Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears Live On “The Beat 139” Podcast

July 31, 2024

Vernon "Donveto" Boisseau: All right, how you doing today, Mr. Mayor?

Mayor Eric Adams: Good. Just keeping my beat. You know the beat goes on, so it's good to be on the beat.

Boisseau: Keeping the beat, keeping the beat. I've been watching you a lot. You've been doing a lot of big things in the city, a lot of big things. Yes, you have.

Mayor Adams: We were just up in the Bronx. I'm just leaving the Bronx, where we looked at the millions of pounds of illegal cannabis that has basically been proliferating in our communities, and as we have been cracking them down. That's one of the number one complaints from the residents, particularly up in Harlem, in the Bronx. We're going to destroy several pounds of it, because a lot of this stuff is laced, and you don't know what you're smoking. You're smoking really chemicals. It has hurt the legal market that was supposed to empower those who were unjustly treated when there was this crackdown around cannabis. We're doing our thing. It's just one of the many initiatives that we are looking forward to continuing.

Boisseau: Okay, that's a big issue, too. Very big issue. I've seen there's been a lot of raids, a lot of, I don't know if we call it a raid, but a lot of busts with these illegal businesses and stuff like that.

Mayor Adams: We're finding a lot of stuff inside, including, weapons and other items, as well as these products. Man, we need to really get the word out to family members. Some of this stuff is laced with fentanyl and other items. We have to be very careful of what's being sold in these illegal shops.

Boisseau: All right, so let's get into it. Let's talk about the Rat Pack that I saw on the news. I think they have, are you guys employing people to fight New York City rats?

Mayor Adams: Listen, you know what? I hate rats like many other people. Nothing could disrupt your day more than a rat running across your foot. What we're doing is we're localizing this effort with local residents. We hired a rat czar. She's the architect of this great idea where we are bringing residents together to give them knowledge on rats.

A lot of people don't know what breeds and feeds rats. We're giving them a knowledge of rats. We're also doing sort of a walking tour in people's communities to show them where the problems are. We're giving them a nice little hat, some swag to go with it, to just say we're part of the same team to clean up our streets to deal with these rodents. Yes, the rodents are a big problem for a long time.

Boisseau: It's a good thing that we're trying to develop a system to, I don't know if you could stop it completely, but cut it down, at least.

Mayor Adams: We can. This was a learning experience for me when I came into office. We just did a lot of research around this. The number one problem, brother, is the fact that we have garbage and plastic bags on our streets. This started around the 60s after the sanitation strike. We went on a full court press to containerize our garbage. By November of this year, 70 percent of city garbage is going to be in containers. This is a huge lift. People told me it was going to take five years, but we're doing it under three years.

Boisseau: That's great news. That's very great news. Let's talk about it. It says Mayor Adams celebrates a 30 percent reduction in Black and Latino unemployment since the start of administration. That's big.

Mayor Adams: No, huge. When I came into office, our Black and brown people were not receiving the benefits of the assets of the city. One of the areas that we looked at was unemployment. Unemployment in the Black and brown community was four times, particularly in the Black community, I should say, was four times the rates of whites, four times the rates of whites.

We went on the ground and did a real initiative called the hiring hall. We partnered with Henry Garrido from DC 37. We focused on not waiting for people to come downtown to apply for jobs. We went into the community, the NYCHA centers, communities, places, locations, localized gyms, cafeterias, and schools, et cetera. We were able to bring down unemployment by 30 percent, close to 30 percent in the Black and Hispanic community. You saw for the first time since 2019, it's below 8 percent. We're going to keep driving it down. With all these jobs you get in the city, we like to say the prosperity must turn into, I should say the popularity must turn into prosperity for all New Yorkers. That's what we're doing.

When we add that on to the fact that we have about 29 percent in MWBE, over $6 billion that we have in contracts for goods and services, we're really showing the power of the city resources and diversity and local hiring, something that we just rolled out. If you're getting a city contract for certain jobs and certain deliverers of goods and services, you have to hire in NYCHA or locally based on zip codes that people are dealing with economic challenges.

Boisseau: That's big. Next question, mayor. The gun detectors in the subways, are they very effective?

Mayor Adams: Bro, this is unbelievable. One day I will take you down there so you can see firsthand how they operate. We're going to expand it out. Right now we're doing a pilot project. It's not about being intrusive. It's not about taking people's civil liberties away from them. You and I both know if our family members or loved ones is on the subway, you don't want some nut carrying a gun, pulling out a gun like we saw during 2022 when I first came into office. Those people were shot on the train.

We saw last year was this character started shooting on a train because he got into a dispute. This gun detection equipment, you don't have to stop. It's not like the airports where you have to stop and people empty your pockets. None of that happens. You just walk through like you normally walk in. It shows a red box anywhere on a person's body if they're carrying a gun. It's really unbelievable to see it. I think this is the first version of new technology that's going to detect guns. It's about keeping people safe. I'm big on that. People should be safe when they're on our subway system. We rolled it out. We're going to be rolling it out more. We had almost 12,000 test runs. This is a good product. I'm really impressed. I had the Black mayors in the city from across the country over the weekend, and they were blown away when they saw how it pinpointed exactly where the gun was located.

