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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. April is Ask the Mayor Tryouts month here on the Brian Lehrer Show. Just like we do Ask the Mayor every Friday with my questions and yours from Mayor Bill de Blasio. We have invited the eight leading candidates for the June primary to join us this month to do an Ask the Mayor segment with my questions in yours for them. All eight have accepted, we've done five already with three left to go. Dianne Morales, Andrew Yang, and today, Eric Adams.

Now, we welcome back to the show, candidate and Brooklyn Borough President, Eric Adams. His biggest campaign headline in the last few days, he got the coveted endorsement from Bronx Borough President, Ruben Diaz Jr. Just let me remind you all of the ground rules that we establish on these, we want these to be policy questions, not got-you questions or negative attacks. If you get on the air and we think you were a plant from a rival campaign, just trying to make our guests look bad, we will give you a very short shrift.

It's my questions and yours now for candidate Eric Adams at 646-435-72860 or you can tweet a question, just use the same hashtag we do on Fridays, #AsktheMayor. With all of that as prelude, Borough President Adams, welcome back to WNYC, and thanks for doing an Ask the Mayor tryout.

Eric Adams: Hey, Brian, how are you? It's good speaking with you and your audience. I always enjoy talking to you. I was in a community of the day, and a woman came in, I have a mask on, she says "You're Eric Adams, I hear you on Brian Lehrer Show all the time."

Brian: Well, we appreciate your past appearances and we appreciate this one. I know you've all done about a million and a half Zoom forums. You tell me, is there a most common ask-the-candidate question that members of the public tend to ask you?

Eric: Probably public safety and police reform. It's fascinating that a topic I am knowledgeable about, I have yet to be on one forum where that question did not come up. The intersectionality of no matter what we're doing, it's always coming back to police reform and public safety.

Brian: Well, POLITICO had a profile of you this weekend, you probably saw it with a headline, An armed New York mayor? Democratic ex-cop plans to ride an anti-crime message to City Hall. Do you agree with that framing of your campaign?

Eric: Not really. I believe that the prerequisite to prosperity is public safety. I have been on your show for years and I don't think there's ever been a time that I did not talk about that. I've started to see how the erosion of public safety is taking place in our city, everything from a real gang, a problem in the city to the over-proliferation of handguns. I'm going to talk about our city being saved because if we're not safe, if our children or five-year-old children are being shot, those grades with bullets and one-year-old children are dying, we will never be the city we want to be in.

That's the foundation of my campaign, but there's a whole lot in my campaign, as people have witnessed on my website where I have 100 plus steps forward for New York City.

Brian: Well, one of the standard questions I've been asking the candidates in this series is how would you fight crime and mass incarceration at the same time? I tend to get answers that emphasize police reform and community investment as the long-term answer to both. Many of them less interested in focusing on short-term means of stopping the shootings today, for example. Do you have more to say on using the police or any other means of capping the current crime wave now?

Some listeners might like if you're more focused on that than other candidates, some might not like it, but would you make a distinction in your eyes between yourself and the other candidate on which of those two you would emphasize right now?

Brian: Yes, it's so important what you just raised, Brian, because dealing with any crisis, you must have its two-pronged attack. Number one, you have to deal with the imminent threat, and number two, you must have a long-term plan to stop the threat from continuing. Many people are comfortable in talking about the long-term idealistic plan, but we have a realistic crisis right now when you're seeing the increase in gun violence in the city.

When tourists are shot at Grand Central Station and when you're seeing someone that can have a handgun so readily accessible to assassinate a lover, as we saw in Park Slope, long-term plan sound fine, but what are we going to do about an imminent threat? There's several things we need to do. Number one, we have to reinstitute the anti-plainclothes unit, turn that unit into an anti-gun unit, have them zeroed in on gun violence, precision policing, particularly identifying the top drivers of gun violence in the city. That's dealing with gang behavior. We need to focus on that.

Second, we must stop the flow of guns in the city. This is a role, just as we do with terrorism, we have not had a major terrorist attack in the city since 2001. We need to have that same level of energy and focusing on the flow of guns in our city, partner with our federal and state agencies to go after large takedowns of handguns that are arriving in the city, probably daily. Third, we need to invest in the crisis management team.

These are amazing grassroots groups and organization allowing them to go after and identify those who are known shooters, the term they use, having them come in real resources and bring people out of the gang behavior. I've been meeting with several gang members over the last few months to talk about how do we dismantle the gang climate in our city and stop the retaliatory shooters. A lot of shooters we're seeing are retaliatory shooters. There are some things we can do right now.

