Photo shown by NYC mayor was not as it appeared

NEW YORK — In Mayor Eric Adams’s first month in office, he was confronted with a tragic crisis: the deaths of two New York City police officers who were responding to a domestic disturbance in Harlem.

Adams, a former police captain who campaigned as a Democratic crime fighter, quickly sought to humanize the killings. The loss of the officers, he said, reminded him of the 1987 lineof-duty death of a friend, Officer Robert Venable.

“I still think about Robert,” Adams said at a news conference at City Hall. “I keep a picture of Robert in my wallet.”

A week later, Adams posed for a portrait in his office, holding a wallet-size photo of Venable after The New York Times had requested to see it. Adams has since repeated the moving anecdote in media interviews and at a Police Academy ceremony last June, where he again displayed Venable’s picture.

But the weathered photo of Venable had not actually spent decades in the mayor’s wallet. It had been created by employees in the mayor’s office in the days after Adams claimed to have been carrying it in his wallet.

The employees were instructed to create a photo of Venable, according to a person familiar with the request. A picture of the officer was found on Google; it was printed in black-andwhite and made to look worn as if the mayor had been carrying it for some time, including by splashing some coffee on it, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for the mayor, did not dispute that Adams had shown a photo to the Times and at the police ceremony that had been recently created by a City Hall aide.

Levy, however, insisted that Adams had carried a photo of Venable for decades, and provided the names of several former transit police colleagues who said in interviews that Adams and Venable had indeed been friends.