Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears Live on Fox5’s “The 5 O’clock News”

February 20, 2024

Steve Lacy: City Hall today addressing new NYPD data showing subway crime up 22 percent since the beginning of the year.

Natasha Verma: Mayor Adams joins us now to tell us about the plan to help keep New Yorkers safe underground.  Mayor Adams, thanks for joining us.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Good to speak with you both, Steve and Natasha.

Verma: So, every day last week, I'm sure you know that there was a violent crime on the subway, and today you announced that patrols will be expanded. I guess the idea behind that is to have more officers visible. Talk to us a little bit about this plan to keep New Yorkers safe.

Mayor Adams: Yes, the commissioner and the first deputy commissioner, they put in a plan where we're going to have officers in the transit system do 12‑hour tours. We find that allows us to get a greater deal of what we call omnipresence.

And we're also going to encourage our officers to walk through the trains — which we're seeing crimes take place on our actual trains — and really have visibility around the token booths and on the platforms.

You know, we put in place the Subway Safety Plan in 2022, and we were extremely successful. The finance was, you know, currently not there any longer, and we're going to engage in a conversation with our state partners to continue this.

Lacy: Right, money always the big issue; of course. The migrant issue continues to be a huge issue as well, the cost of housing and caring for asylum seekers expected to grow to $12 billion without any federal or state help.  Have you had any help from, any indication there's going to be help coming from either the state or the White House? And when was the last time you talked to the president about this issue?

Mayor Adams: I haven't communicated with the president for quite some time. I've communicated with the White House to share our concerns. After 10 trips to Washington, D.C., we're clear that it's not going to be an immediate response and resources.

But we've had great talks with not only the governor who has been a real partner in this area, but also with our lawmakers. I was in Albany last weekend and interacting with our lawmakers. They understand this is a real financial burden on the city, and they're going to assist us as much as possible to give us the relief that we deserve.

Lacy: Why do you think the president in particular has been so reluctant to get involved in this issue with you?

Mayor Adams: I believe it's a combination of not only the president, I think both the houses need to look at real true immigration reform. The Republicans have stymied and stopped immigration reform for years.  But while we deal with the mid and long‑term plan. there needs to be some immediate relief for all the cities that are involved.  That's El Paso, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Houston. You look at all of these cities, no cities should be taking on the responsibility of a national crisis, and that's what we're doing right now.

Verma: I really want to talk to you about these prepaid cash cards that the city is giving migrants. I know you've talked about this being a pilot program, 500 migrant families will get $1,000 a month.  Talk about the built‑in protection so that there's no misusing of the funds. How can you guarantee that?

Mayor Adams: First, we want to be really clear: each migrant will get about $13 a day, so it's not automatically $1,000 as it has been reported. And this is going to be part of our cost-saving measures. We're going to save $600,000 a month, $7.2 million a year.

I told the team we must bring down the cost of migrant and asylum seekers, the cost by 20 percent, and this is one of those initiatives with a 500‑person pilot project.  And we are clear: if they abuse, if it's abused in any way, it's supposed to go to only food and baby supplies. If it's abused, we would take those cards away.

And we believe that we're going to monitor it as close as possible, and this is an opportunity to put money in our local stores and bodegas and supermarkets.

Verma: I do want to follow up on that. So, you're saying cost saving measures. Can you talk to us more, then, about the reports we've been reading that this was a no‑bid vendor? Why no‑bid if it's a cost saving initiation?

Mayor Adams: Well, for emergency procurement, you can do no bids. This has been done before under previous administrations as well.  This product was introduced when I was on the campaign trail trying to find effective ways of using what's called cyber wallets or using cards for every form of giving services to our city residents.

And we want to expand using this type of method of everything from using our subway system to getting our normal payments, those who are receiving SNAP benefits, WIC benefits. This is a new way of making sure we can be more efficient, we can monitor better and really weed out any type of waste or mismanagement.

Lacy: All right, let's talk about the latest on the debate over whether New York City should continue to be a sanctuary city. That's been a huge issue, obviously, in light of the migrant crisis. I know you told the City Council to explore whether that should be the case. Walk us through exactly what your position is on that and where we are on that given the cost associated with maintaining the sanctuary city designation in light of the migrant crisis.

Mayor Adams: A great question, and that was not my communication with the City Council to explore if we should be a sanctuary city or not. This is a sanctuary city from the days of Mayor Koch, and what happened under a previous administration is that we changed a part of it that won't allow us to communicate with ICE at all.

That is a component I think is important. People who commit violent felonies in the city, we should be communicating with ICE to have them deported, not allowing them to go into our correctional facilities, come out, commit more crimes.

It is a privilege to be here in this city and over 170,000 people have come to the city. Overwhelmingly, they're doing the right things, but that numerical minority that are violent and carrying out violence in our city, they should not be allowed to stay here. That is the component of the sanctuary city that I think we should take a new look at.

Verma: Mr. Mayor, let's talk about teen mental health. I mean, this has been a huge issue across our country, especially here in New York City. And social media can sometimes always be a major culprit.  There's now a lawsuit. Talk just a little bit about what you're hoping to accomplish with that.

Mayor Adams: And this has been something I've been talking about since I was Brooklyn borough president. We have been meeting with social media companies to talk about the impact on how this impacts on the mental health of our young people. And we're saying to social media, let's stop using algorithms to draw our young people into dark places.

We're seeing an increase in depression, increase in suicidal ideations, we are seeing some real issues that we believe social media is playing a major role on. And so we announced the lawsuit, and others across the country are looking at this same issue.

We've done some great things with social media. We don't want to demonize and say get rid of social media. We're saying be a responsible partner as we address the issues that are impacting our young people, particularly those who are 14 and younger.

Lacy: How confident are you going to get a great result from this given the fact that at this point the social media companies actually probably have more money than New York City to fight laws like this that would cut down on their engagement?

Mayor Adams: Well, I think it's déjà vu: cigarette manufacturers had billions, and the people spoke loudly, parents were concerned, loved ones who saw their loved ones deal with the impacts of cancer that came from cigarette smoking.

And we have a history in this country of fighting for what we believe is right with families but in particular our children. And the science is clear: a young child's brain particularly under the age of 14 is not really at the point developed to deal with this impact that's coming from social media.

Verma: Yes, big problem. All right, Mayor Adams, we appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on our show.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Take care.

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