Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears on 'Talkline Radio with Zev Brenner' on WSNR 620 AM and WVIP 93.5

April 4, 2023

Zev Brenner: And we're back. It's been a while, but we're very privileged that the one and only mayor of New York City, the honorable Eric Adam, joins us again. So welcome. Welcome back to the program. Thank you.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thanks so much, Zev, and it is always good seeing you and speaking with you. It's been many years that we have communicated on some very tough issues and I hope we continue to do so.

Brenner: No, I think so too. I'm glad that you engaged in dialogue and discuss… That's so important because I think today's day and age, we lose that sense of being able to talk to one another. I'm glad that you're able to speak to everybody. That's important.

Mayor Adams: Well said.

Brenner: How're you finding things going?

Mayor Adams: Oh, very well. I'm really excited. I ran on public safety. Crime continually is going down. Economic, jobs are going up. We recovered 99 percent of our jobs lost pre-pandemic. You're seeing a double-digit decrease in shootings, double-digit decrease in homicides. Our subway system continues to get safer. All of those things that are on the top of the mind of New Yorkers is what I zeroed in on and leaned into. And we're starting to really see the fruit from the seeds we planted at the first year of in the administration.

Brenner: But there's a perception out there, Mr. Mayor, that people are afraid to go on the subway. They're afraid to walk the streets in Manhattan. They see the homeless, they see the crime. So things may be changing on paper, but people don't feel as confident as they used to feel.

Mayor Adams: Yeah, I don't know if that's accurate. Because we do what's called a customer satisfactory survey on the subway system. And the numbers are jumping. People are saying we're seeing the presence of police. We've removed all of the encampments on our subway system. You see that we have a real subway safety plan. We did it in two levels. The first was in February, then again in October. And we saw the results of focusing on our subway system. Ridership is up. We had about 3.9 million riders, one of the highest levels since the pandemic started.

And even when you look at the homelessness, I had a very aggressive but fair and humane way of removing the encampments. You are not seeing those encampments all over our city and a substantial number of people that we removed from the streets are still in care. And so I think that it takes a while before people go the way they felt to how they're feeling. And when you look at your tabloids every day and they give the impression that the sky is falling, all of a sudden you look around and realize hey, the sky's not falling. This administration is really doing some exciting things and people are going to start feeling it every day.

Brenner: One of the problems that you face and you have no control over the fact is bail reform laws where criminals are just let loose on the street again. Some of them are not even prosecuted like in Manhattan, for example. So that I think is an issue, which I know you've been grappling, but that's also a factor that erodes public confidence because they say, Hey, the criminals get away with it.

Mayor Adams: Yeah, and let's be clear, the whole concept of reforming our criminal justice system is it was a good concept and there's some good things came out of it. And a large number of people who don't have bail come back to court. They follow the rules and many of them don't get involved in criminal justice issues again. But the problem with our criminal justice system is more than just bail. And I keep saying this over and over again, because I want it to resonate. Number one is a small number of people, about 2,000 people that are what we call extreme recidivists. They are carrying out a large number of our burglaries, our robberies, weapon possession, all of these issues that are really driving up our crime numbers. We need to focus on those 2,000 individuals. That's what I ask of Albany, that we need to modify what we're doing in some of the laws to really go after those 2,000. That would be a real win.

Second. Part of the problem, Zev, is that we put in place changes, but we didn't put the money behind those changes, such as discovery. Right now, as it stands with this discovery reform, if a district attorney or prosecutor don't turn over one piece of document, you could have 74,000 of pieces of evidence. But if you miss a police officer's memo book or body cam, that entire case could be dismissed. What DAs and prosecutors are saying that this is overburdening them and we need to give money for more district attorneys. We need to modify the discovery law to make sure that if it's not a substantial piece of evidence, we should not be dismissing these cases. Zev, there's so many cases that have been dismissed of people who have serious charges because the DAs and prosecutors are overwhelmed. And we need to look at every level of our criminal justice system to get this problem fixed.

Brenner: You're absolutely right, sir. How do we change it? Because it's a relatively new law, the discovery one, where if you don't give the evidence in a certain amount of time, the charges get dropped and it's hindering prosecutors. So how do we change that?

Mayor Adams: That's the discussion that's taking place right now in Albany. And it's about justice. We should never move away from justice. Justice is making sure victims of crime have their day in court, and the person who's accused of a crime, they will have their day in court. And in order to do that, we must make sure that we have prosecutors and defense attorneys having the right resources. And I spoke with all of my DAs. We've met several times, and let me tell you, as well as meeting with prosecutors, the issue is the same on both ends. And we need to be conscious of this. We are losing a large number of public service attorneys, a large number of prosecutors, a large number of defense attorneys. We must grapple with this and address it because it could undermine our entire criminal justice system.