Boisseau: It's so sad that it comes to this. I remember when they first started putting metal detectors in the school system. When I was a kid, we didn't have that. Now we got gun detectors in the subway system. It's gotten so bad where we have to monitor everything to keep the safety in New York City.

Mayor Adams: Yes, no, you're right. It is. We did not have gun detectors. People would get into some type of fisticuff. You duped it out, and you kept it moving. Now, these proliferation of guns, and they're being used rapidly. I just saw a video yesterday of a young man rolled up on a bike and shot three young people who were standing in front of an illegal cannabis shop.

Thank God they all lived, but imagine how traumatic that is. It's about how do we keep people safe without being intrusive, and this is a manner in which to do so. People get on planes. They go through those metal detectors, and the devices we're using is currently now used in many of the hospitals and many of the sporting arenas across the country and here in New York.

Boisseau: It's very well needed, I must say. What about the traffic violence? A lot of people have been dying because of traffic violence, like automobiles coming up on the sidewalks, running into businesses, running over people. It's been crazy.

Mayor Adams: No, it has. Now, last year, we had the safest numbers on pedestrian deaths in decades, but you're right. You look at some of these cases, they play on your psyche when you look at some of the traffic violence you witness, and there's no consolation if someone knocks on your door and tells you your loved one is not coming home because they were shot by a steel bullet or a steel car. It's painful, and the loss of life, my heart goes out to families who lose them.

We've been partnering with Cities for Safe Streets and a lot of the advocates to come up with ways to really crack down on the reckless driving and the speeding. A lot of these cars had ghost plates where they were not registered, no insurance. They've been used in crimes, fleeing criminal action. We have been really proactive in it, but we have to do everything possible. Vision Zero is not a bumper sticker to us. It's something that we need to really stop people from being victims of these traffic crashes.

Boisseau: Okay, Mr. Mayor. What are we doing about the mental health crisis in New York City? It's like a lot of people with mental health are hurting people in the city. I don't know if they can be blamed for the crime because they have a mental problem, or do they go to a mental institution, or do they go to Rikers Island? What is being done about that?

Mayor Adams: That's a great question, brother. Here's what happened. Many years ago, we closed our psychiatric wards because many of them had draconian practices and just locking people in a room, not giving them the care that they deserve. There was a response to close down these wards. As we often do, we go from one extreme to the next in politics. So, when we close down these wards, we put people in the streets without the care that they deserve. There are some people who cannot take care of themselves. They need around-the-clock care, and there are those who need periodic check-in and care. That is where we must go.

So when we move people out of psychiatric wards and just turn them into the streets for the most part, when they do something disruptive, we take them to the hospital, we give them medicine for a day, we put them back out in the street until they do something that's criminal-like, like assaulting someone, pushing someone on the subway tracks, et cetera. Then we take them to Rikers Island and charge them criminally for it. Do you know over 50 percent of the inmates at Rikers Island have mental health issues?

We have closed down a psychiatric ward, but we turned Rikers Island into a psychiatric ward. What I believe we need to do is build a state-of-the-art humane psychiatric facility. That should be part of the plan when we close down Rikers. We're building four new jails. We need to really look at how do we build a state-of-the-art psychiatric facility that we can be proud of where people are given community, care, and really the love and nurturing that they need. Right now, we're not doing that. I'm hoping that the city council members who can alter the law can look at how to accomplish that.

We have been focusing on street homelessness. We removed over 7,000 people off the subway system with mental health issues for the most part, or homelessness. We have really focused on those who need wraparound services to meet, to move them into the proper facilities.

Boisseau: All right, Mr. Mayor, I know you're a busy man. I won't hold you too long. Last question, New York City housing. A lot of people are concerned about the housing crisis that we have in New York City.

Mayor Adams: It's a real crisis. We have a 1.4 percent vacancy rate. That means that the number of apartments that are empty, ready for people to move in, is at a 1.4 percent, basically functionally zero for low income. We have to build more. That's what that plan, when people hear a City of Yes proposal for Housing Opportunity, it is what we're saying.

We have to move away from the racist laws of the past that didn't allow us to build in certain communities where we prevented people from moving in. Do you know the city is divided into what's called community boards? We have 59 community boards in the city. Out of those 59, 10 community boards, like Harlem, created more housing last year than 49 of them combined. That's just unfair and it's wrong. We're saying we need to build more housing in places where you have good schools, good access to transportation, good access to food, good access to hospital care. We want to build a little more all over the city. That's what our push is. If we don't build more, we're not going to address this housing crisis that we're facing.

Specifically, when it comes down to single Black men, many people don't want to talk about it, but whenever we try to build facilities that will house single Black men, that's the number one pushback we get. I am saying no to that. My son is a single Black man. He deserves to live in the city like so many others. Even those who have made mistakes in their lives that want to get their life back together, they should be able to live in the city and not sleep on our streets, in our parks, or in our subway system.

Boisseau: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for your time. We'll talk to you soon. You have a wonderful day. I know you're busy, man. Keep making New York City great, because we need you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, brother. I'm staying on the beat.

Boisseau: Stay on the beat. Have a good day, buddy.

Mayor Adams: Take care.

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