Adams goes to Albany
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Mayor Eric Adams testified before State Senators and Assemblymembers Wednesday about his budget and legislative requests for New York City. File photo by Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
By Jacob Kaye
Mayor Eric Adams continued to push for changes to the state’s bail laws and other criminal justice reforms Wednesday as he appeared before state lawmakers to lay out his requests for the city’s budget.
Adams appeared before the group of State Senators and Assemblymembers for the first time this week, alongside a number of New York State mayors, offering testimony during a virtual state budget hearing.
At the top of his list – and at the top of many lawmakers’ minds – was the city’s fight to lower a recent uptick in gun violence. Though New York City remains the safest big city in the U.S., gun incidents in the five boroughs have risen by nearly 30 percent in the past year.
Building off of his “Blueprint to End Gun Violence” plan, introduced in late January following the shooting deaths of NYPD officers Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora, Adams asked the lawmakers for funds to support his efforts.
“Safety and justice are the keys to prosperity,” Adams said Wednesday. “We cannot function as a city unless New Yorkers are safe — and feel safe — on our streets, our transit system, our workplaces, and our homes.”
As part of his budget request, Adams asked lawmakers for funds to support increasing the number of beds available for those with mental health issues and to support healthcare workers.
“Too many of our fellow New Yorkers are cycled through temporary care and released before they are ready, often due to the limited availability of long-term support and housing,” Adams said. “We now face a humanitarian crisis in our streets and on our transit system that threatens our city’s safety and recovery, and we cannot afford to let this issue go unaddressed any longer.”
But at the center of Adams testimony was not a request for money, but for legislative action.
As mentioned in his gun violence plan, Adams wants the state to reform its bail laws to include the dangerousness standard – currently, New York State judges can only consider a defendant's flight risk when determining whether or not to order bail.
Adams also asked the state to reconsider its Raise the Age law, which passed in 2017, allows for 16- and 17-year-old defendants to be tried as juveniles – prior to the passage of the law, New York was one of two states to try the teens as adults.
During the rollout of his gun violence plan, Adams said that teens are being used as “pawns” by adults who use guns to commit crimes, a sentiment he repeated to lawmakers Wednesday.
“Too many New Yorkers in their late teens and early twenties have abused this change, demanding young people under 18 take the fall for guns that are not truly theirs,” he said. “The [Raise the Age] law is being used to victimize our youth.”
Though a number of Republican lawmakers expressed support for the legislative changes Adams requested, and though many others expressed support for his commitment to reduce instances of violence, support for his specific requests wasn’t always met warmly.
Brooklyn Assemblymember Latrice Walker and Adams had a brief but charged exchange at one point in the hearing.
“I do challenge you to a debate with respect to bail reform and the effects it has been having with respect to an alleged rise in crime in the city of New York, where we are seeing crime in the rise all across the country, even in states where bail reform is not a thing,” Walker said.
In response, Adams told Walker she should debate the merits of bail and other criminal justice reforms with the families of gun violence victims.
“You don’t have to tell me to debate a person who lost an 11-month-old child because I lost a brother at the age of 19 years old to gun violence,” Walker responded.
The exchange ended with a commitment from Adams to come to Albany to discuss reform further.
Governor Kathy Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie all said they were against changes to either Raise the Age or bail reform not long after Adams first released his plans.
In January, Queens Assemblymember and chair of the Committee on Corrections David Weprin told the Eagle that he wouldn’t support efforts to change Raise the Age.
“We spent a lot of time and it was a very important piece of reform legislation that we worked on for years,” Weprin told the Eagle in January.
Instead, Weprin said, law enforcement should focus its efforts on going after gun traffickers who put the guns in the hands of young people, an idea repeated by several lawmakers Monday.
“[We should be] cracking down on or even increasing the penalties on people that are taking advantage of children by using them to do their bidding,” Weprin said. “I think that could be done.”
Adams did however express support for the Clean Slate bill Wednesday, a bill that would automatically seal a handful of criminal convictions.
“We cannot allow a criminal conviction to define a person’s life,” Adams said. “The more opportunity we provide to those who have had contact with the criminal justice system, the safer we will all be.”
Criminal justice reform advocates celebrated the mayor’s vocal support of the bill that is supported by Queens lawmaker Catalina Cruz in the Assembly.
“We have a moral imperative to act now, and we call on New York’s lawmakers to deliver real relief to New Yorkers and their families who have been trapped in a lifetime of perpetual punishment,” the Clean Slate NY coalition said in a statement. “The mayor, along with the governor, lawmakers, the public and a diverse coalition of labor and business leaders, recognizes that the Clean Slate Act will strengthen communities, increase economic growth and enhance community safety.”