Brenner: Now, one of the things that we're seeing, and I think it's an outgrowth of the fact that you have a lot more crime in New York, is anti-semitism. There's no question it's on the rise, especially in Brooklyn Hasidic neighborhood, whether it's Crown Heights, Williamsburg, Borough Park, you see that. I know that it's a hate crime, but according to some statistics, some of these perpetrators of hate crimes don't really get prosecuted. So they get arrested, a lot of them slip through again. So I would like to get your feedback. I know that you've been strong about fighting anti-semitism, it's such an important thing, but we're facing growing numbers. It's been a terrible year for anti-semitism in New York.

Mayor Adams: No, it has. But it's always about let's look at how we're trending. That's so important. Are we moving in the right direction? The police commissioner put in place an amazing team with Chief Maddrey, chief of department, Chief John Chell, chief of patrol, and others to go after these issues around hate crime and other areas. In the month of February, we witnessed a 69 percent decrease, February over February last year. And hate crimes among our Jewish constituencies went down 75 percent during the same month. And so we want to continue to trend in the right direction, but our work is not done. I think that we must attack the issue of hate crime in three areas. Number one, there should be a no plea bargaining rule. Anyone who participated in the hate crime should not be able to plead down to a lesser crime. Number two, we need to rarely start building out the pipeline.

During the days of Dr. King, the Black Jewish relationship was strong. We nurtured that relationship during my generation, my relationship with organizations like COJO, Michael Miller and others, building off of those historical generations. But we didn't continue. Where is the relationship or the organizations for my son's generation? We are supposed to continue to do what we learned from the Dr. King era, from my era and our children. And that's what I think is our focus point. We need to rebuild those relationships with Blacks and Jews. We see a large number of the hate crime perpetrators are young Black people, men specifically. And we need to rebuild and nurture that.

And lastly, what we're doing around breaking bread, building bonds, a thousand dinners across the city, 10 people at each dinner minimum all come from a different culture and ethnic group. We want to build with having real conversations with real people as well as what we do in our schools about educating people about the history of all of our coaches in general, specifically leaning into the rich culture of the Jewish community to combat some of this hate crime. So it's not a one size fits all. It is law enforcement prosecuting. It's building out the relationships with our young people, and it's creating those environments that allow us to sit down and have real conversations with each other.

Brenner: Now listen, having those dinners are great. I remember Mr. Mayor, before you got elected, you promised me a Glatt Kosher kitchen at Gracie Mansion. Maybe you can use the Glatt Kosher kitchen for these dinners.

Mayor Adams: Yes. Love the idea. And I think during this time of Passover, Ramadan and Easter, as you do a Seder dinner or a Ramadan dinner, we should be inviting people that are not only part of our cultures but outside our cultures to sit down and learn from each other. This is an excellent opportunity. All of us are reflecting this year on our spiritual groundedness. And we should use it as an opportunity to reach out to people who don't quite understand our various religious faiths.

Brenner: It may be too late to have a Passover Seder at Gracie Mansion this year, but maybe for next it may not be a bad idea.

Mayor Adams: I love that idea. We did an amazing event in Williamsburg and it was in one room, Zev. In one corner of the room we had our Muslim brothers and sisters doing their prayer, at another corner of the room we have Christian brothers and sisters, in another corner of the room we have Jewish brothers and sisters. First time we've seen that in the city, all in the same room, all praying and understanding and respecting each other's faith. We need to continually do things like this to show that our faith is important.

Brenner: No, it's important. I love the idea of right, getting together and sharing foods and certainly that's a good way to break bread together. It's a good way of bonding relationships. And I think under your leadership, I love the idea. By the way, I love the idea that you... And I've worked with many different mayors. Is that you also pay a lot of attention to the ethnic media in New York, and that's very important.

Mayor Adams: Yes, it is. That's the real voice. Think about how many people listen to your radio show and how many people listen to El Diario and some of the smaller radio shows, television shows, newspapers. The power of communicating with people directly is through the ethnic media. And we have really leaned into that. Our team, José, who's in charge of the unit, he is making sure that I'm accessible to the various ethnic media local press in our city.

