A video has surfaced showing now-New York City Mayor Eric Adams boasting that, during his days with the city’s police department, he was a...
A video has surfaced showing now-New York City Mayor Eric Adams boasting that, during his days with the city’s police department, he was a better cop than his white counterparts — whom he referred to as “those crackers.”
The recording was made on Dec. 13, 2019 at a private meeting of the Harlem Business Alliance, the New York Daily News reported Friday.
Adams, who won election in November, was recounting his time with 100 Blacks in Law in Enforcement, a group he helped found.
“Every day in the police department, I kicked those crackers’ a–,” he said in the recording.
“Man, I was unbelievable in the police department with 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement. Became a sergeant, a lieutenant and a captain. You know the story — some people all of a sudden trying to reinvent me. But the reality is what I was then is who I am now.”
At that time, Adams was preparing to kick off fundraising for his mayoral campaign.
He joked that he would prefer to “grow a beard, smoke some weed and leave this stuff alone. You hear me?”
“The people who say, ‘Where’s our real black leaders?’ They’re going to say, listen, ‘Who’s Eric? Why does Eric think he should be mayor?’ Well, Negro, you run. You run. Go raise the 7 million dollars.”
“Let me tell you something, man. They are lining up — ‘Eric can’t be mayor.’ In the corners of the city, they are lining up. They know me. They know what I’m about, and they know what I’m going to do as the mayor of the city of New York. Listen, we’re not going to play this game.”
The Daily News report said the video was recorded by Thomas Lopez-Pierre, founder of the Black Lives Matter Real Estate Forum LLC., who attended the meeting.
In a Friday telephone interview, Lopez-Pierre told the Daily News, “This is how black people talk. To us, it was family. We were having a conversation with family.”
Adams talked about his plans to “right the wrongs of racist contract practices” in New York City, Lopez-Pierre said, according to the Daily News.
Although Adams did not respond to a request for comment from the media outlet on Friday afternoon, several hours later, Adams was asked about his remarks at an unrelated news conference. He called his words “inappropriate” and offered a full apology.
According to ABC News, Adams told reporters, “Inappropriate, inappropriate comments, should not have been used. Someone asked me a question using that comment and playing on that word. I responded in that comment, but clearly, these comments should not have been used, and I apologize not only to those who heard it, but to New Yorkers because they should expect more from me. That was inappropriate.”
“My fight in the police department was fighting racism throughout my entire journey. And I was serious about fighting against that and that is what it was attached to, the question that was asked. And that, you got my response, based on what that question was,” he said.
ABC reported that shortly afterward Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch defended the mayor in a statement.
Lynch said, “We have spent far too many hours together in hospital emergency rooms these past few weeks, and we’ve worked together for decades before that. A few seconds of video will not define our relationship. We have a lot of work to do together to support our members on the streets.”
This kind of rhetoric is incredibly divisive and hateful, and does nothing to help bring together a city that is already suffering under hate and violence.
Clearly, if a white man had uttered these words, the calls for his or her resignation would be deafening.
But these words were said over two years ago.
If it’s even possible, let’s try to remember what the political climate in the U.S. was like before the May 2020 death of convicted criminal and drug user George Floyd while in police custody. At a time when the “defund the police” movement was still a twinkle in the leftist Democrats’ eyes.
The country was divided over then-President Donald Trump, but the Democrats’ campaign to make race a central issue in the 2020 election was just ramping up.
The death of Floyd acted as the flip of a switch. Suddenly, our nation had changed, and there was no going back.
While Adams’ choice of words was unfortunate, America was in a different place. They would be far more destructive if spoken today.
I’m with Lynch on this one. This is not a hill to die on.
Adams has been called out and he has apologized.
Of course, that doesn’t excuse the mainstream media. A similar statement, with the races reversed, would be spurring calls for Adams’ ouster immediately, and be the focus of obsessive coverage for years to come. Don’t expect anything like that for a Democratic mayor of a Democratic city.
Although Adams is not off to a strong start, let’s wait to see what he can do to reduce the soaring crime rate in the city. Considering that it was Adam’s predecessor, the disastrous Democrat Bill De Blasio who helped put the city in its current condition, the former NYPD captain has a lot of work to do.
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