprehensions about policing practices while ensuring public safety and rebuilding trust between the NYPD and the community it serves, especially the Black and Latinx communities?

Mayor Adams: Great question, brother. Think about that number that you just said, 16,000. Let's go back to my fight to end the overuse of stop-and-frisk. We were getting close to 1 million a year. 1 million a year.

Why is it Black civil law enforcement did a real push to address the over-abuse of stop-and-frisk? They were stopping young Black and Brown boys for no reason at all. Having them empty their pockets, charging them with marijuana crimes, they have a joint. Many of the stops were not recorded, with Eliot Spitzer [they] did a report that shows probably one out of four stops were reported. The numbers that they had have a couple of hundred-

Jones Austin: Mayor, did you know that I was the deputy bureau chief in the Civil Rights Bureau for Eliot Spitzer when we did the investigation of the NYPD and released the report? Just wanted you to know that.

Mayor Adams: Listen, trust me, I know. Trust me, I know that. If anything, I know you've worked throughout the years. A lot of people don't realize, you're not new to this. That you're true to this, you've been doing this for a little while. You saw those numbers, those numbers were staggering. I went in and we testified in federal court about the abuse of stop-and-frisk. The federal judge that wrote her decision against the police department acknowledged my testimony in her report that was part of her decision.

Then Hakeem Jeffries, is now Congressman Jeffries, and I, when I went to Albany, a state senator, they were creating a database that they kept the names of innocent young people in the database. Hakeem Jeffries and I co-sponsored a bill to get rid of that database. Then we've moved to quote a bill that they had these officers out there having a quota of the number of stops they had to do each day or each month, the number of sums they had to do each month. We went in and wrote a bill to outlaw that quota system. What I'm saying, the work that we have done, folks like Sister Austin, myself, 100 Blacks, Guardians, we took 1 million stops a year.

Now we're down to 16,000 as you indicated. With clear direction to police officers, you're going to do precision policing and not stop everyone you see in this city. You're going to do smart policing tactics where, based on people who call the police for a particular incident- we had an incident where someone walks beside their building in public housing or NYCHA and they have someone inside the lobby who they said they're there and they're selling drugs, or they saw someone carry a gun.

A police must investigate that. The worst thing could happen if a residence calls you and say, "Someone is in my lobby with a gun," and you tell them, "I cannot come and conduct an investigation and inquiry because I did so many stops in your area before." That is just not policing. We got to get it right. We have to constantly look at those officers who are abusing their authority and bring them on departmental charges, retrain them or get them out of the department. We got a long way to go. Like I said, it's been two years and three months and we have really turned around the way police are policing in the city.

Brother Fatiyn, I have not attended one of my town hall meetings, one of my youth meetings, one of my senior older adults meetings, not one have ever said to me, we want less police in our community. Not one. The relationship between police and New Yorkers is a relationship that is far better than what people want to believe. People want their police, but they want their police to do the job the correct way. That's what we in a constant state of making sure that they're doing.

Muhammed: Exactly. We don't mind having a relationship with police. We just want to make sure that the respect goes both ways, because we have this situation that just was in the news where arrest of a Brooklyn man by NYPD captain reportedly shows him on video pistol whipping the suspect during a struggle, now is under investigation by Internal Affairs. Any update on that story, Mr. Mayor, before we go to the phones?

Mayor Adams: That's a great question. Let's look at this for a moment. The captain was taking action. The person you are talking about was trying to flee, was in a stolen car, had a felony weight of crack cocaine in his car, and he was trying to get away. The captain was in a fight. I'm sure the captain's goal was not, let me just pistol whip someone. He was in a fight. If you're ever in a fight for the danger of your life that you don't know what you got in front of you because someone's just trying to flee- I fought as a police officer. You don't know what you have.

You don't know if this person has a weapon, as we saw with Jonathan. Jonathan was in a fight with a person that had a weapon that they were not aware of. When you're taking police action and you're trained in the academy, if someone is not complying with your basic directions, you have to suspect there's a possibility that this person is a danger to you and to others. That's what happened in the case with Jonathan. Simple stop. Simple inquiry. He started not to listen to the instructions when he put his hand in his pocket.

