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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Well, the two high profile killings in the news are dividing the public, including many of our listeners. So many heartfelt texts on one side or another on both of these stories, calls and texts on the last few shows. The acquittal of Daniel Penny for the subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely is horrifying many as granting more permission for people like a white former Marine who was trained to kill to fatally attack someone like a homeless, mentally ill Black person in crisis who was scary but didn't even touch anybody on that train.

On the other hand, many other people are relieved that someone who saw himself as using his training to prevent an act of violence from taking place is not winding up as a criminal for doing so. Republican Congressman Mike Lawler from north of the city released a statement saying Penny should never have been charged. It's reported that Lawler may run for governor next year. On the other side of the question, New York City public advocate Jumaane Williams released a statement asking, "Does anyone doubt that if the roles were reversed and a white former Marine in a moment of crisis was choked to death by a Black homeless man, there would have been a different outcome," from Jumaane Williams.

People are divided on that. On the public reaction to the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the backlash to the backlash, you might say, has begun to grow. We've talked about the thousands upon thousands of laugh emojis posted to the United Healthcare Facebook page. 30,000 of them, according to The New Yorker, when the news of the murder broke and The New York Times article documenting, "Rage and glee," from social media posters from across the political spectrum.

Including even The New York Post and Wall Street Journal, acknowledging the perception that people feel that there has been so much suffering and even deaths inflicted by the practices of big insurance companies like United Healthcare, which is the biggest in the nation. That they found it hard to feel only sympathy for the Thompson family as victims. Here's Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro yesterday at the news conference announcing the arrest of the suspect Luigi Mangione at a McDonald's in Altoona.

Josh Shapiro: Brian Thompson was a father to two, he was a husband and he was a friend to many. Yes, he was the CEO of a health insurance company. In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint.

Brian Lehrer: Shapiro added this.

Josh Shapiro: In some dark corners, this killer is being hailed as a hero. Hear me on this. He is no hero.

Brian Lehrer: Pennsylvania Governor, Josh Shapiro. People are divided on that. Back here in New York, Mayor Adams moved his weekly news conference up a day from the usual slide on Tuesdays to yesterday, Monday. That means our weekly visit from our lead Eric Adams reporter Elizabeth Kim is taking place today rather than tomorrow. Liz joins me now. Hi, Liz. Thanks for making the switch from Wednesday to Tuesday.

Elizabeth Kim: Sure, Brian. Happy Tuesday.

Brian Lehrer: Did the mayor switch his day because of these events?

Elizabeth Kim: We repeatedly asked his press people why he moved the press conference, and they didn't give us an answer yesterday but then we saw later in the evening that he has on his schedule today a visit to Puerto Rico. He will be at a blockchain summit. Politico reported that he will be meeting with Brock Pierce, who is this crypto industry billionaire who has ties to Donald Trump.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. What do you take from that?

Elizabeth Kim: I think it's interesting that he's choosing to take an overseas trip in this moment. The mayor has not traveled in many, many months. He got a lot of flack when he left town during that first year of his mayoralty, going to places like California to raise money. I think he made a trip also to Florida, Chicago, and he got a lot of criticism for it. He's really tamped that down. It's interesting in this moment that he's decided to go to a crypto summit but then again, in his last presser, he was really touting himself as this mayor who was really early on embracing crypto. If you remember, he elected to get his first three paychecks in cryptocurrency.

Brian Lehrer: Right. I remember from last week's news conference, he was laughing about how people mocked him for that. Now that Trump has been elected and the crypto market is booming again and bitcoin is worth $100,000 a coin, nobody should have laughed at him in the first place. The news conference yesterday included NYPD officials as well as the mayor on the Brian Thompson murder and the manhunt. Here's the new police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, on how they pursued the suspect.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch: We deployed drones, canine units and scuba divers. We leveraged the domain awareness system, Argus cameras and conducted aviation canvases. Our detectives also went door to door interviewing potential witnesses and doing the good old fashioned police work that our investigators are famous for. This combination of old school detective work and new age technology is what led to this result today. We must also acknowledge the instrumental role the media and the public played in this case. The images that we shared with the public were spread far and wide, and the tips we received led to the recovery of crucial evidence. We should never underestimate the power of the public to be our eyes and our ears in these investigations.

