Mayor Eric Adams: Good afternoon or good morning. I’ve looked forward to these weekly off topics and, as always, public safety is a prerequisite to prosperity and we’re looking forward to Thanksgiving, that’s taking place. Thousands of New Yorkers will be here to enjoy what is a New York City’s trademark, the Thanksgiving Day Parade. And NYPD and all the other city agencies will be out there to keep New Yorkers safe.
As you know, 10 straight months, we have witnessed a decrease in crime. And even last month on our subway system, we witnessed a over 20 percent decrease in crime in our subway system. And we’re going to continue with the transition of our new police commissioner, really excited about Commissioner Tisch, as she brings the innovative ideas that she has continually brought to government.
I want to move on to drought warning, still in effect. People say, well, it rained. Why can’t we lift it? We need a heck of a lot more rain than what we saw. And not only rain down here, but rain upstate where our reservoirs are located. So it’s important. We know we have several suspensions, particularly flames being used in our parks. And we really are asking people to conserve water as much as possible. We’re nowhere near where we ought to be this time of the year. So it’s important that we all do our part and use various methods of conservation to ensure that we have water when it’s needed.
Looking forward to the PD class swearing in, this was, as I said, an exciting week. The men and women, the Police Department continue to do the right thing. Last week, I was out in Queens, where we had a lifetime parolee shoot at a police officer and shot an innocent bystander. I visit her in the hospital and had a conversation with her and her family. And, you know, it’s just a horrific experience. You know, I know that avenue so well, Jamaica Avenue. I grew up in that area, I shopped on that avenue and people were out. Here we have this individual that I talk about all the time. Repeated offenders. Repeated offenders. This person was on lifetime parole. He committed crimes while on lifetime parole. This was not his last crime. He was committing crimes while on lifetime parole. And how that happens is just you have to scratch your head and shake your head that it should not happen.
That’s why in our November Plan we are introducing and we have an additional 1,600 police officers that are going to be placed on patrol. We will have to be prepared for those large police classes of guys and ladies reaching their 20th year. If they retire, we have to continue to fill the rank. We want to make sure we keep a strong Police Department. No matter where I go, common denominator in the city, people talk about their law enforcement. They want to see their police officers. And we want to make sure our ranks stay intact, well trained, and committed.
I want to bring on a team from the City of Yes. Really excited about the City of Yes. Can we have Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer and that whole team? Oftentimes we see these successes without realizing who are the faces and the names behind. And I just believe it’s imperative to see who they are. You know, I feel like almost a starting lineup. Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, really want to thank her, Chief Advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Department of City Planning Director and City Planning Commissioner Chair Dan Garodnick, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Tiffany Raspberry, Executive Director of Housing Leila Bozorg, general counsel to the first deputy mayor, they do all the work and they’re background all the time, Alec Schierenbeck, City Legislative Affairs director Connor Martinez.
This was an amazing, amazing team. And each one of them played a role of a City of Yes. Don’t underrate what City of Yes is doing. This is a– City of Yes is so historic, not only in our labor agreement, on what the team was able to do. But we’re talking about 80,000 units of housing. That’s just– that number, think about it. When you do it in comparison to what previous administrations were able to accomplish, what we did with City of Yes and the $5 billion we’re putting in infrastructure and housing, getting it passed the City Council Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchising committee on land use. We know we have another hurdle to do, but you need to celebrate these important victories when they happen.
Can I say enough for Speaker Adrienne Adams, who was very clear on what was needed. And just the team over there, Councilman Riley and Salamanca, for their actions. But I just wanted to really highlight every aspect of what we do. The hours that Connor spends speaking and nurturing relationships with our state, city, and federal lawmakers. And what Tiffany has been able to do.
Our wins, the wins we’ve had in Albany, we got just about 90 percent of what we wanted in Albany every year we were in office because of what Tiffany Raspberry’s team has been able to do. The wins we got in the City Council, the wins we get on a federal level is because of this team and what they have done.
When I asked Dan to join this administration, when I first came into office and I sat down and spoke with him. I said, Dan, we got to think differently. We got to think outside the box. We have a housing crisis. And he came with a City of Yes. Everybody was saying no. They said we’ll never get it passed through. Dan and Tiffany and her team went out and did these meetings and community boards. No one thought we can do it. But we land the what? Plane. We land the plane.
And when you start looking at these historical moments that we’ve had in this administration is because of what this intergovernmental affairs team has been able to do with all of our leaders. What she has done with all of our deputy mayors. They give her the assignment, she pulls in the team and executes the plan. And you have to sell this to our members and our colleagues. So I just wanted to let New Yorkers know that we were able to accomplish this because of that. Now, we haven’t passed. We want to be clear. We got one more hurdle to go. But we’re going to need them to do what they do to make it happen. So I cannot– New Yorkers, thank you.