Brian: One follow-up on this though, then we'll get to calls. There is a chicken in the egg cycle though, where to stop crime right away, the city has historically deployed more aggressive police measures, like broken windows or stop and frisk, which was to get guns off the street, or the Street Crimes Unit.

They called it under Giuliani until it was disbanded after the shooting of Amadou Diallo in the lobby of his own building, or the Anti-Crime Unit, which you just cited as they called it under de Blasio because each time more Black and Brown kids were arrested for not much. How do you clamp down and crime to get out of that cycle?

Eric: Well, clearly, I knew about all of those errors. I was the lead and advocate during those days of fighting against the over-aggressive policing after being assaulted by police officers as a child and going into the police department because civil rights leaders asked me to go in. I went in with the mission of public safety and justice at the same time. If you have the right officers assigned to these units, with the right conflict resolution skill, right communication skills, using the data to identify those who are gang members, and who are driving the crime, remember, you don't have a large number of New Yorkers that are participating in this criminal behavior.

You have a pocket of people who have made it their decision to wreaked havoc on our city. With precision policing, being proactive in policing, identifying those who are on a pathway of violence, and communicating with them before they carry out violent acts, we can actually stop some of the violence that we'll see. That is where we are falling short. It's a combination of law enforcement and the various other city agencies that would treat gun violence as a health crisis and not the way we're treating it now. We need to change the ecosystem of public safety in the city.

Brian: Craig, in Queens, you're on WNYC with mayoral candidate and Brooklyn Borough President, Eric Adams. Hi, Craig.

Craig: Hey, good morning. Brian, thank you for taking my call. Mr. Adams, I get right to the point. Brian, alluded to it a little bit. I'm African American. I live in Queens for the majority of my life. I'll be saying 50 years old this year if I make it, God willing. It seems when it comes to crime, it's the face of Black men, young Black men. I have heard city councilmen advocate people breaking the law because they're minorities. Let's give it, they're minorities, recent immigrants, and it's hard for them to get licensing, the chiro ladies.

When the e-bikes were illegal, there were advocates saying, "Well, these people should be able to use the e-bikes because they're trying to make a living." Nobody is going to advocate for a person in South Jamaica selling marijuana. If that person said, "Well, they legalized marijuana, but they gave all the licenses out to the big corporations. I'm just a young guy out here trying to make a couple of dollars." I'm one to see the law, the breaking of the law, evenly prosecuted. People talk about massage parlors. Sex work should not be criminalized.

You live next to a place where men pull up to get massages or you live off at 150th Street in South Road where streetwalkers walk, and your daughter can walk to the corner store because men blow-by and yet whistle at them. Then, you say this stuff doesn't have an impact on the community. We get it from every side. We're the ones that's always to follow the law, do the right thing, do this. We watch people have illegal tenants in their buildings.

Brian: Craig, what's your question for Eric Adams, or what would you like him to do?

Craig: We watch our neighbors have license plates from out of state for two years on their car while we pay high [unintelligible 00:11:32] rates in New York. When is it going to be that the law is going to be enforced across the board equally with everybody? To the point about guns, people are bringing guns from [unintelligible 00:11:45].

Eric: Hold on, Craig. Hold on, Craig. [crosstalk] I got you.

Brian: Go ahead, Eric. [crosstalk] He's got a lot on the table, Brian. [crosstalk] Craig, didn't hear my follow-up. He couldn't hear my follow-up. Asked him to get to his question. Borough President, he's putting a lot of real stuff on the table.

Eric: He's right. I'm so happy. He called with that question because there's an energy out there that everyday New Yorkers don't want a community that has a high quality of life. We have created this environment that there's a trade-off. Either we have to allow over-aggressive policing or we have to go where the real disruption in our quality of life, particularly in Black, Brown, immigrant communities. That is just not true.

When I moved through the city and I talked to people like Craig, my family houses in South Jamaica, Queens, they don't want to go back to the days when Fat Cat Nichols and top drug lords were reining violence in their community. The role we must play is to make sure our agencies, as some of the issues that he mentioned and our law enforcement is not heavy-handed, but to ensure that we have the quality of life that we're expected in our city. That is doable.

That's what you heard with Craig. You heard the frustration of the city that appears to be out of control on dealing with some of the basic quality of life issues.

