Adams’ Unsettling Picks
Mayor Adams vowed to restore law and order, but tapping his own brother, Bernard Adams, as a deputy NYPD commissioner and controversial Phil Banks as deputy mayor for public safety can only cause needless distractions and doubt.
Many will assume his deputy-commish choice was straight-up nepotism. That will add to concerns over Banks, who comes with a cloud over his head, overseeing a department that needs all the support it can get amid surging crime, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s procriminal orders and continued anti-police hostility from the left.
Worse, the mayor claims he chose his brother to protect him from “white supremacy”: Bernard “will be in charge of my security, which is extremely important to me at a time when we see an increase in white supremacy and hate crimes.”
“We have a serious problem with white supremacy,” he continued. Huh? In ultra-blue New York? (Hate crimes did rise last year, but nearly two thirds targeted Asians and Jews, less than 6% were aimed at blacks.)
No one seriously believes that tough-guy, ex-cop Eric Adams really feels so unsafe. (His folks won’t say whether he’s faced any specific threats from white supremacists or from the anarchists he also cited.)
Bernard was a cop for 20 years, but he’s a retired police sergeant who recently worked as assistant director for parking at Virginia Commonwealth University, per his LinkedIn profile.
And he tells The Post he’ll oversee governmental affairs — in a civilian position (that typically draws a $242,000 salary).
Banks is similarly problematic: He turned down a promotion to first deputy commissioner at the NYPD and retired amid a federal pay-toplay probe that turned up a
mysterious $300,000 in his accounts. He was never charged with any crime, but Adams says he “acknowledges” some “real mistakes and errors.”
These aren’t necessarily crippling problems, but it’s a bit dispiriting to see the new mayor really want to launch his war on crime this way.