THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS
January 6, 2022 - January 12, 2022 • 9
Education Eric Adams may have uphill battle with law enforcement & activists By STEPHON JOHNSON Amsterdam News Staff
New mayor Eric Adams’ police background will determine his future in City Hall
He’s pushed the mantra of “law and order,” but what about “equity and order?” This week marked Eric Adams’ first week as mayor of New York City. The Black, male mayor has preached the mantra of taking back the streets that are already in the people’s possession. Adams campaigned on bringing back the “tough on crime” 20th century relic, which is something that has been pushed by the local right wing since former Mayor Bill de Blasio first took office. In an infamous ad, the team for de Blasio’s opponent, Joe Lhota, put together a collage of images from the city’s “bad old days,” attempting to use scare tactics to get people to the polls. With the pandemic leaving the streets empty and crime slightly increasing, but still low, Adams, a former police captain, saw an opening. During his first set of talks with the media, Adams said that he would
(Photo courtesy of Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
reform and bring back the Anti-Crime Unit, which was criticized in the past for using aggressive tactics. Adams has also gone on record stating that he would bring back solitary confinement. Something that anti-police brutality and anti-incarceration groups have fought against for years. “They better enjoy that one-day reprieve because January 1st they are going back into segregation if they committed a violent act,” said Adams of de Blasio’s solitary confinement policy. In September, it was reported that
murders fell 22% and shootings dropped 9% from the same time in 2020. During that same time, it was announced that, overall, crime in the city decreased by 5.4% when compared to 2020. In November, murders decreased by 17.2% when compared to the same time in 2021 along with a 5.7% decrease in burglaries. All stats are tracked by the NYPD’s CompStat system. Marvin Mayfield, lead statewide organizer at Center for Community Alternatives, said that Adams has a chance to continue police
reform or go back to the “bad old days” for communities of color. “New York stands on a precipice. The COVID pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated inequities in our city and we urgently need our new mayor to invest in communities and address the harms of mass incarceration,” said Mayfield. ”We applaud his support for the Clean Slate Act which will end perpetual punishment and allow New Yorkers with old conviction records to access jobs, housing and education. At the same time, we caution him to move away from the misinformation and outright lies that characterized the last mayor’s approach to bail reform and instead to recognize that these necessary reforms have protected thousands of people from the trauma of pretrial jailing and allowed them to maintain their jobs, support their families, and return to court to exercise their most basic rights.” Vera Institute of Justice, which refers to itself as an independent research organization looking to improve the country’s judicial system, investigated the city’s correction budget and noticed that for the proposed fiscal year 2022 it calls for $2.6 billion allocated towards corrections, which, See ERIC on page 24
