New Yorkers need to put down phones, protect each other: Eric Adams

Never mind “If you see something, say something” — Mayor Eric Adams actually wants New Yorkers to do something.

More specifically, he wants a revival of Good Samaritans who rise to the occasion when fellow New Yorkers are in trouble.

“[People] believe helping is having your camera out and taking a video of it — you know, that is not helping someone,” Adams told me. “We need to really have a campaign talking about how it’s important to look after your fellow New Yorker, because there’s been a number of cases where … people just stood by.”

Having written extensively about public safety in New York — including some of my own horror stories being harassed on the street — I was eager for the opportunity to sit down with the mayor at Gracie Mansion to discuss how he would continue to keep New Yorkers safe.

While crime is down on many measures, including murders, burglaries, and robberies, I have heard over and over from friends and neighbors that they still don’t feel safe on the trains or even just walking down some streets. Women are still being grabbed at subway stations and, as one told me last month, being “harassed daily.”

The mayor agreed that public perception hasn’t caught up to stats — but he understands why.

He believes high-profile incidents, repeat offenders, random acts of violence and people with mental illness roaming the streets all “shake the consciousness of New Yorkers.”

“It could be a small number,” the mayor said. “But it just really gives you the feeling of being unsafe.”

It doesn’t help, he agreed, that people no longer feel “safety in numbers” as they once did.

The perception issue is one of the reasons behind the new Q Teams, quality of life units within the NYPD meant to improve the sense of order and safety in the city.

“We had people sleeping in trees in New York, sleeping on the side of highways and roadways, tents, cardboard boxes,” he recalled. “When you look around the city 1755861328, for the most part, it’s not there.”

Earlier this month, the mayor proposed that, in addition to forcibly committing clearly mentally ill individuals, Q Teams should also be empowered to remove individuals struggling with substance use disorders from the streets.

“They won’t get to help that they need. We can’t just ignore them and leave them on the streets,” he explained.

He credited his administration with quelling “disorder” and accomplishing “everything from clean streets, to removing those with severe mental health illness off our streets, to removing [homeless] encampments.”

But Adams wants the teams to “go further” by addressing abandoned vehicles, open drug use, illegal dumping and loud music.

“It’s a combination of making you physically safe and making people feel safe,” Adams said. “I’d like to believe, if you don’t hear it around Gracie Mansion, you should not hear or see it around Mother Gaston Boulevard or South Jamaica Queens or the South Bronx.”

Asked what his greatest achievement in office has been, Adams says the reduction in gun violence.

Earlier this month, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch reported 412 shooting incidents, with 489 victims in the first 7 months of 2025 — both record lows.

“Gun violence is extremely important. It gives an indicator of how well your city’s doing… New York is the safest big city in America,” Adams told me.

On Thursday Adams’ longtime right-hand, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, was indicted for a second time on corruption charges, with her alleged to have accepted more than $75,000 in bribes in exchange for political favors while in City Hall.

On the same day Adam’s longtime confidant and former Asian affairs advisor Winne Greco was accused of handing a reporter over $200 stuffed in a potato chip bag.

Adams admits some of his choices of staff were a mistake. He said: “There were people I trusted, I should not have trusted. There were people I put in positions that I should not have put in positions.

“But you try to make the best decision for New Yorkers. And when you look at those mistakes of judgment and mistakes in making the right calls, and say, okay, well, how did you do, even in spite of that?”

A former NYPD captain, the mayor also called out mayoral race rival Zohran Mamdani for flip-flopping on the department. Mamdani has previously called to defund the police but since moderated his stance, now saying he would not do so if elected.

“I think it’s the highest level of hypocrisy,” Adams said of Mamdani. “He was pandering to his voting bloc by saying ‘defund the police’… Now you change your tune to something else. It’s clear that he would say anything that’s needed to get elected.”

The mayor warned that Mamdani’s “lack of understanding of public safety is going to endanger public safety.

“The danger is not only him as a candidate, but his platform. He’s part of the DSA [Democratic Socialists of America]. They hate our way of life… [They] don’t believe in family, [they] believe that prostitution should be legalized.”

His hope is that take-no-bull New Yorkers will see through Mamdani’s hollow facade.

“Growing up in poverty, I know what it is to have someone promise me something that they can’t deliver on,” Adams said of his opponent. “It’s wrong, it’s hurtful, and it’s harmful.”