Eric hits ‘no jail solitary’ city pols
Mayor-elect Eric Adams on Tuesday ripped into City Council lawmakers who are pushing a bill that would bar the use of solitary confinement in city jails.
“I am not going to be in a city where dangerous people assault innocent people, go to jail and assault more people,” Adams told reporters after an unrelated press conference in front of Rockefeller Center. “You cannot have a jail system where someone sexually assaults a staffer, slash an inmate and then say it is all right.”
He then rebuked the 29 council members who signed onto a letter Tuesday demanding passage of the legislation, arguing they were “romanticizing this issue.”
“There is a body of people that are coming into the City Council, they have no desire in moving our city forward,” he added. “Their desire is to be disruptive. What am I going to do? I’m going to ignore them. I’m going to stay committed, undistracted and I’m going to grind.”
The push comes a week after Adams warned Rikers Island inmates to start behaving because he plans to immediately reverse outgoing Mayor de Blasio’s oneday solitary ban.
“The mayor announced Dec. 31 he’s going to empty out punitive segregation,” Adams said. “They better enjoy that one-day reprieve because Jan. 1, they’re going back into punitive segregation if they commit a violent act.”
Adams’ remarks come after a year of extraordinary violence and dysfunction in Department of Correction facilities — as city officials raced to repair hundreds of broken jail doors at the infamous Rikers complex, workers staged sickouts over safety worries and 16 inmates died or committed suicide amid the squalid conditions.