Adams talks Queens, Rikers and the courts

Eric Adams talks to a voter in the Rochdale Village Mall on Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye

By Jacob Kaye

For the sake of productivity, Eric Adams should avoid shopping centers in Southeast Queens.

Inside such places, the Democratic nominee for mayor is likely to be presented with an endless stream of supporters giving him well wishes, sharing their thoughts on policy or asking to snap a picture – maybe even all three.

There might also be a shoe store, which Adams says he must step inside of, if only for a moment.

That was the case inside the Rochdale Village Mall on a recent Saturday in October when Adams sat down with the Eagle for a wide-ranging interview. Adams, who grew up in South Jamaica, spoke about his priorities for Queens, the crisis on Rikers Island, his thoughts on the courts and more.

Adams, who currently serves as the Brooklyn borough president, will face off against Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa on Nov. 2. In a city where Democratic voters greatly outnumber Republicans, Adams is largely expected to come out on top.

Adams’ approach to the job, he says, is informed by his past positions – an emphasis on public safety stems from his time as an NYPD officer and his focus on the COVID-19 recovery stems from his time in Borough Hall, when he infamously slept in his office during the pandemic’s worst days.

Throughout the campaign, Adams said he plans to pay particular attention to the outer boroughs of New York City.

When speaking with the Eagle, he said his top three priorities for the World’s Borough are the same as his priorities for the rest of the city: public safety, schools and small businesses.

“I was out in Flushing, with the good, hard working people who witnessed a shooting because of gangs in their community – I hear the same thing in South Jamaica,” Adams said. “So, number one, we have to be safe.”

“Number two schools – these are good communities where they have to send their children outside the community to get quality education,” Adams added. “What people don't realize is that a good school impacts your property value because whenever someone moves into your community, the first thing they ask is, ‘How safe is it? How good are the schools?’ If the area is not safe, and the schools aren't good, it's going to decrease your property value.”

Lastly, Adams said that small businesses need extra help as the city continues to recover from the pandemic. As part of his efforts to help small businesses, Adams is proposing procuring city services and resources locally.

“We should be buying locally, and finding creative ways to infuse that money into the small businesses in Queens as well as other boroughs,” he said.

Rethinking who the city does business with is part of a larger strategy of government reform Adams says he wants to implement if elected.

Calling the city “dysfunctional,” the Democratic nominee wants to create an online system that tracks city agencies and the tasks they complete.

“The crisis we have in our city is clearly self-inflicted and so we're going to go into our agencies and incentivize productivity,” he said. “Department of Buildings, I'm not only judging on stop work orders, I'm going to judge you on how many restaurants that you get open with [Small Business Services. FDNY, I'm not only going to judge you on fires but how many hotels did you do sprinkler inspections in a six months period.”

“When we incentivize and define success, in real time, using technology, you're going to run a more efficient city in the process,” Adams added.

Among the city’s dysfunction that Adams will be forced to address if elected are the troubles on Rikers Island.

The jail complex set to shut down in 2027 has haunted Mayor Bill de Blasio since his first days in office until his last.

De Blasio’s term has been bookended by crises on Rikers – his early years saw the implementation of the federal monitor and the death of Kalief Browder and his last year in office has been the deadliest in the jail since 2016.

Adams said he’ll see through de Blasio’s plan to close Rikers Island and build borough-based jails, including one in Kew Gardens. He added, however, that he wants to meet with the incoming City Council to ask whether or not they wish to see anything changed in the current plans.

While he doesn’t expect to accelerate the timeline for closing Rikers, Adams said he wants “to clean the damn place.”

“The place is dark, it’s dreary, it’s nasty – we have to clean it, we have to go in there, remove the garbage, remove the trash, make it a clean environment,” Adams said.

The mayoral hopeful also said he wants to partner with the courts to see that felony trials are moved along at a quicker pace, something de Blasio has asked of the courts several times in the past two months.

“We have to partner with our courts,” Adams said. “Too many people have been [on Rikers] for too long.”

If elected, Adams said he wants to meet with Chief Judge Janet DiFiore and discuss ways to study the efficiency of the courts – much like what he would do with the city’s agencies, he said.

Partnering with his alma mater John Jay College of Criminal Justice and various bar associations, Adams said he wants to study where the courts are experiencing slow downs.

“[We need to] look at the process of arrest, conviction or exoneration, and what are the bottlenecks, what are bottlenecks that are slowing up this process?” Adams said. “It shouldn't take this long.”

“We have to modernize our approach to dealing with the correctional facility,” he added. “And the court plays a major role in that we have to move these cases in a more expeditious fashion through the system.”