When you think about 80,000 units of housing, the City Council knows how important that is, state lawmakers know how important it is. 1.4 percent vacancy rate. We know we have to get this right. This is just a continuation of what we have been able to accomplish. So thank you so much, DM, you and your team. Thank all of you, Tiffany, and you and your team. Dan, your vision for making this happen. We got more to do. We got more housing to do. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you. So why don’t we open up to a few questions.
[Crosstalk.]
Question: You know, Ritchie Torres, I’ve heard this, he says you have blood on your hands. That you have not done enough to protect New Yorkers from dangerous, mentally ill people on the streets. So how do you respond to that? Are your hands clean?
Mayor Adams: Listen, losing three New Yorkers is painful. It’s painful to all of us. Three New Yorkers– if one New Yorker is harmed. And so I can understand the concerns that the congressmen raised and others have raised. But we can’t be revisionists. I don’t think there has been an elected official in this city that has been more vociferous around people with severe mental health illness. I’ve talked about this. I’ve been demonized, actually, when we say it, that said that people should not live on the streets.
We went out and Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom and her team partnered with the entities to remove the encampments off the street. You don’t see that in the city. People were living on the streets and our subway stations. I’ve talked about the legislation we need passed in Albany with involuntary removal. People who need help don’t know they need help when they’re in that state. And so I reached out to Ritchie yesterday. He sent a letter. We’re going to respond to the letter and give him a real breakdown of what happened here. And we need him to be a partner because the federal government, it has a role also.
Everyone has a role of this national crisis of people who are dealing with severe mental health illness. And it seemed like COVID aggravated the issue more. I don’t know, the experts greater than I would do so. But when I talk to my colleagues in other cities, they said, we’re dealing with the same thing here. I have been to the point of being criticized by people of being inhumane because I don’t believe people should be left unattended.
We move thousands into care. We put in place PATH in our subway system. We put in place SCOUT in our subway system. And, people need help. And we have a broken mental health system. And if we don’t do something about it, we could see incidents like this taking place. And I’ve been clear on that. I don’t know– So I ask all those who are writing us letters now and all those who believe we should do more, you can’t just say, well, what is the city doing? This is the federal, state and city apparatus that must fix this problem.
Question: As far as you’re concerned, sir, you are doing enough?
Mayor Adams: When you have three New Yorkers that are murdered, no one can say they’re doing enough. And in fact, NJ, that’s the right question that should be asked. Is anyone comfortable right now saying they’re doing enough? So I know folks are saying, well, the city needs to do more. And then we should say, yes, the city needs to do more. Hey, and by the way, do you need to do more? That’s the question.
So, yes, I’m the first to say we need to do more and we’re going to continue to do more. And that’s why– Brian why don’t you come up here? I brought Brian on after reading an amazing article he did, was it two years ago?
And I asked him to join our team because he’s an expert in this area. And I said, Brian, can you come on and think differently? He was the architect behind the legislation up in Albany. He’s been the architect around many of the initiatives that we’re doing because of his expertise. So I think your question is a good one, NJ.
Can the city do more? You’re darn right we can. But our federal government can do more. Our state government can do more. Our partners across the hall can do more. We all can do more.
Three New Yorkers were murdered. And not only were they murdered, how many New Yorkers were pushed to the subway tracks? How many New Yorkers were slashed while walking down the block? How many New Yorkers– we lost an EMS lieutenant because of an emotionally disturbed person? So, yes, we can do more. We can do more. All of us can do more. And I’m committed to doing more from day one, I started that, doing more.
Question: So just building on that, you spoke yesterday and you said that the timeline will show that the city did do everything in its power here to make sure that this person was not in the streets. Is there anything you can get into now, the details of what happened? I didn’t know, you said you were going to release that today.
And then the second question I want to ask is, the SDNY has a new prosecutor incoming, expected in January when Trump comes into office, Jay Clayton. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that person, versus his predecessor?
Mayor Adams: I have never met him. I think the system of justice must be fair. I don’t think any American should go through what I’ve gone through. And I’m hoping that the system of justice moves to be proper. And so, I’ve always stated I’ve done nothing wrong.
And this is terrifying for an American to go through, particularly one who committed his life to serving this city. And I am hoping that the next prosecutor that comes in understands how important justice is in this country and what it means to Americans. And so I don’t know him. I’m going to continue to do my job. I have an attorney. The attorney’s going to do his job. My job is to continue to move this city forward in the right direction. That’s what we’re doing. From City of Yes to keeping us safe, to making sure businesses open. We’re going to continue to be focused on my job. That’s what I’m going to do.
So Brian could go into some of the aspects of it, but here’s some important parts of it. There’s been a lot of conversations around the good time release of time people can take off of their sentence. That is after being sentenced, it’s not being the detainee. The assault on the correction officer took place when he was a detainee.
