Eric Adams Speaks with Mishpacha

you're just coming now from times square after the sad shooting last night of uh a few people including a young girl you have a a proposal how to counter crime but most of it deals with getting illegal guns off the street for our community we have a we we don't have a problem with gun violence most of the crimes most of the anti-semitic violence in our streets has to do with people assaulting other people assaulting jews in the street those type of things thefts how would you could you give me some detail about what you would do to counter that on the same level that you have a proposal to counter gun violence well first of all your your concerns are real and as jewish americans you should always be concerned because terrorism anti-semitism the evolution of coming from probably one of the most horrific experiences known to man is something that you are always reminded of and i understand that and representing brooklyn which i like to say is the tel aviv of america we have one of the largest jewish population [Laughter] and it's always at the forefront of my mind not only as your constituents as my constituents but as my friends i am very much connected to this community so there's certain things we must do we must ensure that we never decrease our patrol strength in this city we must ensure that we use technology uh to come down to safety and that's why i uh a substantial amount of money into the cameras in the jewish community we must also we protect our children i started with david greenfield when he talked about having officers at our yeshivas to protect our children because you know mean people target our babies but we also must be clear on hate crimes we have to stop trying to downgrade hate crimes we need to call it what it is we must make sure the individuals who are responsible are apprehended and a no plea bargain deal we can't downgrade hate crimes not only for the jewish community the chinese community any other community in this city we must say you attack a person because of their religion their ethnicity their lifestyle we're going to hold you at the highest level and i'm going to be clear on that my my police department will investigate to catch the people responsible we will use technology to prevent it from happening and apprehend people in a faster time frame and we will make sure we have the patrol strength that's needed typically the first people to be affected by crime has been the orthodox community we had in 2019 the early part of 2020 we had a near daily uh series of assaults on members of the community of williamsburg and crown heights and border park um some of your past rhetoric has and your reputation as a member of the nypd has scared members members of the community in the nypd as a cop you were considered anti-establishment and the past couple of months you've been talking about diverting funds from the nypd to anti-gun anti-gun movements or something like that things like that what could you do to reassure the community that you will be you will be there and instead of instead of decreasing patrols you will increase patrols well first uh let's be clear let's take two points that you just raised number one uh my advocacy in the police department we all know that we abused stop and frisk we were stopping a million black and brown children uh every year that's unacceptable that's not the city that we want to live in and that's not the city i want to be a part of but people say that i'm anti-police but that is in contradiction of the reality i have always been endorsed by the pba when i ran for state senate when i ran football president i've always been supported by the pba the rank and file members know that i believe in public safety but and justice they go together but also what many people don't realize i advocated for the anti-semitism in the police department of the unfair treatment of my hasidic brothers and sisters we saw what happened during covert 19. you couldn't even go to the funerals of your rabbis and your leaders without being treated unfairly i spoke out against the governor and the mayor when they attempted to turn covet into a jewish issue so the same advocacy i showed to young black boys in this city to not be treated unfairly i've shown for the jewish community i'm consistent people should be treated fairly not a defunded policeman i have never supported that bumper sticker slogan of defund the police i don't believe that what i do believe is that we need to use our resources and our dollars to properly deploy our police so we have probably 500 million dollars believe it or not and police officers doing clerical duties i say listen we didn't hire you to be a telephone switchboard operator or barrier detail i need you on patrol i need you guarding synagogues i need you patrolling out streets so i would shift those men and women from doing clerical duties to patrol i was i also said we're spending almost 400 million dollars in overtime a lot of that is due to officers being in court for five six hours waiting to testify we can use zoom we can use webex now what happens when we save that money when we save that money i have more money to put in security cameras uh in the borough parks i have more money to put in some of the youth programs in your community now we become preventive and not just reactionary and building on our crisis management team so i will never do anything that would erode public safety never and i am not part of the disband police department defund police department no i am saying to all my agencies including the police you must do your job efficiently to get the best out of taxpayers dollars of all the candidates you have the most you have the closest witness of all the candidates you were closest to the orthodox community you were state senator in crown heights for many years brooklyn board president past eight years why do you think all the endorsements are going to andrew yang well i believe it's a it's a a few things and those leaders i don't believe they're speaking on behalf of the people you know you have those leaders who all of a sudden they see this shiny new toy of andrew yang and they saw him 24 points up in the poll and they said well you know what let's all go here right away you know but think about this for a moment one of the biggest mistakes i made in my life was uh not investing in microsoft when my buddy came and told me and stated that listen this is a good investment i didn't he stayed with microsoft he's worth millions now that's what i say to the jewish community you invested in this candidate we have been together for almost 15 16 20 years the reason i went into politics you think about those early relationships the worst thing could happen now that people are seeing this shiny new toy is no longer shiny and eric adams message is getting out and one poll is showing we and we are ahead of him don't allow someone else to take the investment i am your microsoft you know this community knows me the number of suckers uh the number of passovers we stood together over and over again you know me i'm not a new friend i'm an old friend and you could critique my record because i have a record we don't know the rest of these guys what were they when