I’m running for mayor, says Adams

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams formally launched his campaign for mayor on Wednesday, outlining a moderate vision and emphasizing his background as a Black former NYPD officer in a time of intense demands for police reform.

“I lived the life of the people I wanted to help. I turned my pain into purpose,” the Brooklyn-born politician proclaimed during an online rally, saying he was beaten by police officers at age 15.

“I became a police officer to change the NYPD from the inside, to take on systematic racism from within,” Adams (inset) said. “That is why I spent my entire adult life in public service.”

Adams previously joined calls for NYPD funding cuts — one of the key demands to emerge from heated anti-police-brutality protests over the summer — but shied away from specifics on Wednesday.

He focused on the disparate impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected and killed people of color at disproportionately high rates.

“It is Black and Brown New Yorkers who are losing the most,” Adams said. “For far too many, it was inequality and unjust, indifferent, dysfunctional government that killed them.”

Unlike rivals in the race, who have made bashing Mayor de Blasio a central part of their campaigns, Adams didn’t directly attack Hizzoner. The Brooklyn beep indicated at a recent candidates’ forum that he wouldn’t shun an endorsement from de Blasio.

But Adams took a shot at the incumbent, who first ran for mayor on a promise to rewrite the “tale of two cities” in New York.

“People talk about the tale of two cities, but we need to acknowledge that the dysfunctionality of government is the author of that,” Adams said.

He promised to release “detailed plans for turning the city around,” having told the Daily News on Monday that he’d hire an “efficiency czar” and consolidate city data if elected mayor.

Council Members Laurie Cumbo (D-Brooklyn) and Daneek Miller (D-Queens) voiced their endorsements of Adams during the Zoom press conference.