He was found guilty for the assault and he was penalized based on that. He lost commissary days while he was a detainee. Then he was sentenced. And after he was sentenced, there was an evaluation, should he get a good time? I think it’s a percentage of his time. Should he get a good time? That’s when that determination was made. And we have a timeline that we’re going to send to everyone after. I’ll make sure Fabien gets it to you.
Now, in addition to that, his role of his sentence running concurrently or consecutively. Concurrently means it’s all running together, his assault on the officer and his original charge that he was in for. If it runs concurrently or consecutively, if it’s consecutively means he has to do one time and then the additional time. We don’t have a determination on that. That’s the decided by the judge, to make that determination. We don’t make that determination.
And even if he stood in jail longer, let’s say he stood in jail for two years, that has nothing to do with– he needed help. So, even if he would have got out 90 days later and, and stabbed three people, it’s just as bad. The system is broken. The mental health system, handoffs, support, having enough beds for long-term care, the mindset of giving someone medication and then once they are stabilized then you feel they’re going to be alright, that is just not true.
And then when you add, and Brian you may want to go into this, when you add the mental health problem with drug uses. That is when– when he left Rikers, he was stabilized. As long as he wasn’t around drugs, as long as everything was alright, he– when he left Rikers, he was stabilized. And now he was put into a universe where there was destabilization. Why don’t you talk about some of that, Brian?
Brian Stettin, Senior Advisor for Severe Mental Illness: Thank you, mayor. And I’m Brian Stettin, I’m the administration’s senior advisor on severe mental illness. And obviously we are significantly limited in what we can say about the specifics of his treatment history, but we are certainly taking a very close look at every contact we had with him in the time he had been in New York, including the time he spent in the criminal justice system and at Rikers. And we’re trying to draw some lessons and things we can add to the agenda we have and how we’re going to really fix this really broken system that we’ve been tackling for a couple of years now.
Some things that jump out in terms of lessons that this case brings to mind, I will say that we have a significant need for a better residential option for people coming out of our jails and our hospitals that are known to have severe mental illness and need a place to live where they are going to receive intensive mental health services and actual medical care in that interim period between their release from the jail or hospital, and when we’re able to get them to the ultimate goal of a permanent supportive housing unit.
That’s not something that’s going to happen immediately upon release. But we need something better than a congregate shelter to send somebody to to have a reasonable expectation that this is someone who we’re going to be able to hang on to and monitor closely. And as the mayor says, someone who comes out of jail in a good place, stable, taking their medication, being able to detect when they’re starting to drift away from that treatment and getting back maybe into substances that undermine their recovery, it really requires us to have them on the radar. And so there is a need for a robust residential option that we are working diligently to create. And it’s something I expect the mayor will have more to say on in the near future.
One other thing I’ll add to that is that in the meantime, we do have a really useful and successful program called IMT, intensive mobile treatment, where we have teams of mental health and social service professionals who, as the name implies, are mobile. They’ll go and follow a person who is unsheltered to wherever we can find them to make sure that they’re taking their meds and getting all the treatment and having their general needs met. And there is a, I think, a need to consider whether– again, without getting into the specifics of this case, we can perhaps tweak some of the eligibility criteria to make sure that when we release people who are known to have mental health struggles from hospitals and jails that we are routinely ensuring that we get that person assigned to an IMT team. Work is going to happen on that.
Mayor Adams: And there’s two other points, and Brian will be here to answer if there’s more questions on this. Two other points that’s very significant here. Number one, the unbelievable constant pressure of releasing people from Rikers. And we have been saying you can’t prematurely release people, but that noise is so loud out there. And it’s ironic, some of the same people who are critiquing what we’re doing right now are some of the loudest voices about open Rikers to just let everybody out.
This is, this is the by-product of opening Rikers and just letting everybody out. This is the by-product of it. And we’ve heard it constantly, why is anybody on Rikers? No one should be on Rikers. So let’s be clear on what we constantly have to fight against and say, no, we’re not just letting anybody out. We got to do it correctly.
Second thing is the challenge of when people, who are not in a state of when we can use the involuntary action– they have to agree to it. When you reach a point that you, and I’m giving you a hypothetical cause I don’t want to go into specific of the individual, but if you reach a person who has been in Rikers and, upon release, they’ve taken their medication, they’re stable and you do your, your exit interview and they okay and say, listen, do you want to go into this care? And they say, no, you cannot force them. We don’t have the right to force them, they don’t fit the criteria that allows us to force them. And that’s a real criteria.
If you try to force them, now you open yourself to the litigation and some of the people who are saying, what did we do wrong, would be suing us because we’re trying to force them. So this is what I have been talking about for years. That we have a population that can’t take care of themselves. And we have to take the necessary action and stop lying about it and saying they have the right to live on our streets, they have the right not to take their medication, they have the right to do whatever they want. This is a result of what I’ve been talking about.
Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. So I hear everything you’re saying about how the system is broken, there need to be changes in state law in your view, the DA may have made decisions that in hindsight were not wonderful, there’s pressure on Rikers. But it feels like, in this case, the breakdown was more of a criminal justice side breakdown than a mental health system breakdown in that, you know, he was given that credit for good behavior.
And I know you’ve said, we’re looking at that, but no one’s actually answered the question, which is, this is your piece of it, of the problem. Why was he given the credit off for time off for good behavior? Why was he given that credit? And is it being given as the norm? It’s being doled out. And if so, why?
Mayor Adams: Let me say this again. The evaluation of, are you going to get good time off? The law says after you are convicted, after you are sentenced, not as a detainee. And so what we are looking at now, can we expand it to say all the time that you were in service, can we make that determination? As it is now, the policy from 200 or something, it has been based on when you are– only after you are sentenced. He was not sentenced until late into the conversation.
Question: He agreed to the burglary charge to the police in August. And then in September, there was a hearing and we have the transcript. And that’s when the DA, they offered him a concurrent sentence. Are you saying that the time off for good behavior decision is made before the bad behavior?
Mayor Adams: Yes. Let me run it, let me do it again cause that’s the question that I ask over and over again. He assaulted an officer at Bellevue. When he did that, he was a detainee. He was not sentence[ed].
When you look at the law, it states your evaluation on good time is after you are sentenced, not while you’re a detainee. So while he was a detainee, there was a hearing and they found him guilty at that hearing. And he was penalized because of the action. Then he was, sometime later, he was sentenced. And when he was sentenced, you are now, based on what you did during the time you were sentenced, will make the determination of your good time. So it doesn’t count towards your good time or bad time if it happens before your sentence.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: Exactly. While you’re a detainee, if it’s before you are sentenced, your evaluation of good time does not take into effect, you know? And so that’s what we want to see. Can we change that to say for your entire time that we have you, can we make that determination even when you’re a detainee and after you are sentenced?
And so I ordered my team to sit down with the law department to say, can we say for the entire time that we have you, and we won’t be in violation of the current law that states, after your sentence.
Question: Hi Mr. Mayor.
Mayor Adams: How are you Mona?
Question I’m well, sir. So Mr. Mayor. I have two questions. Um, first regarding, uh, this forcible removals, will that be again on your legislative agenda for next legislative session? And, um, what changes are you seeking to that? And also if there is currently a bill for that, who is sponsoring the bill? That’s my first question.
Stettin: Sure. That’s absolutely as much on our agenda as ever for the upcoming session. It’s called the Supportive Interventions Act. It’s been introduced by Assemblymember Braunstein, and we hope to have a Senate sponsor soon as well. And the legislation addresses a series of flaws and gaps in that law that we rely on to make sure someone gets treatment when, by no fault of their own, they’re unable to recognize their own need for it, as painfully obvious as it is to everyone around them.
And a key piece of that is to codify language that we believe the current law already says. The current law is vague, and courts have interpreted to mean a certain thing that there’s still some pushback on our efforts to make people understand. And so we would like to have explicit language in the law that makes clear that when you find somebody to be a danger to themselves or others, right, because that’s the crux of the standard for holding somebody involuntarily. You’ve got to find that they have a mental illness and that they’re a danger.
Danger to self has to mean more than just they’re suicidal or they’re engaging in some outrageously dangerous conduct or at some risk of imminent physical harm, right? It also has to consider the person who’s a danger to themselves in that they can’t meet their basic human needs of food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and they are slowly wasting away, right? It’s that kind of slow-motion self-destruction that we all see so often on the streets and subways.
Again, that’s not always mental illness that’s responsible for why a person’s taking such poor care of themselves. But when we can see that it is, we ought to be able to say this person’s a danger to themselves and get them care. And so having that language explicitly in the law so that we can finally end this debate with some advocacy groups who are kind of paralyzing sometimes our folks’ understanding of what their authority is would be immensely helpful.
Another big piece of that is to make sure that when doctors are evaluating whether someone is currently a danger to themselves. Or others, they’re taking account of more than just how that a person appears before them in that very moment, right? Because we have people who’ve been through the system a lot. They have developed some ability to kind of keep it together for the moment of an evaluation.
Or maybe they’ve been in the hospital a little while and they’ve been subdued and calmed down. And the doctor is seeing them saying, well, I don’t see any evidence that you’re a danger. You’re telling me you’re fine. You’re not saying you’re going to hurt anybody. And they let them go, right?