Then he pulled out a gun and shot Jonathan. Then Jonathan had to wrestle with him and take the gun away from him. That's the case here. This is going to be investigated, but when people say that he just went out and pistol whipped someone, that is not what happened there. He was in a fight with a person who had a felony quantity of crack cocaine in a stolen vehicle and trying to get away.

Muhammed: This is one of the things that the New York City Council and their public advocate, Jumaane Williams, was talking about, How Many Stops Acts, that there are situations like you said, when a police officer dealing with crime and they can get into a fight and things happen. There's also stops that there are no fighting. We just want to make sure that there's accountability and responsibility there. There was pushback from you, Mr. Mayor. Right now, we have our conversation with you. We want to open up the phone lines, the phones all filled. To reach us again, 212-545-1075. Let's go to line two and bring Mike calling us from the Bronx this morning. Good morning, Mike. Welcome to Open Line.

Question: Good morning, Brother Fatiyn. Good morning to everybody on the panel.

Muhammed: Morning.

Mayor Adams: Good morning.

Question: Morning, Mr. Adams. I just want to take on back what brother Fatiyn said about the incident that happened with that guy in Brooklyn. Mr. Mayor, I respect what you're saying, but a lot of people see it different. Say he was in a fight, I know a cop's job is hard, but from what I've seen on that video? No, that cop, he did that deliberately. That cop has an extensive background in assaulting and violating people's rights. He has cost the New York City taxpayers $796,000 in 16 known lawsuits against him. I want to know, Mayor Adams, what are you going to do to protect the people of New York City from this type of behavior? Thank you for receiving my call.

Muhammed: Thank you, Mike. Great question. Mr. Mayor?

Mayor Adams: Thank you, Mike. There's a process. We're going to peel apart that video. We're going to look at the whole incident, and make the determination that this cop violate department procedures. If he is, he's going to be brought up on charges. Commissioner Caban has been extremely clear. You violate the rights of the public and abuse your authority, you're going to be held accountable. Rest assure that Commissioner Caban and the Internal Affairs Bureau of this administration, you are not going to see these incidents disappear if we determine someone has violated the rules.

Then there's other oversights. Let's be clear. The NYPD is not the only internal review of a police officer's action. You have everything from the Attorney General Letitia James, and everyone knows Attorney General James' record. You have outside the district attorney's office look over these cases. You've seen a number of arrests, those who abuse their authority, police officers abuse their authority.

There are many entities outside the police department that looked and make sure that not only is the police department internal review is going to be done, but you have other entities that do so. We should all be happy for that, because the police should not have the sole responsibility to just review what they're doing, other eyes should look on it as well. Everything from CCRB to the issue entities that reviews police misconduct. This police departments are reviewed by a countless number of entities and individuals. If abuse is found, it is going to be addressed accordingly.

Muhammed: Let's go back to the phones. Again, there's so much to be said on this. As you said, if abuse is found, and as Mike just said, Mayor Adams, this NYPD captain has a history here. I hope that is also taken in consideration on this investigation as well. Let's go to line three and bring Sandra calling us from Brooklyn. Good morning, Sandra. Welcome to Open Line.

Question: Hi. Good morning, everyone. Hi. Good morning, Mayor Adams.

Mayor Adams: Good morning.

Question: My question is- How you doing? We have so many "building town" being developed for affordable housing. However, the attempt to make the city more energy efficient, we're going from centralized steam heating systems to these splitter AC heater units, which are 1,000 times more expensive. How is that affordable? I used to rent. I had an apartment with a centralized system and the average cost of the heating and AC is $300 a month.

Whereas in a regular building, steam heating, a building that's maybe 100 years old, was only $65 a month. How do we go with income staying stagnant, food prices going up, just costs going up all over the city and the country, affordable housing with heating systems that cost to $300? In addition to that, there's no central heating in the common areas of these buildings, so your apartments are paying for that. That's my question, how is that affordable?

Muhammed: Thank you, Sandra, for that.

Mayor Adams: You just went over my head. I don't know much about heating systems, and I won't even pretend to say I do. I know when developers build housing, they want to find the most cost-effective way to do so. Our housing crisis that we're facing is not based on heating systems, it's based on the lack of building more. Anytime you have a shortage of something, it is going to drive up the cost of something. We have a 1 percent vacancy rate in the city, 1 percent. For affordable low-income units, it is almost a 0 percent. It is just not there. We have to build more housing.

