The New York City Council recently passed two bills that would address crises happening in this city: deaths at Rikers and police abuse—both of which have ballooned since Eric Adams became mayor. The first bill would end the use of solitary confinement at Rikers by requiring that the people who are incarcerated there awaiting trial be allowed at least 14 hours of time outside of their cell, and the other would expand NYPD’s public transparency by requiring them to document each stop and search they make, as well as the legal justification for the stops and searches. Eric Adams vetoed both bills and told New Yorkers “Vetoing this bill will keep those in our custody and our correction officers safer." New York, Eric Adams is lying to you.
Many New Yorkers have heard the tragic story of Khalief Browder, the 16-year-old who never recovered from his hellish three years on Rikers Island—most of which he spent in solitary confinement after being falsely accused of stealing a backpack. His death in 2015 spawned the campaign to close Rikers, an institution that has engulfed thousands of poor, mostly Black and brown New Yorkers since it opened its doors in 1932. But those doors remain open, and many New Yorkers continue to meet similar fates.
In 2019, Layleen was just 27 years old when she was sent to Rikers Island simply because she didn’t have $500 to pay bail. Police accused her of being a sex worker, an all-too-common accusation against trans women that often leads to their criminalization. Layleen had a seizure disorder, a fact that Rikers was not only aware of but had been explicitly informed by a psychiatrist that she could not be placed in solitary confinement. They did it anyway. Officers didn’t just fail to monitor Layleen, they didn’t just leave her in a cell for 17 hours a day, they didn’t even just leave her in a cell to seize and die: in the videos recovered, officers could be seen and heard laughing in the presence of her dead body.
Those stories may be new to some readers, but they’re not new to the city council members. It’s this kind of routine tragedy that led the city council to pass legislation at the end of 2023, banning the use of solitary confinement at Rikers. But Eric Adams vetoed this bill, along with a measure that would have drastically increased the NYPD’s public transparency, while lying to the public to conceal carceral abuses.
Adams is not NYC’s Mayor, he’s NYPD’s. These latest vetoes—along with the lies Adams has offered to defend them—are only the latest of many indefensible actions that Adams has taken throughout his term that endanger New Yorkers.
Regarding why he vetoed the solitary confinement bill that the majority of the city council supports, Adams offered two damning distortions of the truth and constitutional rights. Adams first denied the use of solitary confinement at Rikers altogether, tweeting “Our administration is vehemently against solitary confinement in our jails, and New York City has not used the practice for years. In fact, under our administration, our jails have gotten safer without the practice.” This is a lie.
Not only does New York City continue to use solitary confinement, the very first policy Adams announced before he even took office were his plans to expand solitary confinement, which prompted the city council to write him a letter in December 2021 urging him to reconsider his insistence on its use. Then Mayor-elect Adams responded to the city council that because “he wore a bullet proof vest for 22 years” they did not “have the right to question [him]” so he would simply “ignore them” because “whether they like it or not, [he’s] the mayor.” He then took to simply referring to solitary confinement as either “punitive segregation” or “restrictive housing,” which is a widespread tactic department of corrections throughout the country use—sanitizing terms to skirt the law.
Nor are jails safer under his administration. When Adams was campaigning for mayor, he said that Rikers was in need of systemic change because it was “out of control” and that he supported the plans to close Rikers by 2027. (It’s worth adding that the plan to close Rikers necessitates the reduction of Rikers population, which Adams has hampered through his concerted attacks on bail reform). At the time of these remarks, in 2021, Rikers was already considered a human rights crisis because there had been 16 deaths that year. Since Adams took office, at least 26 people have died at Rikers. But this is only a conservative estimate: the Adams administration also decided to end the Department of Corrections practice of informing the public about in-custody deaths in the jails altogether. This is just one of the many reasons the federal monitor tasked with reporting the conditions at Rikers described the Adams administration as “steeped in secrecy.” There can’t be public outrage without public information.
Adams doubled down after his veto, claiming that people in jail “have done some things that we consider not suitable at the time to be in society.” This rationale exposes several serious problems.
First, 87% of the people incarcerated at Rikers and other NYC jails are held pretrial, meaning they have not been convicted of a crime. Contrary to Adams’s statements, neither society nor the court of law has determined anything. The legal purpose of bail is simply to assure a person returns to court. In this statement, Adams is not only admitting that he believes bail should punish and incarcerate people without affording them due process, but he’s going a step further and arguing that because these people are unsuitable to be in society, his administration should be allowed to subject them to the known horrors of solitary confinement—a practice he’s still denying using, mind you.
Given Adams’s twisted logic, it should come as little surprise that he also vetoed a bill that would drastically increase NYPD’s transparency and accountability to the public by requiring NYPD to report all vehicle stops and searches they conduct as well as provide legal justification for the stops.
This measure is not just incredibly important because of NYPD’s long, notorious history of abuse, discriminatory practices, and the unconstitutional use of stop and frisk in the past. It’s particularly timely because, despite the fact that stop and frisk was ruled unconstitutional in 2013, the Adams administration is still employing the practice. The federal monitor reported that Adams reinstated and renamed units that were disbanded in 2020 for their disproportionate amount of police shootings and that those revived units are now conducting 97% of their stops on Black and brown New Yorkers. The majority of those stops were unlawful, unconstitutional, and unsuccessful. Of 230 cars stopped, only 2 had any weapons.
Mayor Adams continues to illustrate a brazen level of outright dishonesty that reflects a shocking lack of respect for the lives of not just New Yorkers, but the most vulnerable among us. New Yorkers deserve the truth and a mayor who’s willing to protect and serve us, not just the police.
You shouldn't be able to run for office if you have a long history of being a .. cop.
I can't stand Adams, anyone who says the unhoused are a "cancer", has showed their ass completely.
Excellent summation! Not all skin folk are kin folk.... 😡