And so we want to make sure that there is language. There’s language in the law that makes clear that an assessment of whether someone’s a danger to themselves or others has to take account of more than just how they appear in that moment. It’s also about their medical history, their likelihood to stay engaged with outpatient treatment when they do get released, and the behavior that brought them there in the first place. So getting that full context into it is another of the many things that we have in a bill. And I’d be really happy to sit down with you and walk through all of it.
Question: I have a second question.
Mayor Adams: And there’s another piece to this that we have to think about. We’re closing Rikers. We’re building four more jails. 18 to 20 percent of the inmates at Rikers Island have severe mental health illness. 51 percent have mental health illness. It’s not logical to me to create four smaller Rikers. I’ve called for this before, and I will call for it again.
One of those jails should be the a state-of-the-art mental health facility where people can get real care. It is criminal that we are incarcerating people with severe mental health illness. And to continue this, knowing that you’re not going to hold them forever, and then they leave, and you see things like this happen.
Families are seeing the mental health of their loved ones erode. And there’s no real infrastructure. That we’re using modern-day, state-of-the-art methods, a beautiful facility. We’re building something ground up and new. One of those jails should go to deal with 51 percent of our population.
Give them the help they need, the follow-up care that they need. Allow the check-ins that they need. Right now, that does not exist in the capacity that it should. We closed down psych wards in the past because they were inhumane with draconian measures. But let’s get it right by building a brand-new facility. Some elected officials have reached out to me. They said, Eric, we heard you. We’re willing to sit down and speak with you. How do we implement this? We should not be building four new jails only. It doesn’t solve the problem. What was your second question?
Question: There have been reports that you’re winding down some of the migrant shelters, Mr. Mayor. Maybe perhaps integrating them with the regular Department of Homeless Services shelters. So does this mean that… Migrants or migrant families and, I don’t know, what’s the term? Regular homeless families or indigenous homeless families are all going to be in the same shelter because we really have a high number of families with children, New York City public school children, who are in shelters. So I’m just curious.
Mayor Adams: Yes. First of all, we had, you know, I give you that number all the time. We had 220,000 migrants in asylum seekers. That came to the city. It cost us $6.4 billion. Federal government only gave us close to $200 million. And we had to grapple for that.
The reality is, we successfully, with our 30- and 60-day program, we successfully saw 170,000 transition take the next step on their journey. That in itself, when you look at other cities and municipalities, you see what an amazing job Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom and the team was able to do. We moved from the emergency level. We want to normalize that.
And that normalization means closing down some of the hurks that we were able to close down. We’re going to continue to try to do that. And the team is looking at what the next level of what we want to accomplish in this process. But what needs to be clear? We have never and will never put families with children with single adults. That has never been our plan. That will never be our plan.
Families with children, that’s a population that we have to treat with the level of sensitivity that is deserved. We saw the terrible things that happen when you make single adults with family with children. That is not our plan and that won’t be our plan. But we’re looking to downsize the operation. We’ve been successful. In spite of the critics that said don’t do the 30-day, 60-day program, we’ve been successful in downsizing that population.
Question Mayor Adams.
Mayor Adams: How are you?
Question: The first is when do you plan on closing the Floyd Bennett shelter? I know we’ve reported that it was in the works. I don’t know if there’s a timeframe for that.
And the second question is we also reported on really significant delays and challenges from nonprofits who are owed tens of millions of dollars in some cases from nonprofits. We’ve had a lot of delays from the city. They’re delayed multiple fiscal years in money that’s owed to them for services they’re providing. I spoke to more than a dozen providers who said nonprofit leaders who said that this is the worst it’s ever been. It’s dire. They might shut down. They might lay people off. I know you made a try to make inroads into improving the nonprofit payment process and there were some delays with the passport integration.
But what can you say to these nonprofit providers about improvements you will make? Because in some cases people are owed tens of millions of dollars. And when you’re providing a service, you know, whether it’s an after school program or other services, especially dealing with people with mental health challenges, that the city owes them tens of millions of dollars.
Mayor Adams: Okay. I challenge the worst it has ever been. On the campaign trail I heard from nonprofits constantly telling me how long it takes to get paid. And then when it was time to pay, they were trying to pay them pennies on the dollars and not their full amount.
And then when first deputy mayor, former First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright came on board, that was one of the top things I stated that, listen, we need to get payments to nonprofits. We did a 12-week sprint and we turned over $4.2 billion to nonprofits. And so there’s been some conversations about passport, how to get it right. Deputy Mayor Ana Almanzar is now in charge of that. She gave me a briefing last week. We’ve been doing a series of meetings to try to get that done. We’ve been doing a series of meetings to try to get that backlog cleared up because we agree, they’re providing services. They are in need of getting the payments as quickly as possible.
