NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams bragged in 2019 about being a better police officer than his “cracker” colleagues in the NYPD, the New York Daily News has learned.
Adams, who was at the time gearing up to launch his campaign for mayor, went on the racially charged diatribe while at a private event in Harlem on Dec. 13, 2019, a video exclusively obtained by the Daily News shows.
“Every day in the Police Department, I kicked those crackers’ a--,” Adams says in the video.
“Man, I was unbelievable in the Police Department with 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement,” he continued, referring to a police advocacy group he co-founded in the 1990s. “Became a sergeant, a lieutenant, and a captain. You know the story — some people all of a sudden trying to reinvent me. But the reality is what I was then is who I am now.”
Adams went on to discuss his forthcoming campaign for mayor, joking that he would rather “grow a beard, smoke some weed and leave this stuff alone. You hear me?”
“The people who say, ‘Where’s our real Black leaders?’ They’re going to say, ‘Who’s Eric? Why does Eric think he should be mayor?’ Well, Negro, you run, you run. Go raise the $7 million,” he said. “Let me tell you something, man. They are lining up — ‘Eric can’t be mayor.’ In the corners of the city, they are lining up. They know me. They know what I’m about, and they know what I’m going to do as the mayor of the City of New York. Listen, we’re not going to play this game.”
Asked about the matter Friday, Adams apologized and sought to put his heated comments into context.
“I definitely apologize. Inappropriate, inappropriate comments, should not have been used,” said Adams, who retired from the NYPD in 2006 after more than two decades as a cop. “Someone asked me a question using that comment and playing on that word. I responded in that comment, but clearly these comments should not have been used, and I apologize not only to those who heard it, but to New Yorkers because they should expect more from me.”
The video resurfaced on the heels of Adams attending funerals for Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora, two young NYPD officers killed by a gunman in Harlem last month.
Pat Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association, the NYPD’s largest union, said Friday afternoon he had spoken to Adams about the video, but did not criticize him for it, instead asking his members to not “rush to outrage.”
“We have spent far too many hours together in hospital emergency rooms these past few weeks, and we’ve worked together for decades before that,” Lynch said. “A few seconds of video will not define our relationship. We have a lot of work to do together to support our members on the streets.”
The video was shot by Thomas Lopez-Pierre, a controversial former political candidate who has a history of anti-Semitic, racist and anti-police remarks.
Lopez-Pierre defended Adams’ 2019 comments when reached over the phone Friday.
“This is how Black people talk. To us, it was family. We were having a conversation with family,” Lopez-Pierre said.
Lopez-Pierre said Adams’ speech that day, delivered at the Harlem Business Alliance, was focused on how he would as mayor “right the wrongs of racist contract practices” in the city.
While defending Adams’ jab at white cops, Lopez-Pierre said he’s disappointed by the mayor’s newly released anti-crime plan, which he claimed focuses too much on hiring more cops rather than creating economic opportunities for Black New Yorkers.
“More cops are going to get killed because Black men do not have opportunity,” Lopez-Pierre said. “I think it’s a great plan for white people to feel falsely safe.”
———
