NYC Mayor Adams wants state lawmakers to work on bail laws after transit cop brawl

A wild attack against an NYPD transit cop prompted Mayor Adams on Tuesday to say that the state legislature should convene an emergency session to tighten the state’s bail laws, which he’s repeatedly criticized as too lax.

Adams fielded several questions Tuesday about a video that began circulating a day before depicting a teenager and transit cop trading blows after the teen allegedly hopped a turnstile at a Manhattan subway station. The mayor described the altercation as the latest example of how the state’s bail laws are allowing for dangerous suspects to be caught and released.

“Just a few days ago, he was arrested for robbery. Catch, release, repeat. Catch, release, repeat,” Adams said of the teen. “Now he’s back, decides he’s not going to pay his fare, the transit officer communicates with him. He decided that he was not going to leave the system. The transit officer — he didn’t arrest him for not paying his fare — he told him to leave the system, and the response was what we saw in the video.”

The incident underground happened just days after the Republican candidate for governor, Rep. Lee Zeldin, was attacked by a knife-wielding man at one of his campaign rallies — prompting Zeldin to criticize the state’s bail laws as well.

Asked if he finds it ironic that his position on bail reform tracked so closely with Zeldin, a Republican who’s running against Adams’ pick in the race, Gov. Hochul, the mayor turned the question on its head. He responded that the prosecutor on the case, Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley, a campaign co-chair for Zeldin, could have leveled a more serious charge against Zeldin’s assailant, which would have made him eligible to be held pending bail — but Doorley opted against it.

“In one breath, he can’t talk about lax actions from the criminal justice system, and in another breath, the person that represents him is releasing the person that attacked him on stage,” Adams said. “Consistency in message must match the consistency in actions.”

For weeks now, Zeldin has been honing in on public safety — an issue Adams also exploited in his bid for mayor — but Adams said Tuesday that Zeldin is behind the curve and cited Hochul’s recent budget, which came with a new law allowing judges to consider if a defendant has a history of gun use and other factors when deciding to set bail.

“I think it’s ironic that he finally caught up to Kathy Hochul and I,” Adams said of Zeldin. “Gov. Hochul made it clear that she was not willing to pass the budget without dealing with some of the issues around criminal justice deform. Because I don’t call it reform. And so I believe he has finally raised his voice for something that Gov. Hochul and I have been talking about for far too long.”

But Adams maintained on Tuesday that more still needs to be done regarding the state’s bail laws, including lawmakers returning to Albany for a special summer session.

“I believe that Albany should consider coming and revisiting some of the violence we’re seeing [from] repeated offenders,” he said. “We’re not talking about somebody who steals an apple. We’re talking about someone that has repeatedly used violence in our city.”

In a separate press conference Tuesday, Hochul said that “no one should be let out who has assaulted a police officer” and highlighted the changes to bail laws during the budget process, but she said there needs to be a “consensus” to advance more changes.

State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) appeared to signal that there isn’t one, though, when it comes to more changes to the state’s bail laws.

“It’s sad that Mayor Adams has joined the ranks of right-wingers who are so grossly demagoguing this issue,” he said in a written statement. “He should focus less on deflecting from his own responsibility for higher crime and more on taking steps that would actually make New York safer.”