New York City Mayor Eric Adams Talks Public Safety With Lawmakers in Albany

New York City Mayor Eric Adams made his pitch to state lawmakers in person on Monday for changes to the state’s criminal justice laws, and a series of other issues that could impact the five boroughs during his first year in office.

Adams met with leaders from the Senate and the Assembly, both Democrats, and also appeared before both Democratic majority conferences in the state Legislature.

“This has always been a place where you respect the leadership, and you respect the electeds,” Adams told reporters after his final meeting with lawmakers Monday.

Public safety in New York City was central to the visit, Adams said. He’s been asking lawmakers for the last few weeks to reexamine the state’s recent laws related to cash bail and criminal discovery.

After speaking with Democrats, Adams said those conversations would continue, but didn’t say whether his position had changed.

“I shared my thoughts, they shared their thoughts, and it was a very healthy dialogue,” Adams said. “And we're going to be focused on doing what we could possibly do to keep our city safe.”

Adams has asked lawmakers to consider tweaking the state’s recent bail reform law, arguing that judges should have more flexibility to hold someone before trial based on their perceived threat to public safety.

The current bail reform law requires judges to release those charged with most lower-level and nonviolent offenses under the least restrictive means, and without bail.

Democrats who pioneered that law have pushed back on Adams, saying his proposed changes wouldn’t improve public safety, and could have a disproportionate impact on low-income individuals and people of color.

Assemblymember Latrice Walker, a Democratic from Brooklyn who helped negotiate the bail reform law, said Monday that Adams should invest more in violence prevention and pretrial services to target crime, rather than call for changes to the statute.

“We are saying to our mayor today that instead of you wanting to roll back a successful policy regarding criminal justice that we need you to put more resources into the very services to make bail reform an even bigger success,” Walker said.

Adams didn’t detail how his meetings with the state Legislature went, but said he’d continue the conversation on criminal justice with lawmakers, along with a slate of other issues he’s interested in at the state level.

“We’re looking at our Earned Income Tax Credit, universal child care, raising the limit on our borrowing,” Adams said. “There's so many issues that we have to look at that I have to navigate up here. And this is how it's done.”

Adams is also calling for tweaks to the state’s Raise the Age law, saying he’d like tougher penalties for 16- and 17-year-olds caught with a gun, if they won’t say where the firearm came from.