IF THE COPS AREN'T SAFE, NOBODY IS

Eric Adams must be NYC’s wartime mayor 

 

By Michael Goodwin

 

New York Post

January 22, 2022

 

 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks during the press conference at Harlem Hospital after two NYPD officers were shot, one fatally

 

During his successful campaign for mayor in 1993, Rudy Giuliani promised to tackle the epidemic of crime and murder that was bringing New York to its knees. Often his focus and media questions were about statistics showing the year-over-year increases. 

But in an editorial board meeting near the end of the race, Giuliani made a subtle but crucial distinction. “Statistics are important, but they are not the whole story,” I remember him saying. “What counts is whether people feel safe. If they don’t, the statistics don’t really matter.” 

Over the next 20 years, under Giuliani and then Michael Bloomberg, New York became the safest big city in America. While the statistics showed a remarkable decline in every category of crime, the real proof was that New Yorkers, commuters and visitors from around the world felt safe here. 

They felt safe in all kinds of neighborhoods, in their homes and on the streets. With remarkably few exceptions, they felt safe in the parks and on the subways and buses, day and night. 

The result was a new Golden Age of peace and prosperity, made possible by the brave men and women of the NYPD who turned back the tide of crime and violence. For those of us who had experienced the worst of times, the new New York seemed like a miracle. 

And now Gotham is coming full circle. Nobody feels safe in the city these days, and why should they? 

If the cops aren’t safe, nobody is. 

The murder of rookie Police Officer Jason Rivera, 22, and the serious wounding of his partner, Officer Wilbert Mora, mark another low moment in New York’s decline. Three other city cops were wounded in previous shooting incidents just this month. 

Mayor Adams made clear his determination to stop the violence in a powerful speech Friday night at Harlem Hospital. “We are going to find these guns, and we are going to find those who carry them and use them,” he vowed. 

He talked of “saving our city” and the need to “stop the debate” and work together. To my ears, it sounded like a declaration of war, and I hope it was. 

There is no other choice. Adams must become a wartime mayor. Otherwise, his tenure will be a failure before its gets started, a casualty of mayhem, murder and fear. 

The enemy is the malignant idea that having a grievance, real or imagined, gives you a license to steal, to rob, to kill. The unraveling of the fragile social contract that began during COVID and grew during the anti-police riots in the summer of 2020 has metastasized into a full-blown attack on everything America represents, including the rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 

Quality-of-life decline 

 

The NYPD released a photo of the modified weapon used in the killing of 22-year-old rookie officer Jason Rivera

 

Yes, of course, the most serious factor is the proliferation of guns, nearly all of them illegal and, as Adams said, manufactured outside the city and smuggled in to be sold on the black market. 

But not all guns are equal, and a gun stashed in a closet isn’t really an emergency. The problem is that more and more people with grievances feel emboldened to carry a gun because the police have been handcuffed. 

When more people carry guns, more people use them, which leads more people to carry them and use them. 

But it’s not just guns. Public disorder is now routine and quality-of-life crimes, from public urination to farebeating, are acceptable to most politicians. The streets and subways are teeming with the homeless, many of them mentally ill and aggressive, but pearl-clutching and hand-wringing are not solutions. 

Recall that during the Democratic mayoral primary, candidate Andrew Yang had the nerve to say that ordinary New Yorkers have rights to be unmolested. His remark was taken as a sin by the grievance industry and brought him fierce denunciation from the always-angry left. Yang soon left the party. 

This culture of anything goes that Adams inherits got its oxygen under the worst mayor ever, Bill de Blasio. Trying to keep pace with the progressive nut jobs across the country, the Putz neutered the cops and fanned the flames of disrespect and disorder. He didn’t care enough about the city or the people in it to stop the bloodshed and other signs of decay. 

Even as the body count grew in 2020 and then again last year, de Blasio mouthed pieties but did nothing. When pressed, the most he could say of the violence was that it was “unacceptable,” then went back to sleep. 

Others aided and abetted the mayhem. The City Council hates cops more than criminals. The Legislature and Andrew Cuomo did their part by destroying the bail system, which, despite its flaws, was an effective tool for keeping dangerous people off the street. 

The district attorneys failed, too, by surrendering to the progressive ethos of refusing to prosecute many crimes they considered minor. As such, they inadvertently proved the truth of the broken-windows theory of policing — that tolerating quality-of-life crimes would lead emboldened criminals to ever more serious attacks on society. 

Which brings us to the present crisis — and Alvin Bragg, the new Manhattan district attorney. He’s taking the go-soft approach to a whole new level of insanity by vowing to prosecute only the most serious crimes. 

So far, Adams has declined to confront Bragg even as his police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, warns that Bragg’s policy will endanger both the police and public. Similarly, business owners complain that lenient policies will lead to more crime, more victims and fewer jobs. 

Get DA on same page 

 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has hired a public relations team after receiving backlash from his soft-on-crime memo

 

As I’ve noted before, the irony is that Adams, who campaigned on an anti-crime platform, shares many voters with Bragg, who made no secret of his contrasting agenda. Something, or someone, has to give. 

Or, if they’re looking for common ground, they can find it by following Giuliani’s standard of whether the public feels safe. Statistics and agenda aside, Bragg must have heard that people who live and work in even the most exclusive areas of his jurisdiction are shaken by the unchecked crime wave. 

However they voted, the last thing they want is for miscreants to be arrested then set free to commit more crimes. 

Stung by the storm of criticism against his radical policies, Bragg has hired a public-relations team, which suggests he’s digging in his heels. 

Here’s a better idea, one more fitting for the wartime environment we face. Bragg could visit the area around the apartment building at 119 W. 135th St. in Harlem, where Officers Rivera and Mora and a third officer responded to a mother’s 911 call about her son, who suddenly emerged from a bedroom, gun blazing. 

Let Bragg ask that woman’s neighbors if they want more or fewer cops and if they want the troublemakers to get off scot-free. 

Or he could cut right to the chase and ask them if they feel safe. That’s the ultimate test.