Cities are not always good at paying on time with all of the processes that are engaged. But we 100 percent we are on top of this issue, and we are moving to launch it. But starting this administration, they were they asked us, they said, Eric, we are behind in payments. We were able to turn over $4.2 billion to our nonprofits that were waiting as soon as we came in the door. And we were able to do it in a 12-week period. And we want to continue to get those dollars out to our nonprofits. And now you’re asking about Floyd Bennett. You said that—
Question: Can you confirm you will close Floyd Bennett?
Mayor Adams: No. You said that I announced we were closing Floyd Bennett?
Question: I said there had been reports. I know we reported partially. The Times reported partially. So is it—
Mayor Adams: Oh, okay. It’s true. Okay. You know, you report it, then you must know more than I do. I mean, you said—you know, I like that you write a story when you say, we reported it, and all of a sudden you’re asking me a question based on what you’re reporting and saying that it was reported. It’s reported because you reported it.
Okay. [Crosstalk.] You did not hear from me what I’m doing with Floyd Bennett Field. When I make a determination on what I’m doing with Floyd Bennett Field, I’m going to announce what I’m doing with Floyd Bennett Field. We’re looking at all of the HERRCs. Randall’s Island, we’re looking at. We’re looking at Creedmoor. We’re looking at Floyd Bennett Field. We’re trying to downsize the population. So I don’t know where the reports came from because it didn’t come from me.
Question: So you’re denying it.
Mayor Adams: No, I said it didn’t come from me. I’ll make that announcement when it’s ready.
[Crosstalk.]
Question: Mayor, on some of the mental health we’ve been speaking with and then on the new commissioner.
Mayor Adams: Yes.
Question: Why do you believe, this is question number one, the state-of-the-art mental health facilities would be helpful when you’ve outlined explicitly how difficult it is to hold people on mental health holds and that mental health doesn’t have a huge impact on release from Rikers. So who would populate these unless you have the tools to populate them?
Stettin: I can take that. Thanks. So as you’re pointing out, we’re talking about people who we don’t have a right to hold involuntarily at the moment they’re coming out of jail, or even a hospital. And so we have to make this option attractive to them. And so what we’re talking about is a housing facility that would have private rooms, that would have a lot of leeway about when people can come and go, and critically would have intensive psychiatric services provided on the premises.
So can I promise you that everybody who currently ditches when they’re sent to the shelter system would stay there? I can’t promise you that because there are people who they may have delusions that the staff is trying to poison them or that they’re listening devices in the walls. You can never account for whether people, when they are in a position to make decisions on their own, are going to decide to take off. But we strongly believe we’d hang on to a whole lot more people if we made the housing option more attractive to them during that period where we’re trying to keep them on a safe and stable path so that we can place them in supportive housing.
Question: But if you build it, they’ll come sort of back?
Stettin: A little bit of that. Right. For the people who are just sort of in that breach, they’re not currently a danger to themselves or others. We don’t have, again, we’re thinking more broadly about when we can use that authority, but sometimes we can’t. And so in that situation, we have to make what we offer them more attractive and more appealing.
Mayor Adams: And you get, as Brian said, listen, what I’ve learned from speaking with Brian is that when you’re dealing with someone with severe mental health illness or mental health illness and you try to put them in a congregate setting, they don’t want it. They feel unsafe. They feel that they’re targeted.
And when we’re able to give them those single rooms, when we’re able to give them a nice atmosphere like we did when we started showing the brochures, we have to change the dynamic. So if we’re able to take 51 percent of that population and have them do outpatient treatment or the 20 percent have the inpatient treatment that’s needed, in a beautiful facility, where you’re treated with respect. And find out what people are doing globally. This is an opportunity for us to change the game on mental health by taking one of those facilities and turn it into a state of the art facilities that what people are doing across the globe.
Mental health issues are not only New York. There are experts all over the globe that’s looking at that. And we want to bring them in and say, what should this facility look like? What should we have here? What is the proven success of having people come back for their medication? How do we do follow up?
That’s where we have to go. We can’t continue to incarcerate ourselves out of the mental health crisis. To have 51 percent of the inmates dealing with mental health issues, something is wrong. Something is wrong. So to build four more jails to just make sure the population is spread out, that’s not solving the problem.
Question: [Inaudible.] Can you peel back the curtain a little bit on your decision making? You praised her vision and her ability to modernize. But what did you like as it applies? To crime fighting, for example, we’ve seen some of this random violence lately. How will her how will her vision play out in combating these problems? You talk to everyday New Yorkers. These are the number one concerns. How does her vision play out to solving problems like that?
Mayor Adams: Yep. Yep. Great question. The a couple of things I had. I looked at 15 candidates. You know, the the police commissioner’s role is a coveted position. People reached out from all over the country and some very impressive resumes and narrowed it down to three.
