NYC to Revive Controversial Anti-Crime Unit Under New Mayor

(Bloomberg) -- New York City Mayor Eric Adams vowed on Monday to take immediate action to end gun violence, offering the first sense of the former police captain’s policy response to the string of tragic crimes that have punctuated his initial weeks in office.

Adams called for the state to enact more restrictive bail provisions, and announced plans to revive a controversial anti-crime unit that was disbanded under former Mayor Bill de Blasio after misconduct complaints mounted. 

Reviving the anti-crime unit, which Adams referred to as “neighborhood safety teams,” will fulfill one of his top campaign promises during his 2021 bid for mayor. Adams, 61, who took office on Jan. 1, had made public safety his signature campaign issue, arguing that crime and disorder would continue to derail the city’s pandemic recovery without fixes. A month into his tenure, a string of painful incidents have gripped the city, complicating his message and raising questions about what he can actually do to fight crime. 

“As your mayor, this is my number one priority,” he said Monday in a 25-minute City Hall address that was accompanied by a 15-page policy booklet. “I campaigned on it. I will deliver on it.”

Adams acknowledged the “mistakes” of previous iterations of the anti-crime unit, which attracted scrutiny after a number of high-profile killings of New Yorkers including Amadou Diallo and Eric Garner. Misconduct complaints and criticism of racial profiling piled up, sparking citywide protests and calls for police reform.

The revamped unit will employ better video technology and will require body cameras that must be turned on, Adams said. It will be launched over the next three weeks in the 30 precincts where 80% of violence occurs, he said. There are already more than 400 officers in the pipeline for the unit who will be carefully selected for “emotional intelligence” and will have additional training, he said. Police in the unit will travel in unmarked vehicles and won’t wear uniforms, but in a change from past iterations of the unit, will be required to be easily identifiable as cops.

Shooting incidents have increased by nearly 24% to 73 so far this year compared to the same period in 2021, according to data from the New York Police Department. Subway assaults and murders are at their highest since 1997.

On Friday, an officer was killed and another injured while responding to a domestic violence call. They were the fourth and fifth officers shot in the past month. In the days prior, a teenager was murdered working the night shift at an East Harlem Burger King, a baby was shot in the head and a woman was shoved to her death in the Times Square subway station.

“New York City has been tested to its core in the first month of 2022,” according to the policy report. “These weeks have been among the most violent in recent memory, most of it caused by a crisis of gun violence that continues to plague our communities.”

‘I Will Deliver’

Adams has crisscrossed the city in response to the deaths and crimes, attending vigils, visiting with victims’ families and denouncing the violence. But before Monday’s address, he had provided little detail about his specific public safety plans. 

So far, he has directed 1,000 more cops to the 2,600 assigned to the city’s subway system. The NYPD is the U.S.’s largest and most well-resourced police force, with roughly 35,000 uniformed officers and an operating budget that eclipses $5 billion.

Without plainclothes officers on the streets, “you’re basically just giving the playbook to the bad guys,” said Michael Alcazar, professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a retired NYPD detective. “We need that element of surprise in combating crime. We need to make criminals feel uncomfortable.”

On Monday, Adams also proposed expanding cooperation between city and state police to help intercept illegal guns trafficked to New York City, and plans to conduct random spot checks at the Port Authority and city bus and train stations to look for illegal guns. He also proposed expanding the city’s Gun Violence Suppression Division, a specialized unit of detectives, and pledged expansion of summer job programs for at-risk youth.

Though he declined to give a total cost of his proposals, Adams pledged to fund the plans by reducing expenses in other parts of the city budget. For instance, he said he will redirect money from ThriveNYC, a mental health initiative started under de Blasio and led by his wife, Chirlane McCray. 

Early Pushback

Adams will need lawmakers in Albany to enact any changes to state law, including altering the bail practices. Although both chambers of the Legislature are controlled by Democrats, the progressive lobby has gained in stature in recent years and has pushed back against any changes to hard-fought bail reform legislation garnered in 2019. 

In Albany, Adams said he will push for state changes that will judges to consider a defendant’s “dangerousness” when deciding whether to remand that person into custody or release them on their promise to show up for trial -- a standard employed by 49 other states. He is also seeking to lower the age to be tried in criminal court for gun possession to 16 from 18, and wants to amend the state’s discovery reform laws. 

“New York has never had a dangerousness standard, long pre-dating the bail reform,” said New York State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mike Gianaris. “Trying to impose it now would actually be a step backward.”

Asked whether Adams’ proposed changes to state law would be a nonstarter, Gianaris said there’s a willingness to hear the mayor out. “I don’t think there is a great appetite in the legislature to go backward on something the data shows actually works,” Gianaris added.

Some City Council members and criminal justice groups also took issue with Adams’s plans to revive the plainclothes unit. Queens council member Tiffany Caban called the plainclothes unit “particularly troubling,” while Jullian Harris-Calvin, director of the Greater Justice New York program at the Vera Institute of Justice, panned Adams’s plans to rely on police practices of the past. 

“What we’ve seen in practice over many years in New York City is that more policing, especially of low-level quality-of-life offenses, doesn’t make us safer,” Harris-Calvin said.

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