Adams, a retired New York Police Division captain who embraced a public security message, would be the second Black mayor within the metropolis’s historical past, after the late David Dinkins.
A Brooklyn native who at the moment serves as its borough president, Adams received a chaotic Democratic major this summer time on a promise to each beef up and reform the NYPD amid worries over an increase in violent crime. His message — that “public security is the prerequisite to prosperity” — resonated with working class Democratic voters outdoors the historically liberal enclaves of Manhattan and components of Brooklyn, which fueled his nomination. Adams’ basic election marketing campaign was rather more subdued. He largely ignored Sliwa, a founding father of the Guardian Angels and media character.
After Sliwa attacked him throughout one in all their two debates, Adams shrugged and refused to interact.
“I am chatting with New Yorkers,” he mentioned, “not buffoonery.”
A former state lawmaker, Adams rose to the highest of the Democratic mayoral discipline with a transparent pitch to voters anxious over a pandemic-year surge in violent crime and protracted issues over NYPD abuses, arguing that he’s uniquely positioned to handle each issues.
That effort required he strike a cautious stability in pledging to cope with police misconduct, typically noting his previous efforts to name out racism inside the NYPD, in addition to his testimony within the courtroom case that ended the illegal use of “cease and frisk” insurance policies. (Adams says the tactic must be used, however beneath lawful pointers.) He has additionally argued that the present debate over policing has introduced a false alternative, rejecting each the law-and-order rhetoric favored by many on the appropriate, whereas denouncing left-wing activists’ calls to “defund” or extra basically reform the police.