And when I looked at the three, my number one, I have Chief Maddrey. I have Chief Chell. I have Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry. These guys are crime fighting machines. They know how to fight crime. They know how to look at a problem and resolve the problem. They can do it well. But how do you take the Police Department deeper? By using the some of the technology, the innovation that’s going to really have a public safety revolution of really keeping us being the finest. And when I asked that question of the other candidates, they gave me law enforcement answers. I didn’t get that from Commissioner Tisch.
What she looked at is really the same way she did when she was in [the] Police Department for the 12 years. How she revolutionized it with the smartphones, with the cameras. She was able to roll out these new methodologies and those cameras that those police officers are wearing now has changed the game and making sure we know the truth that happens when police officers respond to the scene of any form of incident.
That’s what I need right now. I have the crime fighting locked down. These guys know what they’re doing. I don’t have to worry about fighting crime. What I need to be concerned about is what is the future of policing going to look like using our drones, using robotics, using detections of weapons, and all these other entities. And she brings that… She’s unafraid. She knows how I feel about technology. She doesn’t sit back and say, well, this may not be safe. I may fail at it.
No, I need someone that’s unafraid to move the traditional… Police Departments are extremely conservative on taking any changes. They are afraid of change. That is the history of policing. And I don’t want that. And she brought that, and the others that I interviewed, the last three, two of them, they were good law enforcement people, but they were just that they were just going to be law enforcement. I need a law enforcement person and I need an innovator, uh, to turn this department into what I know what it could become.
Question: Um, talking about mental health. I don’t know if you guys are aware. But, uh, some of these immigrants, they coming in true with mental health.
Mayor Adams: Yes.
Question: And, uh, I don’t know if you guys are evaluated while they being on the shelters, uh, on these facilities. And the other thing, I don’t know if you guys are aware of it. One hundred sixteen to a million was fighting. One of them was using a knife. So who knows what happened? So I just want to let you guys know about that.
And coming back to… Mr. Mayor, we know that last year or a year before you said that you [were] going to travel to Africa. Knowing how important is Africa. We see the European summit happening, Africa, Europe, US, Europe, China, Europe. Are we, are you looking at traveling to Africa anytime soon? And what are your administration is doing to tie a relationship with the African countries?
Mayor Adams: Yeah, I want to do, I want to do a seven country African tour. Aissata, the assistant commissioner over there, she is sort of coordinating. But that’s my goal. Uh, many during UN week, we met with many of the African leaders, and we want to create that partnership. We sent young people to Ghana last year. I’ve been in Africa six or seven, I think seven times. And I just want to start to build that bridge to you know, just really establish a relationship, a trade culture and education. That is my, my focus and goal. So I’m looking forward to see the best time to do that.
Question: I was going to ask you, in the November Plan, we’ve seen it placing an emphasis on 1600 police officers. And also we’ve heard that when you’re talking about how to deal with the mentally ill that get incarcerated, you’re talking about a new approach. It’s more humane and less involved with law enforcement. Keeping in that vein.
You do have an EMS that’s in crisis right now. The folks that you turn to who are most experienced are the EMS folks. And so they have a crisis where they’re not sticking around on the job. They’re like in a plantation system where they don’t make the same as firefighters. Isn’t it time because of the fact that we have this crisis to raise them to full parity and uniform respect because they are the people you turn to both in responding to these random stabbings and to the individuals that are troubled.
Mayor Adams: Those guys do an unbelievable job. I see even when I was in law enforcement, uh, how they respond to, you know, these very difficult scenes. I don’t think people realize, uh, the role of an EMS and EMT and how challenging it is. And that’s why I shared with, Commissioner Campion, that as I did with all of my unions, let’s give them a fair contract and negotiation. We want to land the plane. I’ve been good at landing the planes. I think we had 97 percent of our unions have settled. And then when you look at not only have the heads settled, but when they send it out to their membership, we’re getting in the area of 97, 98 percent ratification rate. And so I’m with you. I’m not the choir. I wrote the song.
Question: You did a pretty good job elevating this crisis about mental health. And you have a relationship with Governor Hochul and the state regulates hospitals. Your health commissioner, new health commissioner made a very compelling case about the impact of closing hospitals. Should we now, through this crisis, declare a moratorium on hospital closures till you get your arms around this issue?
Mayor Adams: Well, I think that’s the call of the governor. You know, we are charged, charged with the H and H, our hospital system. But it’s the call of the governor on exactly what she believes is the best approach. And we’re going to, we’re going to work in conjunction with her.
But I think the low hanging fruit is that there’s a bill in front of lawmakers. We need to pass that bill. Brian has made it clear over and over again. There are those who don’t know they need care. And we need to, we need to get that bill passed to ensure that we can get those who don’t know they need care, the care that they deserve. It’s inhumane for us not to.
Question [Inaudible.] Having that place they can go to that’s close proximity, even though it’s not necessarily the place they’re going to stay, gives you another place to stabilize the patient.
Mayor Adams: I won’t disagree with you.