Brian: Let's go to Don, in Manhattan, who's going to change the subject entirely, I think. Don, you're on w NYC with Eric Adams.

Don: Thanks, Brian. Mr. Adams, my question for you and my issue is directed to you and also all the other candidates, Brian, if you could maybe find this out from these people is I'm a working musician, a gigging musician, really original gig economy. I've been doing this in New York for 40 years. I live in the East Village. I own a car. I parked on the street. I can afford $500 a month to park a car. What we have in the city now is a mayor who was essentially given eminent domain of the city streets to the restaurant industry to seize this parking, to take these parking spaces.

He used the pandemic to do this and everybody's okay with them doing that during the pandemic, but he did this with no input from any communities about the effects of these-- they called it terraces. They're really farm sheds. What they basically are, they're called loafing sheds. We had them on the farm when I was a kid, where you put pigs in them, but these neighborhoods now, the West Village, the East Village, some of these streets look like the slums of some Brazilian city. They looked like a shantytown.

We've gone a long way from like an Edward Hopper painting in New York. We look more like a Steinbeck Okie camp. What I want to know, and what's happening for me as a musician who needs the car to get the gigs and come back and find parking. It's basically putting me out of business.

Brian: Don, I'm going to get you an answer to your question. Are open streets really outdoor dining that moves off the sidewalk into the street, taking up parking spots, going too far for permanent status, in your opinion, Borough President?

Eric: I'm a strong supporter of open streets. I'm a strong supporter of restaurant industries. I have been an opportunity to use some of the spaces on our streets to ensure that we deal with the COVID crisis. I'm a strong supporter of seeing how we expand that, even of the sidewalk using cafes on the sidewalk. Our restaurant industry really is the bellwether for our entire city. I was a dishwasher as a child. I know when you're looking at a restaurant, you may see just fancy dining, but in fact, it's part of our ecosystem of our financial ecosystem.

We can find a way to do it where we can co-exist, but I strongly support open streets. I strongly support having the outdoor dining. This allowed us to keep that industry from going under and really hurting our entire city.

Brian: Not the answer the caller was hoping to hear, but a clear position on that issue. Bruce, in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bruce.

Bruce: Hi, this is [unintelligible 00:16:33] Bruce [unintelligible 00:16:34] in Harlem. I want to know how the mayor candidate will be dealing with incompetent people leading NYCHA, DHS, and HPD, which allow nonprofit company, such as you have a [unintelligible 00:16:45] to find actually rate current and future low-income home-owner using the low-income tax credit. Scam. This is not the first time we talked about it. What's your plan, Eric? You were Borough President and [unintelligible 00:16:58] took over a whole building complex in your district in Brooklyn. Nothing has been done.

Brian: Sounds like you have a history with this caller, but once you tell everybody else what the issue is, as you see it.

Eric: I really didn't understand exactly what his issue was. I don't have a history with the caller. What I would tell you this is that if you [unintelligible 00:17:24] here before NYCHA, that's not the [unintelligible 00:17:26]. NYCHA is dying. We keep having the same response of that. We will look for the federal government to come in and bail us out. Yes, we need the federal government, but there are some things we can do now. I support the Regional Planning authorities' call to sell the air rights, not the land, but the air rights over NYCHA. They are projected anywhere from $4 to $8 billion.

We can use that for emergency repairs to get NYCHA up and operate and why we're fighting for the federal government to come in, but we need to do something else. I think it's unfair that we are asking NYCHA residents to navigate these complex proposals that are coming down. We need to allow the NYCHA board members to, number one, have an attorney that will give them advice on some of these real important, everything from RAD to infill building to NextGen. They could sit down and come up with real understanding and make real decisions on their livelihoods.

We also must move NYCHA into the 21st century. I call it for NYCHA stats. We can put QR codes on every building to identify what repairs need to be on the building, a greater level of transparency, where we can really hold a NYCHA or management accountable in real-time. We must move the city to a real-time governance model. NYCHA is the place where we need to do it and then give on the ground support. The numbers of NYCHA residents, the young people who are not needing proficiency and agitation who are not employed, who're dealing with chronic illnesses.

We don't get into NYCHA and have a holistic approach of turning around NYCHA, we're going to be at the table again saying the same thing. It's not about just the builders have lost faith. The entire NYCHA population has lost faith.

