NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Mayor Eric Adams told 1010 WINS on Friday that gains made in public safety in 2022 will continue into 2023 and that there’s already a “different energy” this year as elected leaders in the city and Albany look to make clear that they’re working together to tackle crime and other issues facing New Yorkers.
Adams joined WINS a day after he and other Black elected officials representing New York state and city took part in a summit on public safety at Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network headquarters in Harlem on Thursday night.
Earlier in the day Thursday, the NYPD released its crime statistics for 2022, showing a 22% rise in overall crime citywide compared with 2021—but also significant drops in the majority of major crimes like robbery and murder, with the latter reaching its lowest level since 2019, before U.S. cities saw spikes in crime during the pandemic.
Five of the seven major index-crime categories decreased in New York City in December: murder declined by 26.1%, grand larceny by 25.9%, rape by 11.5%, burglary by 10.2% and robbery by 8.3%.
Adams told 1010 WINS that while there may have been a jump in overall crime in 2022, the data shows significant progress was made in the last six months of the year after the first half of the year was spent implementing policies to improve public safety.
“We realize when we came into the administration in January we were trending in the wrong direction,” the mayor said. “And we knew it was going to take a while before we could deal with the over proliferation of guns on our street and gang behavior that was really driving the crime in our city.”
“The last six months, we’re seeing the trend in the right direction, we’re seeing a decrease in major crime areas,” Adams said. “And last month alone we saw substantial decreases in everything from shootings to homicides, to robberies, grand larcenies—and we must continue that.”
Public safety was the focus of Thursday’s summit of Black leaders in Harlem, a meeting the mayor attended. Also in attendance were New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, Bronx D.A. Darcel Clark, Brooklyn D.A. Eric Gonzalez, state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, and Hazel Dukes, the president of the NAACP New York State Conference, among others.
After meeting privately for about 90 minutes, the group held an availability with reporters but didn’t answer any questions and give specifics.
“We’re going to have public safety and fairness at the same time,” Clark said. “That’s the goal here and we’re going to build a strategy to make that happen.”
After the meeting, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams told reporters that the group was “committed to being unified and working together when it comes to public safety, when it comes to having the perception of public safety really, really be the reality.”
Mayor Adams said that by not showing a united front in 2022, Black leaders had allowed others to hijack their successes.
“In 2023, we’ll never again allow anyone to do anything to give the impression that we are not united in dealing with the institutional historical problems that prevented far too many people in this state from moving forward,” the mayor told reporters.
Adams told 1010 WINS on Friday that “there’s a different energy in 2023” after the media portrayed City Hall and Albany as at odds on many issues, particularly bail reform and its potential impacts on crime in the five boroughs.
“I had an amazing year in Albany,” he said. “There were a list of things I needed such as childcare dollars; earned income tax that put money in the pockets of everyday, struggling New Yorkers; NYCHA land trust; and some other important initiatives.”
“The leadership in Albany gave me those things,” the mayor continued. “They knew New York City needed them. And we allowed the one area that we disagreed on [crime] to become the highlight. We’re not going to do that this year. We’re going to go and sit down together. That’s what the meeting was about yesterday.”
He said Black leaders will not only focus on public safety but also on the economy and building more housing in the city and state.
While Adams has issues with bail reform, he said the issue of crime is about “so much more than that.”
“It is a criminal justice system that is bottlenecked—too many recidivists, too many repeated offenders are allowed on our streets,” he said. “We believe that roughly 1,600 people are driving a large amount of our violent crime. And our goal is to go back to Albany and really partner with our lawmakers to go after those recidivists and push those initiatives we think are important.”
Adams said the city is continuing to tackle not only crimes but the public’s perception of how safe the city is.
“I know that the public safety initiatives must be actual numbers, but it also must be how people are feeling,” he said.
Most recently, the city focused on removing encampments from the streets and subway and getting homeless mentally ill people the help they need, factors that Adams said had contributed to a feeling of uneasiness.
“We must make sure we have a clean, safe city where people are actually seeing the indicators that they’re safe in this city, and that’s my focus,” the mayor said.
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