Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears on CBS This Morning

January 5, 2022

Gayle King: Welcome back to CBS This Morning, we're going to start the hour with the new Mayor of the nation's most heavily populated city. His name is Eric Adams. He was sworn in as Mayor of New York City just five days and counting, and like many leaders across the country, he's facing an unprecedented spike in COVID-19 cases. There have been more than 3.4 million new cases nationwide in the last seven days. Yikes. And here in New York City, hospitalizations have topped 5,000 a day for the first time since spring of 2020. The numbers are not good. Throughout the pandemic, the city is frequently served as a warning to the rest of the country about what's to come. Now Eric Adams is the only second Black mayor of New York City. He also previously served as Captain in the NYPD, and he joins us as you see at the table, live and in color, you did your COVID testing, we're following all the COVID protocols you passed, which is why you're sitting at the table, we welcome you. 

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. It's good to be here. You know, on election - on the night I was sworn in, I had a picture of my mom, I was holding in my hand, she transitioned last year in April, and she symbolizes who we are. You know, mother always say to me, you know, baby, you're going to be born in dark places –you're going to be in dark places, you need to turn them into not burials but planting. That's what we are as New Yorkers and Americans. We’re going to survive this – 

King: Are we? Because – listen, Mr. Mayor, when we walk around the city and you see people lined up in the COVID lines, I wonder what you think when people are sitting there for two, three hours at a time, despite the spike, you're saying this city is going to remain open. You want people to go back to work. You want people to go back to school. Why do you feel so confident about that when the numbers look so bleak and so scary? 

Mayor: Well, because we've been through crises before, I don't care if it's Pearl Harbor, if Great Depression, it's seeing our two buildings attacked during 9/11, but remember 9/12, we got up, and we continued to survive. Don't see ourselves in the crisis, see yourself past the crisis. That negative energy in our country is really destroying our children, it's destroying each other. We're tired of being prisoners to COVID. So let's be smart. Let's do the social distancing. Let's weigh our math, get vaccinated and take the booster shot, and then let's make sure we test. We're going to make - we put 1,000,000.5 tests in our schools, so we can identify the child as COVID and ensure that the rest of the classroom is not infected at the same time. 

Nick Burleson: Now, I understand we are survivors, but we also adjust, and shouldn't we be adjusted when it comes to our kids? I mean, I get it, we want them back to school as well, but shouldn’t we be thinking about remote learning and how to improve that moving forward, just in case our kids are sitting at home like they were last year?  

King: Because you've made it clear you want them in school – 

Mayor: Yes, that’s plan B, that's Plan B – 

King: Okay –  

Mayor: We have a plan B – 

King: You have plan B – 

Mayor: Right. But we're clear on a plan A and why are we clear on a plan A? The safest place for a child is in school. Little Johnny's not in school, he's not in this room. He's in the streets, you know, he doesn't have his mask on, and then you go to those communities where they don't have high speed broadband Wi-Fi, where they can't go online and get the education they need. Over 100,000 children are homeless, they don't have the same resources. Now you're able to say I have a little room for my little son or daughter –  

Burleson: Right.  

Mayor: Where they have the computer technology. I'm there to support you, then that's fine. But that's not New York, typically in non-English speaking communities. 

Burleson: I hear you on that. 

Tony Dokoupil: New York, it get’s a lot of attention nationally, particularly from Republicans who say it's a testing ground for Democratic ideas, and if you look at our big cities, New York, LA, San Francisco, the ideas are not working, and this brings us to crime. You've got some double digit increases in some significant areas, and there's a feeling among New Yorkers, I feel it as a New Yorker and I hear from other people that the city's not as safe as it was. You're new to this. You just started, but you got a deep background in law enforcement. When are we going to see details on this Safe New York plan? And what are you expecting to make this city livable the way it once was? 

Mayor: Well said. I'm new to this, but I'm true to this okay. You know that I've been doing this for a while, and I was clear on the campaign trail. I've said New York is – it is gangs and guns, every time you see a shooting, read the next sentence, gang related. So, what did we do yesterday with DA Eric Gonzalez? He showed the graph, he brought down three gang crews, violent gang crews, and what happens? Shootings dropped. He brought down a gang crew yesterday that was known for all of the violence in certain parts of Brooklyn. We have to go after the gangs.  

Dokoupil: Well, everybody agrees you should go after serious violent crime. That's not controversial. But the Manhattan DA made comments yesterday about not going after smaller offenses, fare beating, resisting arrest, there were a couple that he listed, and that's controversial. Do you think that stopping big crime begins by going after smaller crime? 

