The previous Mayor, he who shall remain nameless, the guy we’d like to forget, won his first term by ripping off Charles Dickens and describing New York as a tale of two cities; rich vs. poor, haves vs. have nots.
Eight years later we have a tale of two cities but of another kind. Reality vs. fantasy, common sense vs. babble.
Major crimes in New York City surged by more than 30-percent last month; 370 more robberies, 354 more felony assaults and 342 more burglaries than last year.
Gun violence is still high, but shootings are down by 29-percent.
New Yorkers are street smart but they are scared. You can see it in their faces. Eyes darting on the streets, scanning in the subways.
If you feel like you’re being sized up when you walk into a store that’s because you are. You’re a robbery suspect until you tap, swipe or insert your credit card.
Which brings me to the New York Times erudite editorial board member Mara Gay.
In an opinion column in December, Gay painstakingly portrayed Eric Adams’ childhood in Brooklyn and Queens, his victimization by police, his career in the NYPD and his ascent in politics. She lauded his street cred, his appeal to working class Black New Yorkers and his flair for showmanship.
She saluted his savviness and gushed over the “group of Black New Yorkers who have waited a generation for their shot to run City Hall.”
But in her column at the end of last month, Gay unloaded on Adams for being in a “time warp.” He’s a “throwback” to the nineties, she wrote, “championing language that has been used to promote criminal justice polices that are harmful and long outdated.”
Gay says,“it is deeply troubling that the Black mayor of American’s largest city is lending credibility to these ideas.”
Adams, says Gay, may just “be appealing to the older, more conservative Black voters in his base or trying to soothe the unease of white voters worried about disorder.”
I won’t get into the nuances of that stupid statement but Ms. Gay, have you read the just released Quinnipiac University poll? Here’s the title: “Crime overshadows all other issues as at the most urgent in NYC.”
The poll cut across “all political parties, races, genders, age groups and boroughs.”
An overwhelming number of the New Yorkers polled, 86-percent, want more cops, especially in the subways.
New Yorkers want to be safe and the NYPD makes them feel safe. That is the truth, full stop.
Ms. Gay was eight years old in 1994, the year she says Mayor Adams’ crime fighting policies are stuck in. The policies she says don’t work and “are harmful and long outdated.”
Let’s rewind and remind ourselves what life was like in New York in the 90’s. Crime was rampant. The NYC transit system was in the toilet. Fare beaters were ubiquitous. Sound familiar?
You know what turned things around? A concept called “broken windows policing.” It operates on the premise that by controlling minor offenses you can restore the people’s sense of security and in the process nab lawbreakers wanted for bigger crimes.
Mara Gay says Adams’ crime-fighting tactics have “not shown conclusively that they work.” Well, that’s made-up, progressive prattle.
In less than two years of broken windows policing in the nasty nineties, crime decreased more than 20-percent. More significantly, people saw things were better, the streets and the subways felt safer.
Eric Adams is the Mayor because New Yorkers believed he was the best person to bring safety and sanity back to the City. All New Yorkers, including Black New Yorkers, had a chance to elect a defund-the-police progressive mayor and they did not!
Sorry Ms. Gay, elections do have consequences.
And as for the Mayor’s “group of Black New Yorkers who have waited a generation for their shot to run City Hall?” Our Police Commissioner, Keechant Sewell and our Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phil Banks, are fully supportive of Adams’ anti-crime policies. Oh, and they’re Black.
Mara Gay, The New York Times and all those who moan and groan that Eric Adams doesn’t fit their model of a modern Black mayor, should start looking deep into the eyes of New Yorkers.
What they’ll see is a city in free fall, a fear-for-all city, in almost every neighborhood, and amongst almost every ethnicity, gender and income level.
Hey you regular New Yorkers…you people who ride the subways everyday and have to walk home on dark streets, you, the 86-percenters in the Q poll…tell your elected representatives, the women and men who work for YOU, what YOU want, not what THEY’VE conjured up as truth. Straight from the streets experience, not behavioral theories.
It’s simply about reality and common sense; living without fear and saving lives.
S-N-Y-N! Save New York now!
2 thoughts on “Gay vs Adams”
FWOB, thank you for enduring the pain of reading Pravda and reporting on its nauseating excesses for the *benefit* of those of us who cannot stomach reading daily agitprop in the guise of what used to be a good newspaper.
Broken windows: To restore a sense of lawfullness, you must eliminate an atmosphere of lawlessness. Talk about “duh” (as in last week’s post) — and it worked! Or, as Mara Gay might suggest, “Who are you gonna believe — me, or your own lyin’ eyes??”
When Gay was 8 years old, the city was so bad that she could not live in the Brooklyn areas that have since become popular. Nor could she travel on the subway at night, as our children do. She probably didn’t have a car to worry about stolen radios, wheels, and the car itself.
Sad but true, the New York Times (aka supermarket tabloid in its choice of reporting) is not what it once was. The current reasons to subscribe are mostly limited to:
a) the concept of knowing your enemy
b) Brett Stephens
c) David Brooks
d) Crossword puzzles