The way we build more housing is to, one, incentivize building. Two, look at places that we have not built housing in historically, and tell those communities, you have an obligation to do so. Fatiyn, people run around all the time saying housing is right, but on the next day they're saying, don't build it in my community. There are too many areas in this city that they basically have no affordable housing. Hats off to Julie Menin, the councilwoman, she's building one of the first affordable units in her district, which is on the East Side of Manhattan.

You have too many areas that have not had their share of affordable housing. We did run a project in the Bronx. There was such a demonstration that they didn't want to build affordable housing, but they didn't have any affordable housing built in their community. We could go from community to community and see places that have access to good food, access to good schools, access to good hospital care. They have no affordable units in their community.

That's where our fight is. That's why we need Albany to come up with a real housing plan. We did nothing last year. We got to get it done this year. We need the city council to assist us in our City of Yes program that we put in place a major initiative to rezone this entire city so that every community built a little more affordable housing in this city. That is how we bring down the cost of housing and not have New Yorkers fleeing this city.

Muhammed: Mr. Mayor, I know you said that you had a hard out at 8:40, but I'll be amiss without presenting this question about considering your defense-

Mayor Adams: Brother, not unless we got callers on the line, and so-

Muhammed: We got callers on the line. Let me let me continue with these callers. Let's just roll here. Let's go to line five and bring Adel from Brooklyn this morning. Good morning, Adel. Welcome to Open Line.

Question: It's me?

Muhammed: Yes, you're on air.

Question: Oh, okay. Good morning.

Mayor Adams: Good morning.

Question: Good morning, everyone. Mayor, I voted for you and I'm going to vote again. I think you and Biden are doing a great job. My question is to the mayor, I've watched a lot of TV, I know what's going on with all this crime in the streets and everything and in subways. What is it that makes it so hard to keep these repeat offenders in jail?

Mayor Adams: Great question. I would just break it down, what are the three issues? When you peel this back, and you will see there are three issues we're facing. We're facing repeated offenders. I mean they're violent, they're repeated, and they've made up their mind that they are going to hurt innocent people in the city, and predominantly in Black and Brown communities. That's where they're committing a lot of this violence. Number two, we're dealing with a severe mental health problem, people who don't realize they need help. In January and February when I became mayor, I went out in the streets and visit people and encampments inside tents who were living on the streets.

I saw people with bipolar, human waste, stale food, drug paraphernalia. Everybody told me, Eric, don't take on this fight. It's too complicated. You're never going to win. I said, I'm not going to allow people to live in the street like this. You don't see those encampments in our streets for the most part anymore, but we need help in Albany. There's a terminology called involuntary removal. This is when you remove someone to the hospital, get care in an involuntary fashion because they don't know they need care.

For us to say that people have a right to live on the street, like you said, in other cities, and because they were going for care when they needed, when you are dealing with schizophrenic behavior, bipolar, other severe mental health issues, you don't know you need care and that you're in danger to themselves. I need help from Albany to give me the authority to do that more. We've taken thousands off our subway system in the street, but we still can do more if we're given authority to do so. We got repeated offenders, mental health, severe mental health, severe mental health illness, and lastly, random acts of violence.

Those three items have played on the psyches of New Yorkers, because a random act of violence that someone pushes you for no reason or pushes you to the subway track, the person who shoved the individual to the subway track a few weeks ago, he was a repeated offender, severe mental health illness, he was a random act of violence. He was a poster person for what we're saying we are addressing in the city. Sister, to get to repeated offenders, we have to look at what is happening in Albany. We have to zero in on repeated offenders, and judges must play their role.

Some of these judges are looking at the cases in front of us. Like we were talking about the record of a police officer that does something wrong, we need to look at the record of these repeated offenders. We have people who are on trial for gun charges, months later getting caught in a shooting or a robbery, or slashing and they go back out and do another crime over and over again. If we don't get our judges in alignment with public safety, no one hears about them, no one sees them, and so their role is often ignored. That is one of the most important things we can do, is stop these repeated offenders that we're seeing.