Brian: With the Oscars last night, I could say our next caller is George from Nomadland, but really he's George from Nomad, which some of you know is short for Madison Square North, that neighborhood of Manhattan. He has a zoning question. George, you're on WNYC with Eric Adams.

George: Good morning, Borough President Adams. You said that you would uptown [crosstalk] Manhattan. Good. Thank you. Nice to secure you again. You said you would uptown Manhattan from 14th to 42nd Street among other areas of the city. Presumably, this is to create affordable housing but upzoning's often result in creating market-rate housing eliminating affordable units, and leaving vacant lots for years. Nomad, in particular, where historic buildings once stood. Can you discuss your support of city-wide upzoning and square that with you being one of the few candidates to accept funding from real estate developers?

Eric: It sounds as though one of my opponents probably put this question. Let's be clear. Over 75% of my contributions have come from low-dollar donors. I'm extremely proud of how I had been able to reach across the city. 51% of our income tax dollars have come from real estate. When you look at the opponents who have stated they're not taking real estate dollars, you'll find it just the opposite. People are saying they're not taking any money from landlords yet, what happened to those small property landlords?

One to four-family owners, we should demonize them. No. What we should do is go after bad-acting landlords and ensure that we, number one, or use a criminal justice system when they commit crimes, such as the illegal evictions, destroying property, [unintelligible 00:21:27]. We should prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. [crosstalk] We should not demonize--

Brian: Why not say no to donations from big corporate landlords, who many of our listeners would think have too much influence in politics?

Eric: I don't believe that, Brian. I think that if we're saying that because someone gives you a contribution that you are going to make decisions, then that's an indictment on the entire system. [crosstalk]

Brian: Why else would the big real estate company make a donation?

Eric: When I speak to a real estate company, they talk about public safety. They talk about all property values have gone up in the city because we became a safe city during the days of when we turned around crime. The prerequisite to prosperity is public safety. When landlords and others, big and small, hear me talk about how this city is going to be a safe city for all of our residents. They're not supporting me because of my real estate or policies, I've denied projects in my borough that I voted against that with big real estate projects.

To think that a landlord is not concerned about education, is not concerned about safety, is not concerned about healthcare, that is just not true. They have tied to the success of the city and I advocate on the success of the entire thing.

Brian: We've got a minute left. You ready for a lightning round to conclude? Yes or no answers or very short answers. [crosstalk] Do your best. Did you think Amazon headquarters in Queens would have been more good or more bad for the city?

Eric: I believe it would have been good if we would have eked out and listened to the Queensbridge residents and local residents to determine how to get good community benefits agreements and [unintelligible 00:23:18] around education.

Brian: Should gifted and talented programs exist at all in the public schools?

Eric: I would say yes but we need to expand the definition of that. I will open up five more schools, one in each borough, and use a cross-sections of how we determine this. Even with children with special needs if they have gifts as well. We're only focusing on exams. Just use a different model.

Brian: Have you ever ridden a city bike?

Eric: All the time.

Brian: Do you own a car?

Eric: No, I do not.

Brian: If you're raising children or did raise children, I don't know your family status, do they or did they attend public school the whole time?

Eric: I have one son felt like five sons but I had one son. Jordan attended public schools throughout his entire career.

Brian: Do you have a favorite spectator sport?

Eric: Yes, biking is one. That was one of my favorite past times and I enjoy basketball as well.

Brian: Knicks or the Nets?

Eric: Nets. You're trying to get me in trouble.

Brian: The Borough President of Brooklyn has to give that answer. If you donate as a member-- it was great to see KD back [unintelligible 00:24:37]. If you donate as a member to any arts organization, can you name one?

Eric: ARTs East New York. I like going after my small organizations. They are often ignored.

Brian: Name one thing that you do for fun in non-pandemic times that has nothing to do with politics.

Eric: I enjoy the Waterfront, the Brooklyn Greenway something that I advocated and supported. I enjoy being there. I enjoy riding my bike to all of our waterfront locations in the city.

Brian: Finally, with rank choice voting, is there anyone you would like your supporters to list second?

Eric: Of their number of candidates that I am extremely impressed with their beliefs, we have a zero in on exactly which one but I could see myself ranking one of the candidates or second.

Brian: You might come to an answer, a name on that before primary?

Eric: Yes.

Brian: Borough President and mayoral hopeful, Eric Adams. We always appreciate it. Thank you so much for doing an Ask the Mayor Tryout today.

Eric: Thank you very much. Take care. Let's speak with you again and your audience.

 

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