LOUIMA BACKS ADAMS’ BID FOR MAYOR
1997 cop-abuse victim says former NYPD capt. would unite the city
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams received a mayoral endorsement on Tuesday from Abner Louima, whose brutal mistreatment at a Brooklyn police station a quarter-century ago sent shock waves throughout the city and the nation.
Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was sodomized with a stick by an officer in 1997, said he had flown up from his home state of Florida to publicly offer his endorsement to the former NYPD captain.
“With Eric Adams as mayor, everyone will have their place,” Louima, 54, said outside City Hall. “He would be a mayor to unite each and everyone.”
Adams celebrated the support as he works to carve out a platform that centers on crime while simultaneously pressing the need for police reform. He said the endorsement was uniquely meaningful to him and described Louima as his friend and a “warrior for justice.”
The horrors of police brutality are etched into Adams’ personal and political biography: He has said a beating he and his brother received from cops at a Queens precincthouse — when he was just 15 — prompted his path into the NYPD.
“It was beyond belief to be a 15-year-old baby and watch the symbol of power and authority destroy me in that manner,” Adams said Tuesday, recalling that he urinated blood for a week after the attack in the 103rd Precinct stationhouse in Jamaica. “Those bruises may leave, but the scars remain forever.”
In 1995, he helped found 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, an advocacy group focused on fighting police brutality.
Two years later, Louima was tortured with a broken broomstick in a bathroom at the 70th Precinct stationhouse in Kensington, Brooklyn. Louima spent two months in the hospital after the attack at the hands of NYPD Officer Justin Volpe.
Volpe mistakenly believed
Louima had punched him during a fight outside a Flatbush nightclub. Louima said in January that he had since forgiven Volpe, who has spent more than two decades in prison.
Adams was on the police force at the time of the heinous crime and said Louima’s case sparked a movement inside and outside the department. He recalled marching through the streets to demand justice, and he said he and other members of his advocacy group faced harassment over their activism.
“We were inspired by Mr. Louima’s courage,” Adams said. “We knew we had no other choice.”
Adams explicitly tied his appeal to young New Yorkers, who witnessed swelling citywide demonstrations last spring after a series of brutal police killings placed law enforcement under a national microscope.
He said that the push for police reform has deep roots, emphasizing 35 years of work he has put into the cause and claiming he faced surveillance during Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s tough-on-crime administration.
“I was there then,” he said. “I’m here now. And I’ll be there in the future.”
Adams argued that policing is one of three critical topics in the mayor’s race, along with COVID and crime. And he emphasized that he believes police reform and public safety must be aggressively pursued in tandem.
“I’m going to continue to advocate for justice as I did with Mr. Louima, and I’m going to advocate to end the gun violence,” said Adams, whose public safety proposals include provisions like relaunching the Police Department’s controversial anti-crime units as an anti-gun unit. “Justice and safety must go together.”
After the news conference, Adams and Louima wandered in front of a police car. They locked hands. And then, in a moment of not-so-subtle symbolism, they posed for pictures.