Jones Austin: Just on that point, real quickly, let me just say. The research and the data shows us that that is a finite number. We can't blame all of crime on recidivism. I want to be clear about that. It's a small fraction. I'm not saying that we can ignore it. I agree with you on that, but it's not the entirety of the situation. Fair?

Mayor Adams: Without a doubt. 100 percent, Jennifer, that you can't blame it all. When we sit down and look at the research, many of these cases, which is very interesting as I dug into this two years ago when we were looking at what was happening up in Albany, number one, these may be some technical terms, but it's important for us to know the discovery rules. Go speak to your district attorneys. They are dropping cases because they can't get the paperwork in time a lot. I'm not talking about just some minor petty larceny cases. I'm talking about gun cases or robbery cases.

The DAs would tell you the discovery rules that say by a certain period of time we have to turn over all of these documentation without giving them the support they need, and instead they're dismissing cases of dangerous people. That small number you talked about, like I said, 38 people that assaulted transit workers were arrested over 1,100 times in the city. 542 shoplifters were arrested over 7,600 times in the city. So yes, small number of people, but they're doing a disproportionate amount of crime.

Muhammed: Mayor Adams, just 30 seconds. I know this is not a 30-second answer, but real quick because we are out of time. Considering your defense of the NYPD's aggressive social media stance this past week towards critics including personal attacks on journalists and public figures, how do you balance the need to support police officers with the imperative of maintaining civil discourse and respecting the freedom of the press, and speech, especially with such actions might deepen divisions between the police and the communities they serve?

Mayor Adams: First of all, I don't think there was an attack on a journalist. Police need to be held accountable. Doctors, lawyers, teacher, you go through whatever profession you look at, we all must be held accountable. Are we saying that journalists should not be held accountable? Is that what we're saying? Freedom of press does not mean you cannot be held accountable. Go look at some of the articles that this journalist has been writing for the last three years. Go look at some of them. I never respond to any of them. I ignore them and don't personalize them.

When you write an article, one, that was factually incorrect, you fed into the belief that crime was out of control in the subway system by indicating there was a 75 percent increase in homicides, a 75 percent more homicides than there were in the subway system, which was just wrong, and the whole article was filled with inaccuracies, you have to be held accountable for that. Then you release the article, Fatiyn. He released it at 5:00 PM of the same day that we just buried a police officer. That was insensitive. That is what those officers responded to.

You have a profession where people place their lives on the line every day, and they constantly attack and criticize. All the journalists are now coming out in support of this reporter who has been doing this for years. Why shouldn't the commanding officers come out in support of their police officers who are placing their lives on the line? If the journalists are coming out in support of the journalist, why shouldn't those who are sending these men and women out there to put their lives on the line, why shouldn't they come out and support them? That doesn't make sense to me. No matter what profession we're in-

Muhammed: I got to hold you there.

Jones Austin: [Crosstalk.] But I think it's important-

Muhammed: Jennifer, we're going to have to come back on the other side. We're going to have to come back on the other side because we are on it.

Jones Austin: [Crosstalk.] It can incite violence. It can encourage and incite people to take action against citizens, everyday residents. That's the concern. When you use your position of power and it looks like you're coming at people, you have to be careful.

Mayor Adams: I lost you. What you say, Jennifer? I didn't get that part. What were you saying-

Jones Austin: I'm just saying when you're in an office with authority, in a position of authority, and it looks like you're attacking an everyday citizen or resident, that can spur a negative reaction, hostility. That could actually spur violence. That's what I'm just concerned about, being very careful about that. When you use your position of authority and you look like you're coming at somebody or coming back at somebody, that can encourage others to do the same. I just said-

Muhammed: I got to hold everybody because we have commercials and we can't go over because Reverend Sharpton is coming up next with his nationally syndicated show. Mayor Adams, we just got to have you back. I know you're on next week-

Mayor Adams: I love it. Any time brother, any time.

Muhammed: On 10:30, but yes, we got to do this on a consistent basis. Mayor Ras Baraka comes on once a month. We got to get you on every six weeks on Open Line.

Mayor Adams: I would love to.

Muhammed: Thank you for joining us.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

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