Mayor Adams’s First 100 Days: A Focus on Crime, Covid and Crises

On an unusually chilly morning in late March, Mayor Eric Adams started his day visiting a child-care middle in Queens. Roughly seven miles away, law enforcement officials in Brooklyn have been finishing up his order to clear homeless encampments, tossing away tents and different belongings in a rubbish truck as a part of a brand new public security initiative.

The mayor additionally held a jobs-related announcement with JetBlue and later attended the premiere of the Broadway present “Plaza Suite.” His day ended at Manhattan’s latest workplace skyscraper, at an occasion selling a bank card that encourages folks to pay their hire with plastic, the place he was photographed partying with the mannequin Cara Delevingne.

It was Day 87 of the Adams administration, a day that mirrored the brand new mayor’s sturdy agenda and his early priorities. The homeless sweeps, criticized by advocates as uncaring and simplistic, characterize a key a part of his crime technique to assault symbols of lawlessness. The star-studded occasions and jobs bulletins are a part of his business-friendly, cheerleader strategy to governing.

Mr. Adams, in an interview at Metropolis Corridor to debate his first 100 days as mayor, insisted that addressing homelessness and attending to the town’s nightlife have been a part of his job, and never in battle together with his picture in the course of the marketing campaign as a champion of working-class New Yorkers.

“I bought to feed my nightlife to get vacationers again right here — a multibillion-dollar business,” he mentioned. “And so individuals who subscribe to the speculation that ‘OK, you’re eradicating encampments, and so that you now should sit at house and never be seen within the different features of your job,’ that’s simply foolish. My job is so multifaceted.”

Mr. Adams, who is thought to work lengthy hours and who revealed that he slept solely 4 hours at evening, mentioned that his night included one other cease not listed on his public schedule.

“Now I left that occasion — know what I did?” he mentioned. “I went within the subway system and made certain that we have been handing out details about being in a homeless shelter.”

His motto is “Get Stuff Achieved,” and Mr. Adams pointed to a number of accomplishments forward of his one hundredth day on Sunday: creating new anti-gun police items and extra beds at shelters, and increasing a summer season college program to incorporate 110,000 college students and a youth jobs program to incorporate 100,000 younger folks.

However Mr. Adams has additionally been contending with challenges which have few fast options, together with the town’s restoration from the coronavirus pandemic. On Sunday, the mayor’s one hundredth day in workplace, his press secretary introduced that Mr. Adams had examined constructive for the virus and can be canceling public occasions for the week.

Crime has risen this 12 months, and Mr. Adams has confronted loads of criticism over his insurance policies and hiring selections. He has not supplied up detailed plans for extra inexpensive housing or for the way forward for the gifted and gifted program in metropolis faculties.

His relationship with the Metropolis Council additionally appears to be in query. The Council speaker just lately castigated the mayor as a result of three metropolis businesses skipped a five-hour Council oversight listening to on a Bronx fireplace that killed 17 folks. The speaker, Adrienne Adams, mentioned that the businesses’ absence “leads me to presume that your administration doesn’t deal with this essential subject with the total seriousness deserved.”

Different council members have taken subject with the mayor’s proposed finances cuts, contending that they might damage the town’s most weak residents and that the police items might harass Black and Latino residents.

However given his emphasis on legal justice in his mayoral marketing campaign, Mr. Adams’s first time period is more likely to be judged on whether or not his administration can start to decrease crime — a nationwide subject that might show tough for him to manage.

On Wednesday, the town’s police commissioner introduced new crime figures that confirmed a 36 % improve in main crimes and a 16 % rise in shootings over the previous 12 months.

Mr. Adams has just lately deployed seven new anti-gun police items, one of many key parts of his anti-crime plan, and mentioned final week that the items had taken almost 30 weapons off the streets.

“I don’t get the grade that I deserve till we begin seeing crime transfer in the suitable route,” Mr. Adams mentioned within the interview at Metropolis Corridor.

Mr. Adams, a former police captain, was instantly confronted by a spate of high-profile violent crimes in January, together with the taking pictures deaths of two law enforcement officials in Manhattan and the demise of a lady who was pushed in entrance of a prepare on the Occasions Sq. subway station.

Final month, the Police Division started to implement so-called quality-of-life issues, a throwback to the town’s embrace of “damaged home windows” policing — enforcement of low-level offenses in an effort to stop extra severe crimes.

Mr. Adams additionally ordered the police to maintain folks from sheltering within the subway system after which adopted up together with his push to clear homeless encampments.

The progressive caucus within the Metropolis Council — greater than half of council members — mentioned that Mr. Adams had “displayed cruelty” together with his homeless sweeps and requested the mayor to cease them. Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been a high-profile critic, raising alarm about his policing tactics and modifications to solitary confinement on the Rikers Island jail.

Ms. Adams, the Council speaker, laid out a platform together with her members to oppose a number of the mayor’s public-safety strikes and known as for growing the variety of beds for the homeless.

“Public security could be achieved once we put money into guaranteeing our communities are robust, so we will truly stop crime and violence earlier than they happen,” Ms. Adams mentioned in a press release. “A balanced and complete strategy to public security that focuses extra on prevention is the best.”

