Mayor Eric Adams.
Credit score: Ed Reed/Mayoral Images Workplace.
Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday blamed the notion that New York Metropolis is unsafe and its sprawling homelessness disaster squarely on the Democratic challenger within the 2025 NYC Mayor’s Race who says he’s greatest positioned to repair these points: former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Adams, throughout a Wednesday morning interview on the Reset Speak Present with host JR Gittens, took purpose at Cuomo — the present frontrunner within the mayoral race — for signing off on prison justice reforms in 2019 which Hizzoner claims make it onerous for the town to crack down on repeat offenders.
“When you look at the problems we are facing around public safety, it was born out of Albany; it was the laws that he passed, and he wanted to see move forward,” Adams mentioned of the previous governor, who resigned in 2021 amid almost a dozen allegations of sexual misconduct that he denies.
“You can’t come back later and try to reinvent your life when you were in office already,” he added. “The recidivism we’re seeing in our city is because of the laws that were passed by him.”
Adams mentioned this in response to a query concerning the Cuomo marketing campaign’s concentrate on addressing anxieties round crime, together with a plan to rent 5,000 extra NYPD officers.
In his marketing campaign launch video earlier this month, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo mentioned the town feels “threatening, out of control and in crisis” due to a “lack of intelligent action” by its leaders. Whereas Cuomo has shunned immediately attacking Adams by title, his statements have been a transparent indictment of the mayor’s management.Picture by Lloyd Mitchell
‘The people will judge’
Wealthy Azzopardi, Cuomo’s spokesperson, merely responded, “The people of New York City will judge performance.”
The previous governor additionally launched proposals to place extra recidivists behind bars, handle quality-of-life considerations, and double the variety of cops patrolling the town subways.
Adams has ramped up his criticisms of Cuomo over the previous few days as the previous governor has nabbed endorsements from a number of of his shut political allies and raised way more marketing campaign money within the first 13 days of March than Adams introduced in since mid-January.
In his marketing campaign launch video earlier this month, Cuomo mentioned the town feels “threatening, out of control and in crisis” due to a “lack of intelligent action” by its leaders. Whereas Cuomo has shunned immediately attacking Adams by title, his statements are a transparent indictment of the mayor’s management.
In 2019, Cuomo signed a package deal of prison justice reforms that eradicated money bail for many misdemeanors and non-violent felonies — although the legislation has since been tweaked a number of occasions to as soon as once more give judges extra discretion to set bail. He additionally signed modifications to the state’s discovery legal guidelines that yr, which require prosecutors to rapidly share proof of their possession with the defendant’s counsel on a strict timeline.
Each the modifications to bail and discovery have been geared toward addressing inequities within the prison justice system, corresponding to these accused however not convicted of against the law languishing in jail pre-trial and defendants going to trial with out seeing a lot of the proof prosecutors will current.
Nevertheless, many elected officers have mentioned that whereas the reforms have been well-intentioned, they went too far and made it more durable to maintain repeat offenders behind bars earlier than trial. Too many circumstances are tossed on technicalities.
Earlier this month, Cuomo defended signing the bail reform legal guidelines, saying “it righted a terrible social wrong.”
Homelessness downside
Adams additionally blamed Cuomo for making sure selections that he mentioned precipitated the town’s present homelessness disaster—although he didn’t go into specifics. Moreover, he blasted the previous governor’s dealing with of COVID-19 in nursing houses and years-long feud with former Mayor Invoice de Blasio.
“When you look at the homeless crisis that we’re seeing, it was some of the programs that he shut down,” Adams mentioned. “When you look at what happened under COVID, a report is being released of the bickering that took place between him and the previous mayor that didn’t allow New York to get the resources that they deserve. We look at the deaths in the nursing homes.”
Azzopardi additionally pushed again on these claims, saying that whereas Cuomo lower funding to a now-defunct rental help program often called Benefit in 2011, he changed it with different housing subsidy packages that acquired extra funding. These included a program to develop 20,000 supportive housing items, he mentioned, 80% of which have been slated for the town.
Azzopardi additionally defended Cuomo’s response to COVID-19 as governor and the way his administration communicated details about the pandemic to the general public.
Relating to allegations that Cuomo’s actions as governor led to the excessive COVID-19 loss of life fee in nursing houses, Azzopardi pointed to a January Justice Division Inspector Basic report he says discovered that New York adopted federal tips and that Trump’s first DOJ went after Cuomo for purely political causes.
