Hope as Adams’ Honeymoon Ends

It looks like Mayor Adams’ honeymoon is over, as a new poll shows only 29% of New Yorkers giving a thumbs-up to his job performance so far, against 64% who say he’s doing poor or fair work. But it’s a long way from there to divorce court.

Crucially, the Spectrum News NY1/Siena College poll found that more than seven in 10 New Yorkers fear they’ll become a victim of violent crime, and Adams’ NYPD is finally seeing some success on that front.

The NYPD’s Gun Violence Suppression Division and the patrol force have taken a record amount of guns off the streets. Shootings are down 7% this year over 2021; homicides are down 9% this year.

If Adams can continue those gains and deliver a wider drop in all crime categories (major crimes are up 38%), the voters will start smiling on him again: It’s all about the results, though he’ll also need New Yorkers to see him resolving the homelessness issues that spread a different kind of fear.

The mayor will help his own cause if he keeps using his bully pulpit to call out state lawmakers, soft-on-crime prosecutors and judges for cutting loose suspected shooters and other recidivists to wreak continued mayhem in the community.

The city’s criminal-justice system, he warned the other day, has become such a “laughingstock” that the “bad guys no longer take [the law] seriously.” More of that, sir, and don’t hesitate to name Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Gov. Kathy Hochul for refusing to truly fix recent justice “reforms.”

Meanwhile, keep looking for other policing innovations, using every lawful tactic to ensure that it’s the gang-bangers and other menaces who worry when they’re on the streets, not law-abiding citizens.

Heck, Adams should probably also jump on another finding from that poll: 52% said the NYPD’s budget should grow (i.e., hire more cops!), against just 17% who think it

should shrink.