'There's A Whole Lot Of Things You Could Look At': Eric Adams Blasts Andrew Cuomo's Record On Crime

3 days ago

During a press briefing, NYC Mayor Eric Adams was asked about former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D-NY) attacks since launching his bid for NYC mayor.

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Transcript

00:00pretty dismal outcomes.

00:02And then secondly, I wanted to talk about,

00:04you to talk about your opponent, Andrew Cuomo.

00:07You know, he's repeatedly said the city is in crisis

00:10and he said, New Yorkers can feel it.

00:13At one point he said, you don't need to look at a report,

00:15you don't need to look at statistics,

00:19but the crime stats are showing,

00:21as you've repeatedly said, that most crime categories

00:24is showing that crime is falling.

00:26But at the same time, you yourself have talked about

00:29feelings versus facts.

00:32I'd be interested in asking you whether you feel

00:36feelings are more important than the statistics

00:40or are they equally important?

00:42Do you regret maybe giving in so much

00:45to the way people feel versus what the numbers are showing?

00:51First, I don't know why you say I gave into

00:54the way they feel.

00:55Perception is reality to many people.

00:58And I think that's very important

01:01that you never, you know,

01:03you never just dismiss how people are feeling.

01:07I think that's wrong to do.

01:08I used to have this uncle,

01:09I used to say he must've been eight feet tall, you know,

01:12and he would shake my hand and he'll squeeze it.

01:15And I would say, Uncle Elliot, you're hurting my hand.

01:17He said, boy, that doesn't hurt you.

01:18I'm like, why are you telling me,

01:19how are you going to tell me what I'm feeling?

01:21And so I would never dismiss New Yorkers,

01:24but I can see why the former governor

01:27don't want to look at reports because, you know,

01:29you have to look at the reports of what he did

01:31when he was governor, you know, to tier six,

01:35the laws he passed that made some of our streets unsafe,

01:39what was done around mental health.

01:41There's a whole lot of things that you can look at.

01:44And so it's best to say, don't even look at reports.

01:46No, I said, look at reports,

01:47because reports, if you use your report to write your stories

01:51that tells us where we're moving forward.

01:54And so those numbers are significant of what we've done.

01:5720,000, over 20,000 illegal guns removed.

01:59We moved up our streets,

02:00almost 80,000 illegal vehicles moved up our streets.

02:03And so there's been some real success

02:08in what we've accomplished in this city.

02:10And what I tell the commissioner team all the time,

02:13we have to play a major role

02:15on making people feel safe as well.

02:18And it's interesting, what does that?

02:20Like, just interacting with the public.

02:22They walk inside the subway station.

02:24Hey, how are you, sir?

02:25How are you, ma'am?

02:25Is anything, is everything all right?

02:27Make it an announcement.

02:28We have a police officer on board.

02:30We put a cop on every train during the overnight hours.

02:33And so there's some real successful things

02:36that we are doing and what we accomplished.

02:40And we're gonna continue to do that.

02:41Now, with the homelessness,

02:43it really blows my mind

02:47that people don't see the difference

02:50between our city and other cities.

02:54We don't have those shantytowns over our cities.

02:57I remember when I came into office,

02:58people were sleeping in the subway system,

03:01under stairs, inside the tunnels, along the highways.

03:06When I drive around the city now,

03:09I used to, it was not difficult for me to find

03:12when people were sleeping all over the place.

03:14I can't find them now.

03:15When I do my late night ride around

03:17to try to catch, are we doing our job?

03:20And so if people don't see the success we've had

03:23and not having our cities look like other cities,

03:27people cooking on the sidewalk,

03:29using the sidewalks as bathrooms,

03:32all of these things that were being done

03:34in encampments and tents,

03:35we've done a great job,

03:37that the team has done an amazing job

03:39in bringing back normality.

03:40Now, the report that is used by the city council

03:44is not fairly accounting for what happens.

03:48They're saying, did the person take shelter

03:50immediately after you took down their encampment?

03:54That's just not the reality.

03:55Anyone who has done this work would tell you

03:58it takes a while to build up their trust.

04:00Sometimes people do the next day.

04:01Sometimes people get to notice

04:03that it was going to come down

04:04and they go get the help and they go into shelter.

04:07We took 8,000 people off our subway system

04:09that was sleeping and using our subway system

04:12as a place of reference.

04:14When you look at the investment,

04:15$650 million we're going to invest,

04:19we should be patting ourselves on the back.

04:22I go to these other cities,

04:25and you can just Google these other cities.

04:28You don't have it here in New York,

04:30and so we're proud of what we have done,

04:33and we've done it in a humane way.

04:34There's nothing that is dignified

04:38about sleeping on the streets.

04:40I've said that before,

04:41and I'm going to continue to say it,

04:43and some of the people who are critiquing this,

04:45they were pushing back on us

04:46when we did our initiative to get people off our streets.

04:50And so, that's all part of the noise.

04:51We know how good this job has been.

04:56Hi, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

04:57I'm doing well, thank you. Two questions.

04:59I wanted to ask first,

05:00there's a lot of anxiety right now

05:02among teachers and school leaders

05:04that the Trump administration

05:05may cut funding to New York City schools.

05:07As I'm sure you know,

05:09they currently receive about $2 billion a year.

'There's A Whole Lot Of Things You Could Look At': Eric Adams Blasts Andrew Cuomo's Record On Crime

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