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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Mayor Adams held his weekly news conference yesterday as he was grappling with some very hard news. Police Officer Jonathan Diller was shot and killed on duty in Queens Monday night. That same evening, a man was pushed onto the tracks and killed in Manhattan in the subways. The mayor spoke of the pain.

Mayor Adams: "And losing Jonathan, it hurts a lot. I remember sitting in the hospitals at the beginning of this term and standing over those hospital beds and sitting inside that vehicle after leaving there, trying to just figure out, what am I going to have to say at the funeral? What am I going to say to this family?"

Brian Lehrer: We'll hear more clips from the news conference and discuss them with our lead Eric Adams reporter now, Elizabeth Kim, who joins us as she does most Wednesdays after the mayor's weekly Q&As with the press. Hi, Liz.

Elizabeth Kim: Hi, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: It was a somber mood at the press conference yesterday, would you say, with this backdrop?

Elizabeth Kim: Very much so. You could really hear the pain in the mayor's voice when he's talking about one of the most, I guess, tragic rituals that every mayor is forced to confront, which is when a uniformed officer dies, is killed in the line of duty, he has to speak with the family. He has to address the members of the NYPD. He has to deliver a eulogy at the funeral. As he said in those remarks, there were echoes of his first year in office when the two officers, Mora and Rivera, were slain in response to a domestic dispute.

You can't help but know that because the mayor was a former police officer, there's also added personal resonance for him. Earlier, prior to that moment, he talks about how it brought back memories of his own days in the force, where he was worried about himself and also his brother, who was also a police officer.

Brian Lehrer: A killing like this also reminds us that as much as people talk about police policy and can be very critical of the mayor for imposing what some people, many New Yorkers, consider over policing and the impact of that on people's lives, that it is still an incredibly dangerous life and death kind of job and these officers put their lives on the line every day when they go out.

Elizabeth Kim: That's right, Brian. I think the mayor, because he was a former officer, he communicates the stakes of these moments very well. When he started his remarks, he specifically said, "I am going to refer to this officer as Jonathan. I'm going to use his first name because I want to humanize him."

Brian Lehrer: You've put together a montage of various things the mayor had to say about public safety at yesterday's news conference. This is about a minute altogether. Let's listen.

Mayor Adams: "These are bad people who are doing bad things to good people. It's the good guys against the bad guys. I spoke to someone on the subway system the other day, and they said, 'We have to be having at least 400 or 500 crimes on our subway system a day.' This is how people believe. And then we hear this over and over again. The city is out of control. The city is out of control. The city is out of control. It's just not true. But we need help. Our police officers can't do this on their own. They've been doing an admirable job.

And let me tell you something, folks. We're losing correction officers. They're getting ready to retire and age out, and no one is meeting the classes. We're losing police officers. We're losing district attorneys because district attorneys are overwhelmed with paperwork right now, and we're losing them. Go talk to your DAs. We're losing probation officers. We're losing parole officers. The foundation of the public safety apparatus is dissolving right in front of our eyes."

Brian Lehrer: That last bit is very chilling if we take it as fact, "The foundation of the public safety apparatus is dissolving right in front of our eyes," but it's still a warning from the mayor, not a fact, right? He doesn't think the city is out of control.

Elizabeth Kim: Right. I think that those clips speak to the challenge that's confronting the mayor, but also the challenge for the public and the press in reporting on his messaging on public safety. Now, this week's presser followed last week's presser when he was talking about a violent shooting inside a subway train. He said that he did not want that moment to hijack the narrative on public safety because the data has shown that last year, major crime did decrease from the prior year. Now, what we have now is we do see an uptick in crime four months into this year compared to last year.

The message that he has been trying to drive at is that "I have brought crime down. If you compare it to when I started, crime is down." Once again, like you mentioned, it was a very scary night Monday. Not only because of the death of the NYPD officer, but because of this fatal pushing on the subway tracks at 125th Street in Harlem. That brings back memories of also the mayor's first year where there was a fatal pushing of a woman in Times Square. Once again, the person who was responsible for the pushing had a history of being hospitalized for mental illness.

It's bringing us back to this moment where once again there is a high-profile incident. The mayor has to talk about it. How is he talking about this? It's very difficult for him. On the one hand, he has to address it. On the other hand, he's trying to communicate and allay fears of people who are going on the subway that there are four million riders. It is still exceedingly rare to be the victim of a violent crime. Yes, he's sounding these multiple alarms, and he has to talk-- He's trying to communicate that the city is not out of control, but at the same time, sometimes his messaging sounds very, very grim, as when he was talking about the upcoming retirements and exits of law enforcement officers and DAs.

He did not immediately follow that with, "But this is what the city is prepared to do to stem the tide of those exits." At the end of the day, when a reporter asked him this question, the messaging sounds a little contradictory and even self-defeating. What is it? Is the city spiraling out of control, or are you saying that the narrative is out of control?