Question: Mr. Mayor, how are you doing?
Mayor Adams: Good, good. How are you?
Question: Not too bad. I have two questions for you. Um, just going back to what NJ asked earlier, can you tell us anything about your conversation with Ritchie Torres? Like the tone and tenor and how he received some of the points you were making? About what the city’s doing regarding severe mental illness?
And secondly, you’ve talked about, uh, making the priorities for New York City known to the incoming president and his administration. Now that he’s filling out some of his cabinet picks and you have a better idea of who’s going to be doing what, are there plans for more coordination? Any in-person visit plans to, like, you or any of your team sit down with his folks in D.C. or Florida or wherever?
Mayor Adams: You know, as I’ve been consistent about private conversations. I said I reached out to Ritchie. I didn’t get a chance to speak with him. But even after speaking with him, you know, private conversations, people like talking to me because they never hear it again. They never become part of sources or rumors or reports. You know, what I, what people say to me, stays with me.
I’m looking and I’m reading some of the reports of, you know, the opinions people have on the incoming president’s team that he’s putting together, you know… he ran. He went across the country. He raised the money. He’s went to rallies of, you know, it always baffles me. The person who did the sweat, blood, and tears, now he has to pick his team. And those who say I don’t like who he picked, then run. No one stops anyone from running and being the president. You know, when people tell me, Eric, don’t pick this person, [pick that] person. Run for mayor.
He ran for president. The American people heard his agenda and elected him. Now he has to put the team together to execute that. And, you know, I have my opinions on who should be or shouldn’t, but that is his job to do. The American people elected him. And so he needs to put together the team, to do that, to execute what he promised to American people.
And I don’t have a problem with him doing that just as I did it. People critique my picks, but they didn’t run for mayor. They don’t deal with the, all the incoming of being a mayor. So you can’t have it both ways. You can’t sit on the sidelines and then you want to determine who people are going to pick as their team. People pick their teams.
Question: If you had, you know, now that you know some of the picks, who’s going to be doing what? Are there plans for you or any of the team members to sit down with them?
Mayor Adams: Definitely. Definitely. Transitioning government is one of the most difficult things to do. People should have the opportunity to do so. We communicated that once things are in order, we will like to sit down and share some of our ideas and visions around the border, around affordability, around when New York city, uh, needs, uh, uh, he was receptive to that and we’re going to continue to do it. Our goal is not to be warring, but working with the incoming president for New York city. That’s my goal. Not four years of fighting four years of building this city.
Question: So… to bring it to City of Yes for a minute, what will City of Yes be doing not just to guarantee new housing, but affordable housing? Because I’ve been to a community meeting last week, and I think even just yesterday on Brian Lehrer’s show, there was, a guest who’s sort of an expert on this, where the concept of, builders basically, exploiting what City of Yes allows them to do up to the point of adding affordable housing, but not beyond. Like, they can build to a certain height, and if they want to build higher, then it has to be affordable housing. The question has been raised, I’ve seen it a few times already. Like, well, what’s the stopping point of going to said height… and then just stopping there?
Mayor Adams: You’re saying that, if they, after they build to a certain level, the affordable housing comes after that?
Question: There’s sort of some kind of threshold, that I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been hearing this, that there’s like, well, one of the rules is such that, you know, they can build up to a certain level, height as much as, you know, whatever they like. And that if they want it above, building above a certain height, that then they would have to guarantee a certain amount of affordable housing. And people in response to that have been raised the question of, well, what’s to stop them from just going up to that threshold height and not going beyond it to have affordable housing?
Mayor Adams: Well, you know, that exists now, you know, when people, and even in the past, particularly under the previous administration, you have a right, people it as a right, of a certain level. And if they want to build higher than that, or a bigger footprint than that, then that’s when you’re able to negotiate and say, okay, you may have as a right to build eight floors, but if you want to build 13 floors, a percentage of that must be affordable.
So that exists now. Now, there’s specific part of it that you’re saying that it could be exploited, then I think the best thing to do is to sit down with the expert, Dan, who understand, and you could, you could raise that specific question to him, but we took great care and concern. The City Council took great care and concern of looking through, the entire City of Yes, there’s been a lot of conversations around this as I indicated, going to community boards, et cetera.
Listen, we’re talking about 80,000 new units of housing, 80,000 new units of housing. We need all levels of housing. We need a market. We need affordable. We need low income. We need middle income.
When you have a 1.4 percent vacancy rate, that drives up costs, that drives up of what we are facing right now. And so, this City Council has been on, the committees I should say, cause we still got to get past the City Council, but the committees have been clear that they support this. And now we’re going to take it to the full City Council and we’re going to make sure that it’s not exploited, that we’re going to build housing.
November 26, 2024 Manhattan, New York
Sources: nyc.gov , Midtown Tribune
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