Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears On WNBC’s “News 4 NY”

April 1, 2024

Adam Kuperstein: Now to a News 4 exclusive, a $15 million lawsuit getting a lot of attention. A man claims that a Lower Manhattan Burger King is the center of a drug market. But many neighbors, they're not buying it.

News 4's Myles Miller has been digging into this case and has more on what the police and the men who were hanging out at that restaurant have to say about these allegations.

Mayor Eric Adams: I just think we need to reconsider how we view our New Yorkers that are dealing with hard times.

Myles Miller: Mayor Eric Adams pushing back again today against a Lower Manhattan condo owner. Kevin Kaufman filed a $15 million lawsuit against this Burger King right next door to his Fulton Street apartment building. His accusation? That men who hang out there have turned it into an open air drug-bazaar.

Mayor Adams: The way the story was written, it was like they were drug dealers. They were committing crimes. They were this, they were that. And so I'm sitting down here now, and I'm doing something that people don't often do. I'm talking to them.

Miller: Mayor Eric Adams reading about the lawsuit and reports of drug deals paid a visit last week.

Mayor Adams: Filing that lawsuit gave them the feeling that they was automatically criminality attached to them and identified it as a crisis. And it's just not true.

Miller: Those accused of selling drugs wanted to set the record straight. They asked us not to show their faces.

Anonymous: There's no evidence of selling drugs or nothing. You know, that's... We could actually sue him for defamation of character, because we didn't do none of that that he's claiming.

Miller: The NYPD says for all of last year and so far this year, there have been no arrests at the Burger King. Those who work down here think the claims in the lawsuit are false.

Man on Street: Fulton Street, who in their right mind would actually come down here and say, okay, let's do drugs. You know? People have better things to do with their time.

Mayor Adams: They did several buy and busts and undercover operations, and clearly, there was no drug dealing going on in a rampant way, the way it was described.

Miller: Kaufman didn't respond to News 4's request for comment about the allegations. Burger King, for its part, says they're discussing the suit with the franchise owner.

The mayor says rest assured if there was any drug dealing going on at that Burger King, he would have been the first person to tell officers to enforce that quality of life issue. In Lower Manhattan, I'm Myles Miller, News 4 New York.

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