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls for our lead Eric Adams reporter, Liz Kim. 212-433-WNYC, perhaps on public safety as you experience it, as you perceive it. Can you hold both those thoughts in your mind at the same time, that there are some terribly violent crimes that happen in this city? That there's a problem, as the mayor sees it, with a small number of recidivists? There's a problem with a relatively small number of people who have serious mental health problems. Sometimes those two intersect, but that at the same time, this is a very, very, very safe city in historical terms and in comparative terms to other places.

Can you hold those two things in your mind at the same time and have them make sense? I wonder if anybody is listening who may have considered, or if somebody you know may have considered, becoming a police officer, a probation officer, a parole officer, a correction officer, and they just don't want to do it now. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or anything else for Liz Kim on the mayor's news conference, call or text.

Yesterday on the show, Liz, as you probably know, we talked to your fellow WNYC Gothamist reporters Samantha Max and Jessy Edwards about the hundreds of lawsuits that they reported on that have now been filed under the Adult Survivors Act alleging sexual abuse of women incarcerated on Rikers Island. The mayor was asked about that yesterday, and he said this.

Mayor Adams: "I just became aware of that, the report. I read it today. We're going to dig into it. And it must be a thorough investigation on exactly what the allegations are, and we will look into exactly what took place. This is the first time I became aware."

Brian Lehrer: What struck you about his response? It sounds like it was new to him. The story did just come out on Gothamist and on the station yesterday morning, but was there any follow-up to that? I don't know. I'll check it out.

Elizabeth Kim: That was essentially the mayor's response. He did not have a list of policy changes that he wanted to make in light of the report. I think what's important to point out about that story is there's one very stunning statistic. Which is that 57% of the lawsuits filed under the Adult Survivors Act-- Now, that's the law that opened a one-year window for people to sue alleged sexual assault abusers in civil court. 57% of those lawsuits came from women who say that they were sexually abused or sexually assaulted at Rikers.

We know that there has been a story of chronic dysfunction and danger at Rikers. That is what ultimately led to the law that the city needs to close Rikers by 2027. The story reinforces the notion that there is dysfunction at Rikers, and it will add to the call by many advocates that the mayor must close Rikers by 2027, but he's wavered on that. He has said that this is a very expensive proposition. He doesn't want to rush the closure.

This is yet another reason that advocates will point to why the mayor needs to examine Rikers much more carefully, but also push the closure and adhere to the deadline.

Brian Lehrer: Here is Danny in Massapequa, a retired NYPD lieutenant, who I think is going to articulate something the mayor also says about a reason for the possible looming shortage in law enforcement personnel. Danny, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling today.

Danny: Good morning, Brian. First of all, I want you to understand how close this hits to home, is that I was at work Monday night when the radio told me that a 31-year-old cop from Massapequa was shot and taken to the hospital. I have a 31-year-old cop son who was working at the time. That was about the longest two minutes of my life.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you.

Danny: Texting my son. This is neither--

Brian Lehrer: In other words, you thought for a moment it could have been your own son who was killed.

Danny: It could have been my own son. Right. Correct. Bad news travels quickly, and within minutes of this happening, people were-- I was able to get ahold of my son and realized he was home safe with his three children under the age of four. I cannot say that, sadly, for this officer-

Brian Lehrer: I hear you-

Danny: -who left behind a one-year-old.

Brian Lehrer: -and I'm sorry you had to go through even that. Go ahead.

Danny: I just have a videotape of me addressing my state senator, who is no longer my state senator, five years ago, where I begged him not to vote for the Criminal Justice Reform Act. I read a litany of charges that were now going to be bail-eligible, and how this was going to lead to a lack of policing in the city, in the state, people being released who would normally be held, and untold counts of violence.

This killing of this officer yesterday, it doesn't outrage me actually as much as the killing of the man on the subway. I'll explain why. Because cops and robbers have been going on for a thousand years, and as The Godfather once said, "This is the business we choose. Sometimes the guys with the guns, the bad guys, win. And it's terrible, it's a tragedy, but it does happen." The fact that these people boasted to have been in jail is unforgivable.

You see, it's one thing to arrest somebody and risk your life. It's quite another thing to have to do it over and over again because these people that do these things, they're not going to be rehabilitated. They're not coming out and getting a job. They are career criminals who've shown no regard for their fellow humans for their entire life. Now suddenly at the age of 40, they're not going to become model citizens. Anywhere where progressive Democrats have taken over the criminal justice system in their cities, and I could list the cities until you're off the air, it has failed. It has led to misery and anguish, mostly with the minority residents of those cities.

Take a walk down Philadelphia. I walk in the city now. Yes, the crime statistics are down, but the sense of dirtiness, uneasiness-- I'm going to the Bronx today. There's people walking in the middle of the Cross Bronx selling me fruit. It has the essence of a lawless city, and people will remember back when Rudy Giuliani arrested all the window washers, posted cops at subways. Nobody got onto the subway illegally if we didn't want to. We seem to be incapable of securing subway turnstiles without soldiers standing there. 20 years ago I was standing there.

Brian Lehrer: I need you to wrap it up for time.

Danny: I lay this [unintelligible 00:15:29] desk, right at the feet of every Democratic state senator or legislator who voted for this thing and couldn't see what would happen. They failed the community. They failed their citizens. They should all be voted out.

