The mayor says he has never seen crime at this level, but shootings and murders are down this year. Some see his comments as fear mongering.
Murders and shootings are down in New York City this year. But you might not know it if you listen to the city’s mayor, Eric Adams.
In May, Mr. Adams said he had “never witnessed crime at this level,” even though there were 488 murders in the city last year compared with 2,262 in 1990, when he was a transit police officer. Months earlier, he told reporters that he “felt unsafe” riding the subway.
Mr. Adams frequently shows up at crime scenes, using his mayor’s pulpit to highlight the wide presence of guns in city streets, and to mourn with victims’ relatives.
He has even called 911 at least twice while mayor — the first instance during his first full day on the job, to report a potential “assault in progress.” (No arrests were made.)
Mr. Adams ran for mayor on the pledge that he would bring down a pandemic-era surge in violence. But while his constant focus on shootings and visits to active crime scenes have drawn media attention, they may also be contributing to the perception that the city is unsafe: A poll last month found that three-quarters of New Yorkers were “somewhat or very concerned” that they would be a victim of violent crime.
His fixation on crime has also complicated the other major theme of his first year in office: guiding the city’s economic recovery from the pandemic.
Mr. Adams has been a vocal proponent of workers returning to city offices, and has urged tourists to come back — a campaign made more difficult by his depictions of New York as a lawless city where criminals and guns roam unchecked.
Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, an influential business group, said that the mayor’s messaging might seem inconsistent, but he was right to focus on public safety.
“The mayor’s messaging reflects what most New Yorkers feel, which is we’re worried about safety, but we have ultimate confidence that our city will bounce back,” she said.
Fabien Levy, a spokesman for the mayor, said in a statement that crime was nowhere near historic levels, but that New Yorkers “deserve to know the facts.”
“As a result of our efforts over these first six months, both homicides and shootings were down by double digits last month,” he said, “but we are being honest with New Yorkers about the work that there is left to do and the changes that still need to be made at every level of government — from district attorneys and judges to state and federal law makers.”
Mr. Adams has lived in the city his entire life, spending 22 years as a police officer, leading a group called “100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care” and serving as a state senator and then Brooklyn borough president. During that time, he has been known for an unorthodox, impromptu style of messaging.
In 1995, when he was the president of the Grand Council of Guardians, another Black fraternal police group, he traveled to Indiana to escort the boxer Mike Tyson after his release from prison for a rape conviction — a move Mr. Adams said was intended to help the athlete “turn his life around.”
As a state senator, in 2010, Mr. Adams put up billboards encouraging young men not to wear saggy pants, using the slogan: “Raise your pants, raise your image.” The next year, he released a memorable video encouraging parents to check children’s toys and keepsakes to look for drugs and weapons.
During his campaign for mayor, Mr. Adams accused gentrifiers arriving in Brooklyn of “hijacking” apartments from longtime residents and urged them to “go back to Iowa.” Since being elected, Mr. Adams has promoted his vegan lifestyle to New Yorkers, but was forced to admit in February that he sometimes ate fish.
Mr. Adams is certainly not the first mayor to have challenges with messaging; his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, has acknowledged his own messaging problem, blaming his widespread unpopularity on his failure to articulate a cohesive vision.
Mr. Adams has, so far, found more fault with the media for misrepresenting his views or focusing on issues that portray him in a negative light, and he and his team have pushed back against polls showing that his approval rating is dropping.
The mayor said last month that some reporters “lack journalistic integrity” and were trying to “distort the reality” — pointing to coverage of him being heckled at Madison Square Garden.
“Let’s report the news and let’s stop sensationalizing it because I must get a lot of clicks,” Mr. Adams said in an interview on NY1.
Mr. Adams’s inconsistent messaging has not been limited to crime.
The mayor has argued that he is leading the nation on combating the coronavirus, and he recently received praise from public health experts for announcing that the city would provide Paxlovid, the antiviral drug, for free at mobile testing sites. The next day, the same experts criticized Mr. Adams for quietly removing the city’s color-coded alert system that warned New Yorkers about heightened risks from the virus.
On schools, Mr. Adams has said that he is worried about the roughly 150,000 families that have left the public school system in recent years, and he expanded the city’s gifted and talented program to convince families to stay. Then he upset parents by reducing school budgets, cutting teachers and opposing a state bill to lower class sizes.
Camille Rivera, a Democratic political consultant, said that Mr. Adams would be better served if he chose to talk about the problems contributing to crime, like skyrocketing rents and school budget cuts that affected positions like guidance counselors and art teachers.
“You can put cops all across the city, but if you’re cutting funding across the social services spaces, then what are you really doing here?” she said.
Mr. Levy said that the mayor’s message was consistent: “He is fully committed to making our city more safe, steering us out of Covid and investing in our city’s youngest.”
Mr. Adams defended the school cuts on Thursday, arguing they were necessary because of lower student enrollment.
The roots of the violence in New York City are complex and not entirely within the mayor’s control.
Major crimes have risen 37 percent this year, fueled by a jump in robberies and grand larceny including car thefts. At the same time, murders have dropped nearly 8 percent compared to last year, and shootings have fallen about 10 percent, according to police figures, though both figures remain higher than the period before the pandemic.
A series of violent episodes have contributed to the feeling that the city is not safe. A woman was fatally shot on the Upper East Side while pushing her infant daughter in a stroller; an 11-year-old girl was killed in the Bronx when she was caught in the crossfire of teenagers. A Goldman Sachs employee died in an unprovoked shooting on the subway; and a mass shooting on the subway injured at least 23 people in Brooklyn.
Still, some perceive Mr. Adams’s public comments as fear mongering.
“Crime rates are not anywhere near where they were 20 or 30 years ago,” said Olivia Lapeyrolerie, a political consultant who was formerly a deputy press secretary to Mr. de Blasio. “Not giving that context, which he knows better than most people, is inciting a panic that is unnecessary.”
Mr. Adams, at times, seems to recognize the need to add more nuance to some of his off-the-cuff remarks.
He clarified in May that crime was not the worst it had ever been, but he said he had “never seen anything like this: the over-availabilities of guns, the easy use of guns and the comfort people have in carrying guns.” He sometimes talks about shootings and murders being down this year, but those comments often get less attention than the crime scenes he visits.
The mayor is the first to admit that his ability to address crime will define his mayoralty. In a recent interview on NBC’s “Nightly News” with Lester Holt, Mr. Adams gave himself a grade of “incomplete” when it came to fighting crime during his first six months in office.
“I’m not successful until every New Yorker feels safe,” he said.
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