NYC Mayor Eric Adams rips Albany lawmakers after session ends without more public safety action: ‘Where is the reality?’

Mayor Adams questioned Monday what “reality” Albany lawmakers are living in after they wrapped up this year’s legislative session without acting on his demand for a controversial addition to the state’s bail laws.

For months, Adams and his team pushed state legislators to pass a bill that would give judges the power to consider the “dangerousness” of a defendant before deciding whether to set bail or keep them incarcerated pending trial.

But the 2022 lawmaking session in the state capitol came to an end over the weekend without any action on the dangerousness front — and Adams said Monday morning that he couldn’t wrap his head around why legislators balked at his proposal.

“Sometimes I just feel that with some lawmakers that they are just not dealing with the reality. Idealism can’t displace realism,” Adams told reporters while visiting an NYPD detective bureau field office in Brooklyn for a gun violence briefing.

“When I have some of these conversations, I’ve had lawmakers say to me that young people are carrying guns because they feel unsafe and so there should be understanding for that, that they’re carrying guns. No! No! It’s not understandable.”

During negations on public safety issues this spring, Adams said one lawmaker told him to “let everybody out” from Rikers Island to address the crisis at the city jail.

“Where is the reality here? That is not what New Yorkers want,” he said.

Adams did not name any of the lawmakers he blamed for his Albany headaches, but progressive Democrats in the Legislature have been vehemently opposed to adding a dangerousness standard.

The proposal first came up during budget talks in the spring, when Adams, with support from Gov. Hochul, argued that the inability for judges to consider the dangerousness results in defendants being needlessly set free to commit more crimes.

The mayor has repeatedly tied the city’s spate of gun violence to what he describes as the state’s overly lax criminal justice laws — a point he reiterated at Monday’s event.

“No one takes criminal justice seriously anymore. These bad guys no longer take them seriously,” he said. “They believe our criminal justice system is a laughing stock of our entire country.”

But progressive Democrats have countered that there’s no data to back up the mayor’s argument and alleged a dangerousness standard would disproportionately impact Black and Brown New Yorkers.

“These proposals would roll back progress the state has made toward ending the criminalization of poverty and do nothing to advance public safety,” Brooklyn Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, who went on a hunger strike in protest of Adams’ proposed bail law tweaks, said in a statement in April.

Despite the dangerousness dilemma, Adams secured some concessions from the Legislature on the heated bail issue this year, including a bill that gives judges more discretion in cases involving gun possession.

Adams acknowledged those wins Monday.

“We made some victories in Albany around public safety. We would have liked to receive more, like the dangerous standard, that’s so important,” he said. “I am hoping that they reexamine that in the next legislative cycle because we have to close some of those loopholes that are dealing with public safety.”

Adams’ appearance at the detective bureau field office — where NYPD brass filled him in on some takedowns of organized crime gangs — comes as the city’s shooting rates are dropping slightly.

After remaining elevated for most of the spring, shooting were as of Sunday down 7% this year as compared to 2021, according to NYPD data. Murders are also down 9% so far this year.

But the major crime rate — a compilation of seven major felonies, including murder — is up 38%, the data shows. The surge is fueled by a 40% jump in robberies and a 51% spike in grand larcenies.

Adams, who made crime-fighting the centerpiece of his successful mayoral campaign last year, credited the slight improvement in shooting rates to his decision to reintroduce a modified version of the NYPD’s plainclothes units.

“The units that everyone criticized me for … Everyone said, ‘No, don’t do it, Eric,’” Adams said. “But you know me, being a former cop, I’m used to people yelling at me, screaming at me, spitting at me, saying what I shouldn’t do — I’m focused, I knew we were doing the right thing.”