stocks of the real estate developer was killed what would they when members of borough park uh patrol were shot and i brought them vests to protect them where were they when we bought ambulance um for the different hasellas where were they so i don't know anti-semitism has been in this city show me one quote that andrew yang has stated about anti-semitism as you have experienced this in this city or anything he has stated on behalf of the jewish people that's the worst thing you can do right now is abandon your old friend the main issue that people have been citing as the reason why they're endorsing gang is because of his stance on yeshivas he has been from the beginning unqualified in his support for yeshivas while you have tempered your support you know you asked as for in my country you asked three times about yeshivas and why you said that you have to be sensitive to the community and you have to work with the community you have never said that you will not allow the that if the sed if the state education department issues these regulations that would dramatically change the way yeshivas operate that you will not uh work with you that you will protect the community for that and make sure that you protect the integrity of yeshivas well first first of all we we talked about this several times and the first interview it was a setup you know i had no i listen i am not interfering with the way of life for jewish people and so when i'm hearing someone come to me basically saying well if somebody break the law what are you going to do how would you respond to that you know without understanding the full scope and when i went back and space and communicated with of my brothers in the jewish community and said what is he asking here what do you know what's the question and so to to put someone in the room and go after your intention is one thing so let me be clear right now the there's a big debate that's taking place across this city not only in the jewish community african-american chinese south asian people are saying they want culturally sensitive education they want education that the children can look at and see themselves this is a unified fight that it is not just unique to your community my commitment to you i am not going to do anything that's going to dismantle your educational system and you will have the support you need to continue to produce the qualitative uh students that you're seeing i'm seeing the results of your students i walked through those yeshivas after that first interview and said let me go see what people are talking about we should be encouraging people to learn multiple multiple languages uh yiddish and english we should be teaching them not only to know shakespeare but your scholars and the scholars of other communities and so when it comes down to protecting your way of life and your yeshivas you have my commitment i'm not going to do anything to disrupt the success that you have shown now what has really been missing from this well he talking about a small number of distributors that are not meeting what they're considered to be standard the overwhelming numbers are doing a good job and if we're going to use an indicator to shut down schools based on failures let me give you a real failure 65 percent of black children in the department of education never re reach proficiency so we need to look at the house of fdoe before we start criticizing the house of the yeshivas so i am going to be there to give the yeshivas the supports that they need and i am not going to do anything that's going to dismantle your successful educational system just to clarify are you saying that in your 4 or eight years as mayor we will not see scenes of police either putting pla padlocks on the shivers because of their way that they have a secular education or you won't have police you know coming into yeshivas and you know maybe telling kids that they consider chewing because they're not because youtube has been closed down because of the secular education that sad does not have their own law enforcement can you assure the community that you will not be the law enforcement agent you're not going to see my police department coming into yeshivas acting in a disruptive manner like that and you're not going to receive those letters stating that at all there's a there's a disgruntled group of people in your community that have really amplified this and i have walked through the yeshivas and i see the results and not only that uh i know the men and women uh who have gone through your yeshivas and i see how well they're doing uh in society on the subject of metis a component of bismillah the the big issue eight years ago was over may bloomberg's uh uh that one wanted to regulate that that uh that matita prepare may de blasio put in a compromise that seems to be acceptable for everybody are you committed to keeping that i'm circumcised so listen you know families should have the right to do what they want with their children uh within uh not being abusive there's nothing abusive about being circumcised i am not getting getting in the way of your way of life i cannot emphasize that enough of your way of life has become cost effective for our city you don't have a burden on my educational system i don't have a crime problem in your communities your economic development is is amazing i am not getting in the way of your way of life and that includes the circumcisions the subject of social justice is a painful one but for many people it is now associated with violence and looting seen we've seen scenes over the past few months that over the past year that i never thought i'll see in my lifetime the streets of manhattan burning the major department stores looted can you assure store owners in new york city who want to set down roots over here that looting and burning is never acceptable even for one hour or one night listen first of all let me answer that question specifically yes i want to answer that question specifically a second i have marched with many of my friends in the jewish community for several issues whenever they feel they were treated unfairly so we would both agree that we have a right to protest the right but what we don't have a right to do firebomb police vehicles uh break into stores burn houses write graffiti on uh different uh statues and builders in the city that's not acceptable and we're not going to allow outside agitators to come in and create that sort form of violence and we're not going to allow new yorkers to do that that's unacceptable and it won't happen in the city that i am in before we spoke about anti-semitism i i want to address a different side of the coin i wouldn't call it anti-semitism but perhaps a sort of bigotry that orthodox jews visibly orthodox jews feel when they deal with the city bureaucracy city government jury duty would you commit to making sure that there are authors that are visibly orthodox jews as members of your administration on appointments to positions of influence and authority yes that's the easy one you know when you look at my office uh i have two i have a very small office staff and a very few number of people i can hire because many of them are civil service protected so i can only bring in about 20 people