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To the Editor:
Mayor Eric Adams is a duplicitous politician who constantly promotes himself, and attacks those he considers his critics. In his mind, an attack on him is an attack on the city, since he believes it’s his city just as he said it’s his police. The Adams administration is a poster child for how not to govern. Three examples: it creates a crisis that doesn’t exist (crime and chaos in the streets), it makes a crisis worse by incompetence (asylum seekers) and it blatantly lies about making progress in solving a long-term crisis (Rikers Island).
Adams himself has a long history of misrepresenting facts, from his personal biography to the city’s budget projections. His biggest misrepresentations are that he’s “the original progressive,” “the Joe Biden of Brooklyn,” and has the backs of Blacks and browns in poor neighborhoods. On the contrary, when it comes to key issues such as criminal justice, affordable housing/tenants’ rights, budgets and taxes, Adams is aligned with Republicans. Like previous administrations, he also has ties to wealthy and powerful corporations, individuals and real estate developers.
One example is how his administration pushed a false narrative about a law-and-order crisis caused by progressive district attorneys, bail reform and the presence in public spaces of the homeless and mentally ill. It helped to create a fear of crime inconsistent with actual crime statistics, which show that violent crime has fallen.
Howard Elterman
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