Brian Lehrer: Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. Liz, sure enough, even as there was coverage of some people posting online that they would not help catch the alleged killer in this case, it was exactly that. Just a worker in a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, who recognized Mangione from the news reports and turned him in as the suspect. The mayor seemed happy it happened that way as a lesson for all New Yorkers when any crime occurs, would you say?

Elizabeth Kim: That's right. They repeated that old adage that we often see. If you see something, say something. There was a lot of pressure on the NYPD and also the relatively new police commissioner, Jessica Tisch. This was a crime that garnered national attention. As the days ticked by and the manhunt was ongoing, I think there was a lot of anxiety and questions as to why couldn't the NYPD, which is arguably the most well equipped police force in the country, not catch him?

It's very interesting if you hear what she says there, she ticks off all the different resources that they used like scuba divers, drones. Then she also talks about just old fashioned police work, just going and interviewing people and then looking at, I imagine, hundreds of hours of surveillance footage. At the end of the day, I think it was surfacing those photos that were disseminated by the media which led to the tip.

Brian Lehrer: On the hundreds of hours of surveillance videos, I saw them talking about that at the news conference in Pennsylvania with Governor Shapiro and officials there. Some of the NYPD, I believe, was represented there as well, that so many hours of surveillance video just to come up with that one or two moments where Mangione dropped his mask to talk to somebody in the youth hostel and then in the taxi cab. Those were real needles in haystacks, but they had them and they apparently led to his capture. Go ahead. Do you want to say something, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth Kim: Yes. There's been some conversation about how at the end of the day, it was really just the public that came forward. It didn't rely on this high tech policing that the NYPD often brags about. I don't know if that's necessarily fair because we don't know. We do know that they at least relied on the technology that was available to them in the form of surveillance technology. This happened in midtown Manhattan, which has a lot of cameras.

How did they identify the cab driver, for instance, who picked him up after the shooting? I think it's fair to say exactly what the police commissioner there said. It was both. It was the use of their technology that did allow them to find these photographs, which in the end was shared with the public and then someone from the public came in with the tip.

Brian Lehrer: I've seen it noted that some people are being critical. This is out of your city hall reporter bid. I don't know how often in a manhunt situation this ever happens, but it's been noted that nobody from his family or his classmates from Penn who would presumably have recognized his face, nobody who knew him turned him in. It took this person in a McDonald's but maybe people don't give up their friends and loved ones. I don't know.

Elizabeth Kim: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: At the news conference yesterday, reporter Max Rivlin-Nadler from the publication Hell Gate asked why there wasn't a similar push for the killers also on the loose, not of a corporate CEO, but a New Yorker in the Financial District for much humbler circumstances. This is a two minute exchange from yesterday's news conference and it begins with Max Rivlin-Nadler's question.

Max Rivlin-Nadler: Mayor Adams, with the CEO shooting, there was a constant stream of updates, surveillance images, crime stopper alerts, TV news spots, requests for information from the NYPD. I wanted to ask you about the killing of a migrant teenager last week in the Financial District. A group of men attacked him and another migrant after reportedly asking him whether he spoke English or not. What updates do you have in that case? Do you have images of the suspects in that case? If so, why haven't those been publicized as we saw in this other case? Has the same amount of police resources been spent on his death as the CEO's death?

Mayor Adams: First and foremost, the fact pattern that you just described about asking did he speak English, that was not in any of the reports. That was not in any of the interviews. I specifically asked the investigators and the commissioner and that was in any documentation or any of the interviews that took place. Any loss is a huge loss. There are aspect of that incident that is slightly different from what was reported and is currently receiving the necessary manpower to bring the person to justice.

We don't believe a loss of a death of an innocent life should be ignored but when you have a specifically targeted shooter, we didn't know if this person was going to carry out additional shootings. We didn't know if this person was a serial shooter. We didn't know what we had. We knew we had to take him off the streets of the city. The urgency was not so much that was he a CEO in comparison to someone that's a low income New Yorker? No, it's not. We did not know what we had and what was going to be the extent of that.