when you look at my office two of the high officials in my office were hasidic and i i trust them they have been great advisors and have assisted me in a number of different areas uh so if i have now thousands of employees you're going to see uh the community represented in every level of government there's been stories about about your past with louis farrakhan and al sharpton percolating around the internet for many years already but it was recently brought to the fore in a new york times article um do you want to address that well you know like you said 93 if if we do the math we have 93 2003 2020. we talked about 17 18 almost 20 years ago uh i think that if anyone ever had a question mark wait a minute is eric anti-semitic look at my 20-year run uh i am not anti-semitic and uh i don't subscribe to the philosophy of the nation of islam we were part of using the local members here as part of security uh crime fighting initiative we were in a different city back then 2000 homicides a year of 98 000 robberies many of them were in poorer communities they had they had a security program that was like the crisis management of today and we looked at those methods of doing patrol and safety but i've never subscribed to to believe as a christian i believe in embracing all people and so 20 years later if you look at my record you have to walk away with uh eric is not anti-semitic eric is anti-hate and eric is a friend of the jewish people the next may will be charged with pulling the city out of the economic slump caused by kovid do you have a plan for that yes it's a very clear one first this mayor is going to have a 10 billion dollar infusion of cash coming from the federal and state and an additional amount of part of that amount is coming from of sports betting the question really becomes how do we use those dollars to really stabilize some of the underlying reasons for the inequities that we are seeing number one we have to get crime under control uh no one is coming here to spend billions of dollars in tourism when there's there's a shooting taking place in the center of our tourist district so we must reinstitute a plane closed anti-gun unit with the right offices assigned with the right training and use other mechanisms to stop the flow flow of guns in our city second we have to get covert under control it's imperative uh to get our office buildings back open with clear regulations of what is needed to keep employees safe so they can feed into our ecosystem our financial ecosystem a third employment i am really impressed when i was sitting down with some of my jewish leaders as they're talking about not only yeshiva's but also how do we do vocational training we have to get our young people trained and all the skills from carpentry to be electricians to plumbers uh to get certifications and computer technology we had two hundred thousand job two to three hundred thousand jobs that were available pre-covet that we couldn't feel because the skills were not there and so it's crucial that we have a real training for job employment and lastly uh we have to be clear on investing in our small businesses the last time that ppp came here the stimulus dollar came to the city we ignored our small businesses we need to help our small businesses the city has to stop being too bureaucratic too expensive too difficult to do business in we're going to have a more business friendly environment with all of our agencies including the department of builders fdny consumer affairs we're going to really roll out the welcome mat to get these businesses back up and operating here's the israel question if elected i would you do you plan on doing what new york city mays have traditionally done and be an advocate for israel well i visited israel twice i'm going back again and i'm going to try to find a plot of land so it can be my retirement place i love the people of israel i love the the food the culture the dance you know everything about israel uh you know so we're in israel do you plan on retiring oh and the goat was going in golden heights you know there's a couple of beautiful places that i really loved when i was in israel and yes i'm an advocate for of the uh the country uh and i believe in the statehood of israel and again uh new brooklyn is the tel aviv of america and you know when i interact with my jewish brothers and sisters here just tell me how great life is going to be there and they're one of the leading tech giants we're going to create a partnership with israel in new york to make sure that we can exchange technology and education they're producing some amazing uh technological uh uh initiative and innovation that i believe we can really benefit from here of all the major candidates in this race you're the only one to refrain from criticizing may de blasio according to a source in city hall the mayor has noticed that has is that a calculated move on your part no i just strongly believe that when you're in a crisis from my days of being a police officer when my partner and i ran up the stairs to go after someone who was shooting a gun we didn't fight and argue while running up those flights we dealt with the threat covey was the enemy of our city and i felt that it was appropriate not to get into the petty fights between governors and mayors the public needed to see that as leaders we had this under control people were losing their family members they were checking into hospitals never to see them again they were on food pantry lines they were losing their businesses it was impo important to me not to criticize but to be part of the solution would you accept governor cuomo's endorsement or campaign with him if nominated i am clear i want the support of every new yorker and that includes the governor and any other new yorker i believe that i just want to show this city that i'm committed to turning the city around and helping every new new yorker i love this city i love the people in this city and really diversity is our real uh jewel our crown jewel and who whomever wants to show their support for me i welcome that there are so many neighborhoods in the city that have the unique characteristic yet they are governed like the rest of the city take boiler park for example traffic patterns parking patterns are different bar back to other places you come sunday afternoon and it's a mad house on shabbos afternoon it's deserted yet the city has been has been enforcing the those regulations the same on a deserted friday afternoon at four o'clock as the rest of the city would you consider more focused enforcement without a doubt you're right every community uh has a unique way of dealing with movement of people moving of course and even just uh how you exist uh i'm in borough park during the day during the morning times when you're dropping off your children it is almost impossible to move we should look at how we do traffic a trash pickup how do we coordinate it i thought david greenfield was really smart for coordinating the trash pickup the school buses you have a one school bus that can block traffic uh for uh you know a large amount of time and so i think it's important to uniquely adjust how do you use city services that it encourages of the business and not impedes business