Different obstacles rapidly emerged. His push to revive the town’s financial system was tempered by the Omicron surge of the coronavirus. He took warmth for sure hires, together with a former police official who left the division whereas beneath federal investigation and three pastors who’ve been criticized for espousing homophobic views.

Mr. Adams, a vegan fanatic who wrote a guide about his plant-based food regimen, was even compelled to acknowledge that he eats fish.

His frustrations with how his message is being obtained have often surfaced at his information conferences. At one, he chided the Metropolis Corridor press corps and threatened to cease taking off-topic questions, arguing that he was doing a “darn good job.”

Extra just lately, Mr. Adams warned staffers that anybody violating his “self-discipline of message” in entrance of a “gotcha” press corps can be fired, in keeping with audio obtained by Politico. Mr. Adams confirmed within the interview at Metropolis Corridor that he was now personally reviewing each metropolis information launch every morning and mentioned that it took solely about quarter-hour.

“We’re going to be one workforce with one message,” he mentioned, including that individuals who had their very own private agenda have been “not a match” for his administration.

The mayor’s relationship with state leaders can also be nonetheless one thing of a piece in progress. Whereas he has established rapport with Gov. Kathy Hochul — one thing that his predecessor, Invoice de Blasio, by no means managed with the previous Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — he has seen combined ends in Albany.

Michael Gianaris, the deputy majority chief of the State Senate who represents western Queens, mentioned he had not had a dialog or a non-public assembly with Mr. Adams for the reason that mayor took workplace. Mr. Gianaris mentioned the mayor had as a substitute appeared to depend on Governor Hochul for help.

“There are dozens of individuals within the State Legislature whose pursuits are to do what’s greatest for New York Metropolis,” he mentioned. “It’s an odd technique.”

Mr. Adams’s lone journey to the State Capitol in February didn’t go effectively. The tabloids centered on pushback from state lawmakers on the mayor’s request to toughen the state bail regulation, with The Each day Information working a front-page headline that mentioned: “Eric ‘Beat Up’ in Crime Combat.”

The $220 billion state finances, which was agreed upon on Thursday, did embody a few of Mr. Adams’s priorities, together with some modifications to the bail regulation, an enlargement of the earned-income tax credit score and further funding for baby care. He mentioned within the interview at Metropolis Corridor that he was disillusioned that mayoral management of faculties, one other high precedence, was not included within the finances, however added that he was assured it will be permitted individually.

The mayor mentioned he was happy with initiatives like increasing a doula program for brand new moms to 500 households and vocational coaching for 90 foster care youth. Two concepts he talked about on the marketing campaign path — common dyslexia screenings in faculties and a “MyCity” app to supply authorities companies like meals stamps in a single place — ought to arrive later this 12 months or early subsequent 12 months, he mentioned.

He has additionally courted enterprise leaders to assist with the town’s financial restoration and has sought their enter on how greatest to push the town ahead because it emerges from the pandemic.

However at a time when the town is going through a worsening affordability disaster, the mayor has not issued a housing plan regardless of promising the State Legislature in February that he would accomplish that. After he missed his personal deadline, Rachel Payment, the manager director of the New York Housing Convention, checked in together with his housing workforce to see if it had a brand new timeline, nevertheless it didn’t.

“For the final eight years, we’ve been producing upward of 20,000 items of inexpensive housing a 12 months — that’s both new development or preservation,” Ms. Payment mentioned. “We’re going to see an actual slowdown.”

The pandemic stays a frightening problem, with instances, fueled by the BA.2 subvariant of the coronavirus, rising once more, from about 600 each day instances on common in early March to about 1,500 each day instances now.

Mr. Adams, who has been vocal about folks returning to places of work and eradicating masks necessities, could must make tough selections about whether or not to convey again some restrictions. He already needed to delay an introduced transfer to elevate a masks requirement for younger preschool youngsters.

The mayor holds a briefing together with his well being workforce on daily basis at 8:30 a.m. to evaluate the newest virus figures. On a current name, Mr. Adams sat on his train bike whereas his advisers warned him about rising case ranges that might peak within the subsequent two or three weeks. He peppered them with questions, asking about easy methods to unfold public consciousness on antiviral therapies.

“Is there any room to have these messages or notes within the backpacks of youngsters they will take house to their households?” the mayor requested a college official. The official mentioned he would work on it.

Mr. Adams gave himself a grade of “incomplete” in a sequence of 100-day interviews on Friday.

“We’re coping with historic issues, and also you’re seeing them play out throughout our nation with the rise in violence, the psychological well being points that stemmed from Covid,” he mentioned on “Good Day New York” on Fox 5. “However clearly, we’re laying the inspiration to maneuver our metropolis in the suitable route.”

The mayor was upbeat on the interview at Metropolis Corridor, saying that he didn’t discover the job tough after a lifetime of public service.

“These final 100 days — there have been painful moments,” he mentioned. “However there was nothing new for me and the totality of this life that I’ve lived, and so I don’t discover this job laborious in any respect.”