Eric Adams’ Calling Card Is Becoming A Political Vulnerability

NEW YORK — The police force that catapulted Eric Adams to the New York City mayoralty threatens to be his undoing — if a rival can effectively snatch his political calling card.

The tough-on-crime mayor heads into his reelection year with a trail of chaos and corruption through the upper ranks of the NYPD — most recently the abrupt resignation of Adams’ handpicked chief of department over sexual assault allegations. Another high-ranking cop was canned in the process.

The mayor has named four police commissioners in three years, having forced out his second top cop after federal agents raided the homes of him and his twin brother. Adams’ deputy mayor for public safety resigned, and a top aide advising him on policing was pushed out — both amid investigations into their behavior.

Against this backdrop, New York City voters continue to register crime as their leading concern.

The sordid mess atop the nation’s largest police force — which the police captain-turned-mayor is trying to clean up with the recent appointment of a new commissioner, Jessica Tisch — could loosen his tenuous grip on the mayoralty. But Adams’ reelection challengers are curiously staying silent on last week’s resignation of Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey.

“It’s clear his key campaign message has not been operationalized very well,” Basil Smikle Jr., former head of the New York State Democratic Party, said in an interview. “But trying to consistently convince voters this has negatively impacted their lives is a much harder challenge for his opponents — the onus is really on them to explain why this is disqualifying for [Adams].”

As if to illustrate his point, most of Adams’ Democratic rivals did not seize on the latest scandal to rock the department. The New York Post published a graphic account last Friday from one of Maddrey’s underlings accusing him of repeatedly sexually assaulting her at NYPD headquarters, in exchange for approving overtime so excessive it triggered a separate investigation. Maddrey has denied the allegations.

It would seem an obvious line of attack on the law-and-order mayor, and the relative quiet from leading rivals indicates opponents on Adams’ political left are grappling with how to campaign on his signature issue.

“We feel we have to pick our outrage. And frankly, the timing of this one made this a less attractive target. Not particularly noble, but that’s the calculus,” said an aide to one rival campaign, granted anonymity to freely discuss internal strategy.

Another staffer on an opposing team also cited the pre-holiday timing of Maddrey’s ouster as a deterrent for piling on. The reaction stood in contrast to the onslaught of statements calling Adams to task when prosecutors indicted him on bribery charges in September — charges he is fighting in court.

One candidate, lawyer Jim Walden, on Thursday called on the Department of Justice to investigate the allegations of sexual abuse in the upper ranks of the NYPD.

“The current police commissioner is doing a great job for New Yorkers, but she is the fourth commissioner in two years in an administration that has zero credibility,” Walden, who is running as an independent, said in a statement, adding the problem “was created by the men the mayor promoted and protected.”

And state Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, a far-left Democrat, posted that Maddrey “wasn’t just the highest ranking uniformed officer but the Mayor’s close friend” and noted a day earlier, the mayor’s top aide was indicted on bribery charges. “In 2025, we’re going to end this ugly chapter in NYC history,” he added.

The mayor’s oversight of the NYPD stands in contrast with his rhetoric during the 2021 campaign, when he pledged to effectively manage the agency tasked with driving down crime — a winning message for voters concerned with a pandemic-era rise in lawlessness.

While Adams quickly called the allegations against Maddrey “extremely concerning” and vowed an investigation, he defended Maddrey in the face of misconduct allegations last year — in opposition to his first police commissioner — and tapped him for the top uniformed slot in the first place despite a troubled tenure at the department.

Taken together, the mayor’s decision to install longtime friends in positions of power hobbled the most important department for his reelection just as the city struggled to return to pre-pandemic levels of crime — something it has yet to achieve.

“It sounds so boring, but it is all about governance,” Elizabeth Glazer, former head of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice under Bill de Blasio, said in an interview. “Do you have the right people in the right places whose commitment is entirely to making the city safer and not lining their pockets? Not to get sexual favors. Not to ensure they have a contract. And not about retaliation.”

Glazer subsequently founded a research and policy journal called Vital City. In August, the outlet released an analysis that aims to explain why New Yorkers are still worried about crime despite the city being the safest big metropolis in the country, and despite the fact that most major index crimes have fallen under Adams.

For starters, crime is still higher than it was before the pandemic, the report noted. Felony assaults are up several years running. Lower-level crimes like harassment have consistently gone up since 2020 — and at the time of the report were expected to reach a decade-long high.

Instead of leading a nationwide reduction in crime rates this time around, the report argued, the NYPD is trailing other cities around the state and country.

The mayor’s office pushed back on the idea that leadership changes had any effect on crime rates.

“When Mayor Adams took office in January 2022, the city faced significant challenges: crime — especially shootings — was surging, homeless encampments were appearing across the five boroughs, and tourism was nearing all-time lows,” Adams’ spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus said in a statement. “Today, crime continues to decline, our Homeless Encampment Task Force has kept our streets from resembling those of other major U.S. cities, jobs in New York City hit an all-time high this year, and tourism has made a remarkable comeback,” Mamelak Altus said.

And a person familiar with Adams’ thinking, who was granted anonymity to discuss policy and responses to 2025 opponents, argued New York City is struggling against obstacles beyond the mayor’s control, including 2019 bail reform laws, a dysfunctional court system and Albany’s refusal to grant clearer authority to forcibly remove New Yorkers struggling with several mental health issues.

“You could ask anybody in law enforcement and they will tell you those things are a huge problem and the floor for crime is naturally higher now,” the person said.

Adams’ challengers have primarily focused on allegations of his corruption and mismanagement — a tacit acknowledgment of the challenge in campaigning on combating crime against a retired police captain. Nearly three in 10 New York City voters ranked crime their top concern in a New York Times/Siena Poll in October. Hispanics and residents of the Bronx registered particularly high concern with lawlessness.

“I believe that effective and fair policing go together,” City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is running to Adams’ left, said in an interview with POLITICO earlier this year. “And that is largely a management challenge.”

How relevant the current troubles facing Adams will be six months from now could depend on the courts and law enforcement officials. Adams himself is set to face federal bribery charges in April. And city, state and federal prosecutors are looking into several other figures who previously held sway over the NYPD, which could vault dysfunction at the agency back into the headlines, even if the mayor’s new commissioner rights the ship.

The person with knowledge of the mayor’s thinking said the campaign will have an easy answer for anyone in the left-of-center field who raises issues with Adams’ stewardship of the NYPD.

“They all have a history of doing things that are so unpopular now that the response to any argument that [Adams] isn’t tough enough on crime will be: Maybe we should just defund the police like you said, [Lander]. Or maybe we should have passed even more lenient criminal justice reforms that would have let more people accused of crimes out of jail, [State Sen. Zellnor Myrie],” the person said.