Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears On 94.7 The Block’s “Jonesy In The Morning”

July 24, 2024

Wayne Mayo: Mayor, are you there?

Mayor Eric Adams: Good morning, how are you?

Tarsha Jones: Ladies and gentlemen, the honorable Mayor Eric Adams. 

Mayor Adams: How are you, sister?

Jones: I’m good.

Mayor Adams: Good to speak with you. 

Jones: I'm so grateful that you call in every week and I was hoping that I was going to be able to see you and meet you in person at the Rise Up New York concert going down on August 3rd.

Mayor Adams: Yes, looking forward to it and just, it's all part of our Summer of Possibility. We're just really doing free stuff all over the city. The concert is very much part of it. My chief advisor, Ingrid T. Lewis-Martin, has really brought on a good show. We're looking forward to it.

Jones: Yes. Enough about that. See, I was supposed to be headlining and singing my hit single, Calling All the Ladies. I have been summoned to perform elsewhere. I need you to fill in for me and call all the ladies.

Mayor Adams: Done. Give me the lyrics so I can practice 

Jones: Yes!

Mayo: Are you ready, New York?

Jones: You heard it here No really though guys you need to come out because Keith Sweat, they're bringing some really cool artists that don't necessarily come through that often. Keith Sweat I know for a fact is going to be there and these events are always packed. There's just a lot of fellowship and community. Good food, good music, great DJs. It's an awesome experience. 

Mayor Adams: Yes, Keith is a good solid brother, been around a little bit and his songs are just still, they still resonate as he just knows [inaudible.].

Jones: That's a fact, and I think he's from Harlem. Is he from harlem? So yes that's uptown's own, come on Keith.

Mayor Adams: Love it, love it. 

Jones: So congratulations, shifting gears, congratulations, because tomorrow, I believe, is the rollout of metal detectors in the subway stations?

Mayor Adams: Yes. You know it's amazing how you have those who are a very small number of people who don't understand the significance of that. Stopping a gun from coming on the subway system using an easy pathway to do so is just amazing when you think about it. You've got to see this technology, sister. It points to where the gun is located on a person's body. 

Jones: Oh. 

Mayor Adams: Yes. It's not just a metal detector. There's a screen, and if a person is carrying a firearm and they walk past the detector, it lights up and shows you where the gun is on that person.

Jones: Is there someone there all the time monitoring?

Mayor Adams: Yes. This is a pilot. We're testing the technology. Someone will always be there watching the screen as a person walks through you don't have to stop and pause, you know when you do those metal detectors in the airport you have to stop and empty your pockets. No you just keep walking and as soon as you walk through if you're carrying a firearm it would highlight exactly where that firearm is on your body and the police officers want to be at the location. 

Jones: Wow, so there's no, he just said, there's no holding up the commute, because, you know New Yorkers, they always got somewhere to be and ain't got time for nothing. It's only, is it only detecting guns?

Mayor Adams: Yes, it detects guns. It can be programmed to detect other weapons, razors, like that. My big focus are the guns. Remember we had that shooting on the train with just really unknown, so many peak passengers who were there. Other New Yorkers who weren't there. Just giving folks the safety that they deserve.

Jones: Yes, that's a little piece of mind. You know you still gotta keep your head on the New York swivel because it is New York. This is a step in the right direction. Also, there have been a lot of high-profile takedowns in the Bronx for those illegal weed spots.

Mayor Adams: Yes, and the legalization of cannabis was important because it went after what they call legacy individuals. These are folks who were arrested for carrying small quantities of marijuana, and their lives were disrupted. The lawmakers wanted to make sure that you allowed them to be at the front of the line to open businesses. 

What has happened, you have these large number of illegal cannabis shops that are opening up all over our city, and they're selling products that's not tested. Some of them are laced with all sorts of things that no one knows about. We have the mushrooms there. They're targeting our children. We have really done a crackdown. We've closed about 700 of these illegal shops. We're seeing the legal shops' profits are starting to increase now. 

The big takeaway is, as we saw in the Bronx, it was the illegal social club. They had about anywhere from five to ten million dollars worth of illegal cannabis and other items, and a shotgun inside. This place has 17 complaints from residents about everything from loud noise to violence and so this was a huge takedown. That was the third because then and early in the week, we had a deli that in the back of the deli, they had, a few millions of dollars of cannabis and mushrooms and other illegal items.

Jones: Wow. We're talking to Mayor Eric Adams, everybody. Keep it where you got it. It's 94.7 The Block. We'll be back with more.

[Music break.]

We are back with Mayor Eric Adams. So we've got big news on the presidential front, or at least the presidential candidate front. What are your thoughts and opinions because we don't really care what the governor got to say. We do not care at all

Mayor Adams: No, we're really excited about the candidacy of the vice president. Yes, the Vice President Harris who's now stepping up to take on this awesome challenge. I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised at her style, ability to read, and she comes with a real thoughtful approach to government. And look, we’re on the precipice of having the first African American woman mayor, I mean women president. 

This is huge, you know. Not only is it substantive because she has the talent and the skills being a former senator and former prosecutor but it's also symbolic. Think about all of these young ladies who are going to be looking towards this and seeing themselves. Young boys stop me all the time and say, I'm going to be male one day. When you break these glass ceilings, I remember how I felt when David Dinkins won. It just puts you on a trajectory. 

Here we're going to have a woman president in the most important country on the globe. This is a great time to be alive. We saw with Barack Obama, and now we're going to see it twice in our lifetime. That says a lot for those who came before us.

Jones: I want to ask you if you can give some sort of conversation to the men out there, particularly Black men, that are against her because she, according to them, I'm seeing this on social media she made a practice of locking them up when she was, what was she a senator? Oh no but she was a prosecutor. 

Mayo: Attorney general. 

Jones: They're using that as the reason to not vote for her and we need all the votes because even though we are excited and this could be a huge first and she's definitely safer than the other option. We need all the votes so what do you tell the guys to get them encouraged and make them feel confident in giving their vote to Kamala.

Mayor Adams: If they are fortunate enough to still have their mothers in their lives, look at their mom. If they have sisters like my sister who, my little sister is everything to me, she has been my rock. Think about your sister. If you have daughters, what is the future of your daughter and what it means to her? 

We have to set aside that if we did some bad things in our lives and someone held us accountable for it, we cannot sit back and blame them for it. It wasn't as though she was unjustly targeting Black men. All of us made mistakes in our lives. Like I said, I was arrested as a young man. You hit bumps in the road and you need to look towards the future and the future is seeing someone like her leading our country in the right direction.

Jones: Right, so we're not playing down anybody's feelings but we have to do what we have to do for the future.

Mayor Adams: Yes, you know what, you and I both know, when it comes down sometimes to endorsing folks of color, people come up with creative ways of not. You know, a brother tells me listen man, I'm not voting for you because you took my third-grade girlfriend away from me. I mean, come on. We got to get over this madness. 

Jones: Yes, that's fear, that's fear. Also, when you don't see reflections of that often, then you're fearful of what you don't know. I get it. 

Mayor Adams: Well said, well said. 

Jones: Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm going to get you the lyrics to Calling All Ladies, and you got to get your dance steps ready now for Rise Up.

Mayo: Understood.

Mayor Adams: Now, listen, I know how to bust a move.

Jones: Oh, my God. What am I going to do with you, ghost? Be safe out there in them streets. 

Mayor Adams: All right, take care.

Jones: Talk soon.