As it was just mentioned, some of the preliminary reporting that the chief gave us is that he was showing a total-- Appeared to be a distaste for corporate America so we didn't know what was next and we did the necessary decision to make sure we brought this person to justice and took him off the streets of New York.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor from the news conference yesterday. Liz, can you tell us more about this Financial District murder which the reporter from Hell Gate makes a great point, has not gotten nearly as much attention to bringing the murderers to justice.

Elizabeth Kim: It's an excellent point and I'm really glad he asked that question. This happened also last week. It happened in the Financial District, also a neighborhood that has a lot of cameras because it's not far from one World Trade Center. There were two migrant teenagers who were allegedly attacked by a group of three men. Now, one of those teenagers was a 17-year-old named Yeremi Colino and he was fatally stabbed.

There was a report in The New York Post that cited unnamed police sources as saying that prior to being attacked they were asked, "Do you speak English?" Therein lies the alleged narrative that they were targeted because they were immigrants, which the mayor by the way, disputed that you heard in that exchange. It's a very fair question. You saw how many resources that the city was spending on the manhunt for the alleged CEO shooter.

This crime has gotten a fraction of that attention. I think it's impossible to ignore the fact that the CEO killing became a national story. As I said earlier, there was immense pressure on the NYPD, on the NYPD commissioner, on the mayor himself to catch this person.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor talks about the possible propensity of Mangione to go after other CEOs because he had this global animus toward corporate America. Fair enough, but we don't know about the propensity of whoever staged that attack in the Financial District to go after other people either. Do we?

Elizabeth Kim: That's correct, Brian. Especially if it is a bias attack. We don't know what the intention of these three men are who were involved in the attack and the fatal stabbing.

Brian Lehrer: What is the city doing to find those killers? Do you think whatever it is has been increased as a result of that question from Max Rivlin-Nadler from Hell Gate yesterday?

Elizabeth Kim: I haven't seen what Crime Stoppers has put out in terms of photographs, but I would imagine a question like that would prompt the NYPD to put out some more photos. That was a question that was put to the mayor. The mayor was forced to answer it, I'm sure. I would think that the NYPD would devote some more resources to it, especially now that the manhunt for the CEO killer is-- We don't know. He's in custody. He's been charged. He still is a suspect but if we were to presume that that is the person who they were after, now that they've wrapped up that case, although I imagine, they are still going over footage and evidence that they can now maybe turn to some other unsolved crimes.

Brian Lehrer: Now, let's talk about the acquittal of Daniel Penny in the death of Jordan Neely. In the context of the mayor's news conference yesterday, he was noncommittal, I think it's accurate to say, saying he respects the jury system. He laid Neely's death largely at the hands of the system, the mental health system that led him to get into that psychologically schizophrenic and socially desperate state in the first place. Here's the mayor on that.

Mayor Adams: Jordan should not have had to die. I strongly believe, as I've been stating probably from day one, we have a mental health system that is broken. When you have someone repeatedly going through that system, that's a signature of failure. We need help in Albany and in the City Council. We can't sit back and mourn the loss of someone that is caught up in the system when we're not taking the action every day.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, the mayor, as you well know, and as many of our listeners know, has talked about the mental health system since coming into office. He's implemented some kind of program, controversial, to keep people with serious mental health problems hospitalized, even against their will, longer term, not just treated and released when they're stabilized short term. How is that program going? Of course, it gets civil rights pushback, too.

Elizabeth Kim: Well, he hasn't been able to do it to the full extent that he wants. Now, what the mayor would like to do is he would like to lower that bar, the bar that it takes to get someone to go to the hospital against their will. Currently the bar is if they pose a threat to themselves or others. The mayor has wanted to change that bar to if they cannot meet their "Basic needs," their basic needs. To do that, he needs actual legislation. He needs something passed in Albany.

I think it's been two years since the mayor has made this proposal and it hasn't gotten any traction so it will be something to watch into the next Albany session. If, in fact, he can muster some more support for something like that. I think there are concerns, there are serious civil liberty concerns over making that standard so low. For example, the mayor cited something that we see every day. We see people who look like they don't have enough clothes, someone who doesn't have shoes, someone who doesn't have a warm coat.

