POLICE Logo
MenuMENU
SearchSEARCH

Retired NYPD Captain Running for New York City Mayor

As a proud former police officer running for mayor with crime on the rise, Adams is often castigated for being out of step with the activist wing of a party whose vote he is seeking on June 22.

April 23, 2021
Retired NYPD Captain Running for New York City Mayor

 

Embed from Getty Images


Ad Loading...

After 11 people were fatally shot inside a Pittsburgh synagogue three years ago, a politician nearly 400 miles away demanded an immediate shift in protocol.

“From now on, I will bring my handgun every time I enter a church or synagogue,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a retired police captain who is now a leading candidate for New York City mayor, said the following day , encouraging trained cops to do the same.

The responses were swift: Emails poured into his office from New Yorkers horrified by the suggestion. They invoked red-state Republicans and the National Rifle Association, and one person expressed gratitude to live on the other side of the East River. The anger was offset by a few people who agreed with the proposition — including one who requested a reference letter to obtain his own permit to carry a concealed weapon, according to previously unreported emails POLITICO obtained through a freedom of information request.

Now Adams is among the top-tier Democratic candidates running to be the next mayor of New York, ranking second in most public polls and sitting on a $7.8 million war chest . As he competes in an eight-person field, he is carving a path formed by his biography: A Black man who openly discusses being a teenager assaulted by police officers, only to become one himself at a time when the city was mired in crime. He quickly challenged orthodoxies within the NYPD.

But as a proud former police officer running for mayor with crime on the rise, Adams is often castigated for being out of step with the activist wing of a party whose vote he is seeking on June 22.

He wants to reinstate a plainclothes unit disbanded by the NYPD last year to focus on gun safety. He readily denounces the “defund NYPD” slogan that surged after the in-custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year. He has defended the controversial practice of stop-and-frisk if used correctly . He wants spot checks for guns entering the city at Port Authority bus terminals .

Ad Loading...