Brenner: I think it's so important. Before I get to your Passover message and want to get to it, I was just curious, how did you prepare for the visit of President Trump to New York? Did it put a lot of strain on you? Tell us about some of the preparations, what went into it?

Mayor Adams: Well, it's interesting, when you come from policing every day, you don't know what to expect. Any given day I could have a runaway child we need to find, I could have a mass shooting, I could have a plane landing on the Hudson River or someone flying a plane into the Empire State Building, or I should say, inside the World Trade Center. And so when you've spent 20 years knowing that when you start your day, you have to be able to pivot, adjust and shift to the conditions that are in front of you, my mind is trained for that. And I am fortunate to have a police commissioner that understands that we have the best police department on the globe, and whenever we deal with an issue, we must be ready for it. And if you are always ready, you don't have to get ready.

And that's what we did with Trump coming to the city to deal with this historical issue that is going to impact our nation. We knew that we must be prepared to allow people to peacefully voice their concern without disrupting the lives of New Yorkers. And that's the message we sent out. And that's the message that the police commissioner sent out to her men and women.

Brenner: Do you have any relationship with former President Trump, whether he was in office or prior to his office, any relationship at all? Some elected officials have had their relationships or lack of it?

Mayor Adams: No, I had no relationship at all with the former president. And if it's a former president or just an everyday person that has to enter the court system to carry out their business, we are going to treat them with the same level of respect and dignity and control to make sure we don't disrupt the lives of New Yorkers.

Brenner: But in this case, the police had to coordinate, I'm sure, with the Secret Service and FBI, so it was a little more complicated operation than your normal police procedure.

Mayor Adams: Yeah, this is virgin territory in that not only did we have to coordinate with the Secret Service, the FBI, but also court officials and law enforcement. And this was a great example of coordination with all of our law enforcement entities and partners. And I'm really impressed and thankful to all of the law enforcement entities as they have all came together.

Brenner: Now, Passover's fast approaching. I know you always give us a Passover message. First of all, I know last time you told me you loved your filter fish. Is that still on the menu?

Mayor Adams: Yes. Yes, yes, yes it is. You know me, I try to eat as much plant-based as possible, but during the holiday season to show respect for the culture, I would take a little nibble of it. But for the most part, there's so many good meals. When you think about the Jewish community, y'all, some of the best plant-based eaters going. There's so many meals that you eat that are healthy and plant based. And I always find something to eat when I sit down at a Seder.

Brenner: Are you going to a Seder this year? Can you tell us?

Mayor Adams: Yes. I went to several already and will continue to do so.

Brenner: Do you have a special Passover message you'd like to share with our audience?

Mayor Adams: I think the same message I shared to my Christian brothers and sisters during Easter, and for my Jewish brothers and sisters during Passover and to my Muslim brothers and sisters during Ramadan. Every time we stepped in our houses of worship it reminds me of my trainer back when I was a kid when I used to box. I used to always do great in the gym, but when I got inside the ring, I would get knocked out. And he says, "Eric, you're leaving your best fight in the gym. We need to have our best fight in the ring." And I say to my brothers and sisters of the Jewish faith, as we go to our synagogues and acknowledge Passover, we can't only be devoted worshipers, we must be devoted practitioners. And the synagogue, the gym, the mosque, the church, those are the gyms. That's what we learn how to fight the fight.

Dealing with homelessness is in the ring. Dealing with crime and violence and hate crime. That's in the ring. Dealing with our asylum seekers so they can be treated fairly. That's in the ring. We need to leave the gym of our houses of worship and we need to enter the ring, because that is what all of our spirituality tells us to be kind, to be gentle, to be respectful and help I uplift your fellow man. No matter what faith you have, those are the fundamental principles of all of them. And so as I say, this year, the goal is not only to be a devoted worshiper, but to be a devoted practitioner and execute what our faiths tell us to execute.

Brenner: Wonderful. You could become a rabbi. By the way, as we close I have to… Now, you also have a lot of Hasidic Jews part of your administration when you were borough president and mayor. Which is nice to see that you have this diversity including within the Jewish community that are part of your staff.

Mayor Adams: So important to me to be diverse. And we have done that. And you're right. Many members of the Jewish community, Hasidic community, Orthodox, as well as Reform Jews, it doesn't matter. They come with the right principle and foundation of serving people in the city.

Brenner: Mr. Mayor, we hope you'll join us again. We miss some of our conversations. We'll hope you join us more often now.

Mayor Adams: One of my favorite radio shows. Always good speaking with you Zev. Take care.

Brenner: Thank you Mr. Mayor.

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