The question then becomes, should city officials then be able to take someone like that forcibly to a hospital to get evaluated? I think that that is something that is up for debate and I think that the mayor is going to encounter a lot of resistance to doing something like that. The death of Jordan Neely could be another opportunity for the mayor to make this rallying cry that the city needs to try something different.

Brian Lehrer: Is it known if Jordan Neely would have been subject to involuntary, longer term hospitalization under the mayor's standards if they had been in effect and if he had been known to them?

Elizabeth Kim: I think there were questions whether Jordan Neely would have been eligible for that kind of forcible hospitalization just under the standards that he had a track record of mental illness and that on that day, he was reportedly shouting things that indicated that he might want to hurt someone. I think the question is, it's not just about the standard, it's about how many resources are you actually going to pour into the subways, into the streets? How many social workers, how many nurses who can make these kinds of evaluations, who could study somebody's history and find them the appropriate help they need?

Brian Lehrer: What else is the mayor suggesting, if anything, to fix the system that he says is broken, that could have helped someone like Jordan Neely to not get in a situation like that in the first place in Addition to involuntary hospitalization?

Elizabeth Kim: That's the central idea. What I would say is something that was very interesting that came out of a recent mayoral forum that I moderated was there was this question of how do we handle homelessness in the subways? One idea that has been tried in Philadelphia with success is using vacant retail spaces as a place or a hub for services for homeless people. The idea is this can be this intermediary step where you get someone to start interacting with a city worker, someone who might not want to go into a shelter, who certainly might not want to go against their will to a hospital. This is like a bridge.

That was the idea in Philadelphia. They've seen a lot of success there. These places offer not just hot food, they also offer showers. The other idea was maybe this is the moment to do that because we do have empty retail spaces since the pandemic. What I would say is that homelessness has been this intractable issue in New York City, that it is long overdue for the city to try something new. In this case, it's not even trying something new. It's trying something that's borrowed from another city. I think there needs to be new ideas but also, I think the mayor's proposal deserves discussion, too. Perhaps the bar isn't basic needs. Perhaps the bar is something in between basic needs and posing a threat to themselves and others.

Brian Lehrer: Clubhouses are one thing. Supportive housing is another. It was, as you know, as a lot of listeners know, a civil rights movement of 50, 60 years ago to deinstitutionalize a lot of people in mental institutions in New York. That happened to a large degree and that was supposed to be paired with a lot of supportive housing, places where people could live in the community, but with a lot of supportive mental health services but those are expensive and supportive housing was never developed in that kind of mass way.

They barely got City of Yes passed for just 80,000 units of regular housing through city council last week. I know the state was supposed to do a lot of the supportive housing funding, but it's so expensive, and there's never been the political will.

Elizabeth Kim: We should also note that when it comes to clubhouses, now, the mayor was talking about clubhouses as a candidate, and the person who he selected to be his health commissioner, Ashwin Vasan, was a big supporter of clubhouses and of that idea and of promoting it and establishing them across the city. Then what happened with that policy was that the mayor actually cut funding to clubhouses and he was roundly criticized for that.

Brian Lehrer: On the verdict itself, the mayor was non committal, as I said in the intro. He was just respectful of the jury system. I guess the question is any reason to think or not to think that he would have been similarly non committal if Penny had been convicted just saying he respects the jury process?

Elizabeth Kim: That's an excellent question, Brian. I think that the press was a little surprised at how restrained the mayor was when it came to offering an assessment of what he thought of the verdict. That's because just a few weeks ago, he did an interview on WOR, the conservative host Rob Astorino, who was also the ex-Westchester county executive who asked him about the case. The mayor said that Penny did "What the city should have done."

What he meant by that was he felt that Penny did the right thing by intervening and that the city should have done a kind of intervention with Neely earlier, too. He also, in his remarks during that interview, he acknowledged the fear that passengers felt. I think from the outset, the mayor has been very sensitive to that. He himself is a former transit cop. He's seen a lot of things on the subway. Public safety is his priority and he's offered a lot of empathy to riders and what they have to see and the anxiety they feel when it comes to seeing someone who looks like they're unhinged.