Mayor: Yes, I do but, also I know DA Bragg. I respect him. He's a great prosecutor, former US Attorney, and here's what I believe in my plan as I speak with them. At the precinct level, someone comes in for a petty theft. We're at the precinct level, you identified that they have a mental health issue, instead of locking them up, let's defer prosecution, let's have a local community based organization that deals with mental health illnesses handle it right at the precinct. That's the coordination we need. There's no reason to put someone a mental health illness in Rikers Island. That's the revolving door. Let's give them the services they need so we could prevent them from going into the Duane Reade stealing again.  

King: Can we talk about stop and frisk, because you seem to be very open to stop and frisk, you know, many people believe that it's a racist policy. Mayor Bloomberg actually apologized for stop and frisk, and I've heard you say you're open to it as long as it can be done properly. How do you do stop and frisk properly?  

Burleson: Without targeting Black and Brown people? 

Mayor: Yes. So – that’s such an important question. We talk about this often, but it never really settles in on people and Bloomberg apologized for the abuse. A misuse of a tool is a weapon. We weaponized a tool. So you call someone, Gayle, and you state that there's a man in front of my house, he put a gun in his waistband. That police officer can't go and investigate that crime, ask that person, stop them, question them, and then frisk them if the law – if the level of questioning reaches there, then you have taken away a valuable tool, that tool – 

Gayle: But that's pretty specific, though, Mr. Mayor. I think a lot of people that complained about stop and frisk was reasonable suspicion and you could make anything reasonably suspicious, can't you?  

Mayor: Yes, and that's the abuse. Remember what I said, abuse of a tool is a weapon, and what do I know that so well, I testified in federal court in the Floyd versus New York City Police Department. The judge wrote in her testimony, I'm ruling against the police department because of Eric Adams’ testimony. 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement, the organization I co-founded, we led the charge of the overly abuse of stop and frisk, and how police were abusing policing in the city.  

Dokoupil: You brought in a Chief of Police from the outside, sterling reputation out on Long Island. I know you're huddling with her, what is the timetable for a speech from you or a detailed plan from on crime in the city?  

Mayor: Well, you know, I love when people say that, the timetable was Eric's timetable. I must put together the right team, the right analysis, bringing my district attorneys, my ATF, my federal, my state and my city law makers. I know it's exciting when the media says, you know, give us a date, give us a date. No, it’s my date, I'm the Mayor of the city. Well, I'm going to do it right. I'm not going to roll it out prematurely just because people are asking the question, I'm going to roll it out ready. We have a plan in place. I want to get buy-in from my state lawmakers – 

Burleson: Right – 

Mayor: I want to get buy-in from my district attorneys and prosecutors. And I want to get buy in from the other law enforcement agency. If you roll it up prematurely, people get offended, and you don't get to execute your plan. 

King: As Mayor of the city, you've been on the job five days and already you're getting some criticism. You said cooks and dishwashers don't have academic skills to sit in a corner office. Did you mean it the way that it came out? Because when the headline doesn't look so good - 

Mayor: Right, right. No, we were saying low skilled employees. Listen, I was a cook. You know, I was a dishwasher.  

King: What was the point you were making?  

Mayor: That when you talk about closing down our city – 

King: Yeah.  

Mayor: If you are a dishwasher, you can't remotely do your job, and we don't have an accountant in the office space coming into a restaurant  - 

Burleson: To occupy that space.  

Mayor: Exactly, then you're not going into that restaurant, that dishwasher is not going to have a job. 

Burleson: The accountant can do his job remotely.  

Mayor: Exactly. And the goal is we need to open the city so low wage employees are able to survive. If no one came into that restaurant when I was paying my way through college, I would not have been able to survive and families can’t survive and that's the mess. People are going to try to take everything I say and distort, but I'm focused. I'm disciplined and I'm grinding to bring my city back. 

Burleson: All right - 

Dokoupil: All right – 

King: You know, I saw your news conference yesterday. The only Mayor I have ever heard, guys, say, “okay, guys, I got  to bounce.” 

[Laughter] 

King: Thank you. I know you got to bounce. 

Dokoupil: We appreciate you, come on back soon, Mayor Adams. 

Mayor: Thank you. 

King: Never heard that before. 

Dokoupil: Mayor Eric Adams, it is now 8:11, he’s going to bounce.  

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