Adams meets NYPD brass, sez stop fare beating as it leads to more serious crime

Mayor Adams sat down with NYPD brass Saturday to talk about fighting crime and violence in the five boroughs during the summer months.

“Safety, safety, safety,” Adams told a small gaggle of reporters outside 1 Police Plaza before he was whisked into the building for his first of three meetings with NYPD officials.

“I’m showing the police department how we have swagger,” he joked before going inside.

Afterward, the mayor hinted at how he wants cops to “swagger.”

One of his ideas is that cops need to “get back to basics,” and Adams stressed that point by mentioning that people who jump subway turnstiles often end up under arrest for more serious offenses.

“We had years where you were told don’t summons, don’t apprehend someone for jumping the turnstile,” Adams told reporters. “A lot of people don’t know we learned from the ’90s that those who jumped turnstiles often go [on] to carry out, to commit a crime.”

Adams has denied any intention to resurrect the 1990s Giuliani-era philosophy of “broken windows” policing, which emphasized arrests for minor crimes such as turnstile jumping as a means of keeping suspects from carrying out more serious offenses.

Adams also said the NYPD needs to make sure its officers are deployed in the most efficient way.

“The first order of business you do is to see are we properly deploying what we have,” Adams said. “I don’t need police officers at the parades where you have no threat of violence at all.”

Also, Adams said, the NYPD needs to evaluate whether officers in administrative jobs need to be redeployed to the streets.

Adams told reporters “great ideas” came from his sit downs with commanders from Brooklyn’s 77th Precinct, which covers much of Crown Heights, Bronx-based Transit District 12, and special investigative units.

The mayor plans to sit down with other city government employees and leaders to work out an inter-agency approach to stopping crime in its tracks.

“In order to start policing the city safely again, I heard across the board it’s time to get back to the basics, but we also need every other agency in the city engaged. This is not a police problem, it’s a city problem.”

“We constantly have the police officers under scrutiny,” Adams continued. “It’s time for everybody to be under scrutiny and that’s the type of mayor I’m going to be.”

The closed-door meetings were called as the city continued to fight a 2.2% rise in shootings this year, with 376 incidents in 2022 through Sunday compared to 368 during the same period of 2021.

Murders in the city were down by 13% — to 119 so far in 2022, compared to 137 at the same point in 2021, said police.

At 1 Police Plaza, tables in the auditorium were set up in a large square as NYPD commanding officers in crisp dress blue uniforms and holding thick binders trickled in.

The mayor was joined at the head of the table by Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey and Phil Banks, a former NYPD first deputy commissioner who is currently the city’s deputy mayor for public safety.

NYPD commanders smiled and chatted with each other as they went into the meeting, where they were asked to offer up three ideas that could bring down crime and improve public safety. The removal of homeless encampments and summons activity were also expected to be mentioned.

Discussions between the mayor and police commanders were friendly and amicable during a “frank sharing of ideas” an NYPD official inside the meeting room said. The meetings was mostly dedicated to crime strategies.

“We have done this before. How can we get back?” the official said, referencing the low crime rates seen in the city before the pandemic.

No union leaders were invited to the meetings, another source said. During the sit down, Adams repeatedly voiced his support for the NYPD’s rank and file.

On Friday the NYPD announced it was planning to reassign more officers to the evening hours to combat summertime gun violence in the city.

An additional 350 officers will be seen patrolling city streets and subways between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. beginning Sunday night, Corey said Friday.

In the summer of 2020 and 2021, city data shows, 42% of shootings between May 1 and Labor Day occurred between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m., police said.