by Reina Sultan
This article was originally published at Prism
Eric Adams began his tenure as New York City’s mayor making explicitly pro-policing and -incarceration promises, with a so-called tough-on-crime approach that he argued was what voters wanted when they elected him. Historically low voter turnout—the lowest New York City had seen since 1953—suggests otherwise. Still, he has remained steadfast in his desire to be the law and order mayor. Adams cites his time as a cop with the New York Police Department as justification for making policy decisions like reversing plans to end solitary confinement. This is despite especially heinous and notorious examples of its usage at Rikers (rest in peace, Layleen Polanco and Kalief Browder). He is not alone in his (incorrect) perspective that more policing and more incarceration makes us safer and, in fact, joins an unfortunately rich legacy of pro-police mayors, many of whom are also Democrats. Most of them, like Adams, have President Joe Biden’s ardent support in bolstering funds toward rather than away from the carceral state.
Adams’ latest public safety strategy that he calls the “Blueprint for Safety” or “Blueprint to End Gun Violence” is more of the same. Heena S., a New York City-based writer and educator, sees this new strategy as following in the tradition of both Democratic and Republican mayors “who have used the rhetoric of ‘rising crime’ and gun violence as justification for the expansion of policing” when in reality there isn’t an objective framework to measure crime. Instead, politicians use unsubstantiated or sometimes plainly wrong claims “to surveil, oppress, incarcerate, and kill poor Black New Yorkers and other groups that are deemed expendable,” according to Heena.