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 delivering remarks at a private event on Dec. 13, 2019, held by the Harlem Business Alliance, a video 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 group that he helped co-found made up of African American NYPD officers. “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 dollars,” 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.”
The video was shot by Thomas Lopez-Pierre, a local activist and founder of the Black Lives Matter Real Estate Forum LLC.
Lopez-Pierre told the Daily News over the phone Friday that Adams’ comments were par for the course.
“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 was at the Harlem Business Alliance that day to talk about how he would as mayor “right the wrongs of racist contract practices” in the city.
While he was encouraged by what Adams had to say in 2019, Lopez-Pierre told the Daily News he’s disappointed by the mayor’s newly released anti-crime plan, which focuses on beefing up the NYPD.
Lopez-Pierre said Adams should have instead focused on creating more jobs and economic opportunities for Black New Yorkers — and offered an ominous prediction for the future.
“More cops are going to get killed because Black men do not have opportunity,” he said. “I think it’s a great plan for white people to feel falsely safe ... Before the end of the year, more than one police officer is going to be killed.”
A spokesman for Adams did not immediately return a request for comment Friday afternoon.
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