10/20/2022
Appearing more than comfortable with navigating everyday NYC dilemmas at the press podium, Mayor Eric Adams deftly swerves questions with new stats and a let’s-focus-on-this-instead strategy. Pick a topic, this retired 22-year-vet NYPD officer-turned-state-senator, and now New York City mayor quickly calculates a response that fits the administration’s messaging.
During this yet another hectic week for the city, the Amsterdam News was able to get a one-on-one, in-person interview with Mayor Eric Adams. The interview touched on a variety of issues, but subway crime is currently headline news.
Since 2021 crime in the city has risen by over 43%. Underground crime is in the news almost every day. On one journey—say from Brooklyn to Manhattan—a straphanger can encounter fellow riders experiencing poverty, mental health issues, homelessness, aggressive panhandling, and, unfortunately, quite possibly a crime.
Adams seems to suggest that people were being subjected to media fearmongering and press emotional manipulation. “On average we have less than six felony crimes a day,” Adams began. “On our subway system, we have 3.5 million riders a day. For the most part, your ride is uneventful, you’re not a victim of a crime. You may see someone who’s homeless.
You may see someone who’s loud. You’ll no longer see the encampments because we got rid of them. We took over 2,000 people who were living off the system, off the system. We have a greater presence of police that are riding trains visibly present. So, if you wake up every day and the New York Post is telling you that we’re gonna take the worst part of the transit experience and highlight it on our front page every day, you’re gonna start feeling unsafe.”
Or maybe straphangers are experiencing a legitimate concern of a real rise in danger potential.
“We’re fighting a perception issue,” Adams insisted. “I just gave you the numbers.”
Many New Yorkers would disagree, the AmNews pointed out, and if a person’s perception prevents a person from doing something because they fear a certain interaction, then that is their reality.
Adams purports that if it doesn’t happen to one personally, then the feared perception is not reality. “If you’ve read every day of those six crimes they highlight, then I go on the subway system and I see someone homeless, I hear loud noises, I see disruption, that is impacting on how I feel…and I don’t see police as much as I want to…so we have to get rid of those six crimes, we can’t have any crimes.
But, at the same time, we have to do those visible things of making sure people feel comfortable when those police officers are riding through the car. Now they are not standing looking at their phones.”
The former NYPD officer, who began his 22-year career as a transit cop, seems to somewhat discount that for many MTA train and even bus-riding New Yorkers their sense of safety has been altered. He insists that the city is not eating itself.
“People are feeling unsafe, what is driving the feeling of being unsafe is not the personal interaction, it is not based on what has happened to me—this is what I’m being told.”
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