At the same time, he's only the second Black mayor of the city and he is sensitive to issues around race. Now, Reverend Al Sharpton, who is one of the mayor's very key allies, even amid his indictment, Sharpton has condemned the choking as vigilantism. He's come out and he's publicly stood by Neely's family who have called for justice.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we are in our weekly conversation with our lead Eric Adams reporter, Elizabeth Kim, who comes on on the day after the mayor's weekly news conference. That news conference is usually Tuesday, so Liz usually joins us on Wednesday. For those of you who know that and are hearing Liz's voice and now you're a little disoriented, "Wait, is it Wednesday? Did I miss all my Tuesday appointments?" No, this is Tuesday but the mayor held his news conference on Monday this week so Liz is here now.

As usual in these segments, in addition to the clips and analysis that Liz brings, we welcome your questions and comments. 212-433-WNYC call or text 212-433-9692. I want to say that on tomorrow's show, we're going to go more deeply into the weeds about what the jury heard in the Penny case that led them to acquit with our reporter Samantha Max, who was in the courtroom for the entire trial. We will also look more closely tomorrow at the civil suit filed last week before the verdict by Jordan Neely's family.

Anything from you, Liz? I'm guessing probably not, but anything from you on the civil suit or if it came up yesterday? I know that generally, standards of proof under the law are lower in a civil suit than a criminal trial. Famously, to take one outsize example, O.J. Simpson once upon a time was acquitted of the murder of his wife, but the family successfully sued for damages in civil court.

Elizabeth Kim: No, Brian. The only thing I would point out is I was rereading some of the Bernard Goetz coverage back in the mid-'80s, and if I remember correctly, he was found guilty in the civil suit where one of the teenagers he shot was paralyzed and suffered brain damage.

Brian Lehrer: We'll talk more about that and the details of what the jury heard tomorrow with our Samantha Max. Here's a comment along these lines. Listener writes, "I'm a former Marine and commend Penny for stepping in. However, part of the training is knowing when enough is enough. Holding someone in a chokehold for over six minutes is excessive, especially after the person stops moving." Liz, again, we'll do this in more detail on tomorrow's show, but I wonder if it came up at all with the mayor yesterday.

I didn't hear it in my listening to the news conference, but that piece of evidence was considered so striking. I know Samantha Max has said that the defense came with a way to refute from their point of view almost every piece of evidence that the prosecution introduced but that one really stuck with people, that he kept the chokehold going. That there's video of another rider on the train saying, "Look, the guy has defecated. You're going to kill him," and he kept the chokehold going. Was the mayor asked to respond to that at all or anybody else?

Elizabeth Kim: No, I don't think he was asked that. At every turn when reporters were trying to press him to just say something about what he thought about the verdict, the mayor was very disciplined on this case. He kept repeating that he respects the judicial system, he respects the process, he respects the jury. That was about it. He just pivoted and said it's time to fix a broken mental health system.

Brian Lehrer: Irene in Suffolk County on the mental health system. Irene, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Irene: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so passionate about this issue. When I heard it, I couldn't believe it. Just background. My mother was schizophrenic and was hospitalized from the time she was in her mid-30s for 30 years. She was finally removed to a group home, but she was in Wingdale, New York, for 30 years. My sister, nine years older than me also, though she taught for almost 20 years, she also had a lapse into the schizophrenia when she was also in her late 30s and she was out on the streets basically.

She was homeless. She was able to use her little bit of money from the teacher retirement and disability to rent in a Motel 6, but she was away from anybody. She didn't get any care. It was like a disaster. I know the ACLU and everybody used all of the civil liberties of people to be behind the deinstitutionalization. I am totally in favor of Mayor Adams effort to try to lower the bar before people can be admitted. Now the number of beds is reduced.

I also have a son, an adopted son who's got bipolar and been struggling with that out in California but he has gotten good care out there. I have one very important question that I have never been able to find the answer to. All of that real estate that was used for institutions, that is held by the state, and why cannot that real estate be used either to provide some institutionalized housing for people who need it or money to finance local community care for these people? Why? Where is that money going to if they sell that property or have they sold the property?

