Mayor Adams defends his policing strategies, pointing to children victimized by violence

The surveillance video shows a woman, holding a toddler’s hand, being robbed at gunpoint inside an apartment building.

While the incident took place two weeks ago, Mayor Eric Adams tweeted it late Sunday night, adding this: “And a small group of people in this city are asking why we put an anti-gun unit in place.”

“If any New Yorker saw that video,” he said Monday, “it had to send shock waves through you.”

It was just one recent instance of young children caught in the middle of violent crimes. Last week, a seven-year-old girl was grazed by a stray bullet in Coney Island, and a three-year-old girl was shot in the arm in Brownsville as she and her father left her day care center.

Meanwhile, the mayor this month rolled out his new anti-gun units, a revamped version of the old NYPD Street Crime unit, which had a history of fatal encounters and was disbanded in 2020. Critics say the new teams could lead to abusive and discriminatory policing.

But the mayor vigorously pushed back on those critics Monday, calling it “silliness” and “noise” that he intends to ignore.

“They’re talking about protecting those who carry guns,” he said. “How about protecting the people who are doing right? How about protecting the three-year-old girl, the seven-year-old girl, the countless number of black and brown people that are shot in the community by the same people?”

The NYPD last week also announced a crackdown on quality-of-life offenses like drug dealing, public drinking and dice games, which has raised concerns about a return to the Giuliani-era “broken windows” theory of policing.

Molly Griffard is a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society, which has warned that the new policing strategies create the potential for abuse, with little accountability.

“We’ve tried these so-called tough-on-crime approaches with anti-crime or anti-gun units, with broken windows policing in the past, and it just doesn’t work,” Griffard said.

Adams, a former NYPD captain, has repeatedly pointed to his history fighting discriminatory policing in the department.

“I’m going to utilize the police department to fight crime, and I’m going to ensure that no one is abusive, because that’s what I did for 35 years,” he said. “And I’m going to continue to do that.”