Mayor Adams is back in the City after meeting with New York State representatives in Albany to discuss his administration’s agenda to advance working-class families through extending mayoral accountability for four years, granting the city authority to shut down illegal smoke shops and creating more affordable housing. Finally, the Mayor outlined the city’s fiscal challenges, including state funding for asylum seekers and increasing New York City’s debt limit. Mayor Adams personally briefed on the latest episodes of violence involving NYPD, bishop Lamor Whitehead’s comments on him, and the New York asylum seeker situation.
Recently, social media has been filled with videos of police officers using violence or reacting aggressively to migrants. Two incidents in particular were brought up: the attack by a group of Latinos in Times Square and the scuffle at the Randall’s Island’s shelter. On the first one, he said he had not seen the video yet, but, “if an officer inappropriately uses force, there are mechanisms, either through CCRB or IAB to conduct a thorough investigation to determine if that officer did something inappropriate, and then a penalty is handed down based on the action”.
On the second one, there are “3,000 men in that facility. The overwhelming number of them are carrying out the roles here, looking to take their next step in the journey. Do you have bad actors? Yes. And any time you have 3,000 people who are placed in an environment where they cannot work, they have to sit around all day, things like this have the potential to happen”, Mayor Adams said. However, his administration as well as legal authorities are going to “do a review of some of the actions because I have to make sure our Police Deparment is safe and those residents who are there are also safe”, Mayor Adams added. “But this is what happens when you get this national problem in the city. We need the national government to assist in resolving this problem”, he stated.
He is planning on improving tech support to help the NYPD, “because we’re hurting in law enforcement from police officers, correction officers, parole officers, probation, school safety agents, all of our law enforcement communities are hurting. We’re missing, we don’t have the manpower”, he concluded.
On bishop Lamor Whitehead’s use of Mayor Adams’ name for “allegedly corrupt purposes and in order to extract money illegally from people”, he said frankly that, “the investigators made it clear that he made promises on something he could not deliver”. And pointed out that, “there are 8.3 million people in the City, and anyone that can use the name of others to get what they want, they’re going to do so. I can’t stop people”.
Adams’ administration is also looking for ways to cut 20% of the budget on the migrants and, at the same time, address the food waste issue by trusting bodegas and small and local businesses. “And what this city has done without the support that we believe we should be getting from the national government, we have been picking up the responsibility of doing so and we’ve done a great job in doing so. International leaders have come and realized what we have done”, Mayor Adams stated proudly.
Regarding the asylum seeker dramatic situation, Mayor Adams is considering repurposing shipping containers into affordable housing, like Atlanta’s administration is doing. But he commented, “they have more space there”.