Brian Lehrer: Liz, I don't know if this is on your beat, but can you begin to answer Irene's question in any way?

Elizabeth Kim: I assume Irene is referring to, under Mario Cuomo, there were a lot of mental health beds that were taken off, but I don't know. Were there whole institutions that were closed? I don't know what happened to those buildings. If they were sold, where did that revenue go?

Brian Lehrer: Another story along these lines, I think. Irene, thank you, Pete in Norwalk, you're on WNYC. Hi, Pete. Thank you for calling in.

Pete: Hey, thanks for taking my call. I'll give you the answer to that question about the psychiatric centers. They turned them all into prisons in upstate New York. A lot of mental hospitals that were closed in the '90s turned into prisons. That's the answer.

Brian Lehrer: I don't know about particular facilities, but certainly in the Mario Cuomo years, there were a lot of those institutions being closed, as Liz just said, and there were a lot of new prison beds being opened and constructed.

Pete: My point, I'm extremely upset about this Daniel Penny thing. First of all, mental health in New York is not worse than it was 30 years ago. Let's be real here. The person was having a crisis. That's it. He didn't touch a person. He didn't do anything to anyone. Are they kidding. This guy killed him. That's it. I don't respect the jury at all because I've been homeless. I was homeless for eight years in Europe. We lived on the subways. I'll tell you, there was so much more mental health crisis.

Patients that were thrown out of the psychiatric centers in the '90s, all ended up in New York City on the streets basically. The crisis has actually gotten better. Ask your listeners if they remember 1992, how it was in New York City because I was homeless during that time. I've never seen anything that-- A murder on TV and the guy gets to go away free with hundreds of thousands of dollars from the GoFundMe. It's just sick to me this is how our world is.

Brian Lehrer: You did have a lot of supporters. Pete, thank you very much. Again, we're going to look more specifically at how the verdict came about with our reporter who is in the courtroom, Samantha Max, on tomorrow's show. One other thing about this before we move on to some final mayoral news conference topics. Liz, I didn't hear it yesterday and I wonder if the mayor has been asked at any point to react to the kind of sentiment that we saw the New York City public advocate Jumaane Williams express yesterday.

I read it earlier asking, "Does anyone doubt that if the roles were reversed and a white former Marine in a moment of crisis was choked to death by a Black homeless man, there would have been a different outcome?" Has anyone that you know of asked our second Black mayor who very vocally identifies with being our second Black mayor, the question in those racial justice terms?

Elizabeth Kim: I can't recall every question whether at one point, maybe early when the incident first happened last May, whether he was asked that. He hasn't talked about that. He hasn't talked about looking at this incident through a racial prism. As you said, the mayor's not afraid to talk about race in this way. He's been quite vocal in talking about himself at times as an activist who spoke out as a police officer against racialized policing. It's not a new topic to him but when it came to this issue, he certainly himself has not wanted to take it up in that way. No.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue and finish up with Liz Kim in just a minute on briefly, a couple of other things that came up at the mayor's news conference yesterday, including, I think we learned yesterday which political party Adams will be running for re-election in next year. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. A few more minutes with our lead Eric Adams reporter, Elizabeth Kim, who joins us weekly after the mayor's weekly news conference. He did it on Monday, this week, not Tuesday so Liz is here today. We talked on yesterday's show, Liz, with Errol Louis from NY1 about the way the mayor seemed to tease on Friday in an interview that he might run for reelection next year as a Republican.

Of course, there's a lot of context for that, including how he's not really saying much critical about Donald Trump and identifying with some of the Republicans' positions on sanctuary city in the coming mass deportation era, things like that. Yesterday the mayor was asked that question again, and if he was vague on Friday, which led to a lot of speculation, he seemed to try to put it to rest yesterday. Here's the mayor on that.

Mayor Adams: When I took office as a police officer and as an elected official, I pledged allegiance to the United States of America. That's what I said on your show. How did I run wild? That's just the nature of the creativity that comes from your industry. I ran as a Democrat, I'm going to run as a Democrat, and I'm going to win as a Democrat like I did the last time.

Brian Lehrer: Case closed on that point, Liz?

Elizabeth Kim: I guess so. If you take the mayor at his word, he is going to run as a Democrat. It seemed like he was closing the door, which was not the way he answered the question. The question when he was asked on NY1 on Friday was pretty straightforward, which was, "Would you reconsider becoming a Republican?" Rather than saying no, he said, "I'm running for the American party." That left open a lot of ambiguity. What it also did was the mayor was doing all of those press hits on Friday because it came the day after the City Council passed the City of Yes, which was arguably one of the biggest political wins for Adams. By making that comment, that-

Brian Lehrer: He changed the story.

Elizabeth Kim: -he changed the story.

Brian Lehrer: He buried the lead that he wanted of the victory lap that he was taking. Right?

Elizabeth Kim: Correct. Ironic, isn't it? I think he was a little bitter about that yesterday and accused the press of being creative. Then he said, "Look at my wins, look at what I did with City of Yes," that should be the story. Well, he kind of hijacked his own story on Friday.

Brian Lehrer: Well, that sounded unequivocal yesterday but we know that there have been cases in the past where Democrats, I'm sure it's happened with Republicans, too, but I'm thinking about some Democratic examples, have run in their primaries and lost and then switched parties or run as independents in the general election. I'm thinking of Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, who is a Democratic US Senator, lost the Democratic primary, then ran as an independent and won.

He split the Democratic and actual Republican nominee votes and won as an independent. Given the mayor's centrist, if that's the right word, policies, who knows if he'll do that after he runs as a Democrat in the primary if he loses. That's just speculation or that's just saying it's possible and there's a long way to go on that. One more topic, and this is a way that you advanced an important story at the news conference yesterday.

I thought you and I, Liz, talked about on last week's show whether the mayor supports in Trump's mass deportation effort shielding people who are undocumented immigrants who've been accused of crimes and only cooperating with ICE to start a deportation process if they've been convicted of a crime. That was unclear as of last week. You followed up with him on that yesterday and here's some of that.

Elizabeth Kim: Just wanted to clarify something. You talked about this last week, too.

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Elizabeth Kim: Would you prefer to see an undocumented person who's accused of a violent crime, would you prefer to see that person serve out their sentence before being handed over to federal authorities, or would you be willing to hand them over to federal authorities before that verdict and before the sentencing is announced?

Mayor Adams: My desire is to give the member of the public who's the victim of that crime, they should serve their sentence. I want to hear what the borders are, what his ideas are because justice is making sure that person serves a sentence. If that person commits a serious violent act and he's automatically cut loose, we can find that person back on our streets. You can find that person-- Not every country will make sure that person serves out his time. If there's a way to have an agreement that they serve out their time in that country, I can live with that.

I think a family member who lost a loved one, who was viciously assaulted, who was harmed in serious ways, particularly our seven major crimes, they should get some sort of justice. Many of our borders in other countries lacks in ensuring that that person does not come back into our city. Nothing would be more horrific that a person commits a serious crime and that person is immediately released without serving that time, and that family's not receiving any justice and they come back on our streets.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, I thought you really advanced the story yesterday with that question. Was I hearing his rationale right? It wasn't to necessarily give the benefit of the doubt to somebody who's been accused but not convicted before they cooperate with deportation proceedings, it was to protect New Yorkers because if somebody is turned over to ICE for deportation without going to jail for a crime that they committed, then they would be a risk to sneak back into New York and hurt somebody else.

Elizabeth Kim: That's right, Brian. Now, the mayor has been all over the place on this issue. If you take him by what he said yesterday, if someone is serving out their sentence, then they have been convicted, and that is the current law. I thought what was also important about what he said is sometimes in this conversation about undocumented people who are committing crimes, there is this sense of somehow there is no system of accountability for them.

That is not true because if you hear what the mayor says, there is a system of accountability. They are going through the justice system. If they are convicted of a crime, they're also sentenced and they can and do serve out that sentence here in New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Our lead Eric Adams reporter here at WNYC and our local news website, Gothamist, Elizabeth Kim. Liz, probably talk to you next Wednesday if the mayor goes back to a Tuesday news conference.

Elizabeth Kim: That's right, Brian. I'll see you next Wednesday.

 

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