Brian Lehrer: Danny, we appreciate your call. How close to Danny's point of view-- and of course, he brought in other things that I'm sure a lot of listeners will object to. What is the shooting of the police officer or the pushing of somebody onto the tracks by somebody who might be a multiple-time recidivist and might have serious mental illnesses have to do with somebody selling fruit on the highway or the small crime of turnstile jumping? Setting that aside for the moment, or even including it, how much would the mayor agree?

Elizabeth Kim: I think it's pretty close to the mayor's feelings on this. On Monday, the NYPD announced that they were going to be surging 800 more officers for fare evasion. This comes, I think, like more than a decade after the Manhattan DA at the time said that they were no longer going to prosecute fare evasion. Now it's signaling a return to that, and the feeling of the mayor and of many NYPD officers like Danny is that watching fare evaders promotes a sense of lawlessness.

They also make the argument that in battling fare evaders, they wind up catching people who do have a history of a criminal record, and they might be able to thwart more serious crimes that could happen on the subway. His remarks are very close to how the mayor feels. Towards the end of his press conference, he said, "I can only enforce the laws in front of me, and that's what I'm asking the NYPD to do."

Brian Lehrer: Just a few more minutes with our lead Eric Adams reporter, Liz Kim, joining us as she does most Wednesdays after the Mayor's weekly Tuesday news conference. I want to touch one other thing, and I know you've done reporting on it. It's a lawsuit that accuses one of the mayor's inner circle, Timothy Pearson, of sexual harassment, and alleges a culture that tolerates it at the NYPD. Tell us briefly who he is and about the lawsuit, and then we're going to play a clip of how the mayor responded yesterday when he was asked about it.

Elizabeth Kim: Timothy Pearson, he's a top aide to the mayor. His title is Senior Advisor on Public Safety, but he's been given a pretty broad portfolio. He's also a close friend of the mayor. They have known each other for 30 years. Pearson is a retired NYPD inspector. What's at issue now is that he's facing some pretty serious allegations around his conduct. In particular, his conduct toward women. As you mentioned, he is being sued by a retired NYPD sergeant, someone with 18 years on the force, who says that she was repeatedly sexually harassed by him when they both worked in this special mayoral unit.

She also says that he blocked her promotion chances when she rebuffed his sexual advances. That lawsuit has now prompted an internal city investigation. Pearson is already under a separate investigation involving an altercation he had with security staff at a migrant shelter last fall. The question that was put to the mayor yesterday was given these two separate incidents or these two separate investigations at this point, what is it going to take to hold him accountable?

Brian Lehrer: He was also asked why isn't Pearson on leave pending the outcome of these investigations. Here's what the mayor said to that.

Mayor Adams: "As a person who was in the Trade Center when the buildings collapsed and saved a great deal of people in guiding them out and protecting the city for the amount of time he has, I think he is due due process."

Brian Lehrer: Is that response in keeping with Adam's attitude toward others accused of wrongdoing?

Elizabeth Kim: This is the question. This is someone who is very close to the mayor, and you can argue on the substance that he shouldn't be put on leave because there are these two separate investigations against him. You could also argue that because of these allegations, he should not be working at a moment where he might be supervising women in particular, but then there's also the optics of it too. This is a close friend of the mayor, and the question then becomes is the mayor bending over backwards for a friend?

Brian Lehrer: We've talked about threats and actually at least one case of a murder this week of a police officer. At the same time, we've talked about alleged malfeasance by Mr. Pearson, who's involved with the NYPD. The pattern of sexual assault alleged under the Adult Survivors Act in those 700-plus lawsuits, charging sexual abuse regarding correction officers at Rikers Island.

Whether it's that police are now rightly being held accountable in ways they haven't in the past in our city or in our country, or whether it's because as the one caller argued, it's progressive changes to the law, putting officers at risk. The mayor cites people not wanting to go into these professions these days. Let me take one more call-in response to that big picture. Abby in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Abby, thank you for calling in. We've got about 30 seconds for you.

Abby: Hello. I just wanted to talk a little bit about-- We are losing police officers. We are losing people who want to be involved in this, and I think a lot of that might not only have to do with progressive changes but also have to do with the fact that we have a policeman's union that is not listening to the public. That is advocating for honestly a lot of violence against a lot of kids, against a lot of people who do not have the power to fight back.

I know people who were police officers who are leaving with these quotes of a few bad apples. I think at a certain point the police do need to take a little bit of accountability for why we're losing people and why people are losing interest in what it is that they do. The police don't have the same relationship they used to have in neighborhoods. They are a threat to a lot of people. It's a really tragic thing for so many good police officers.

Brian Lehrer: Abby, thank you very much. Liz, between the two callers on the topic, I think we exemplify the tension in the city between two versions of what's in the public interest.

Elizabeth Kim: That's right. I will point out that when Eric Adams was campaigning, as a candidate he said that he was someone who could both improve public safety, but also address the history of abuses and discrimination that has occurred within the department because he himself had been an activist on exactly those issues. I think what we've seen to date is yes, he has been a very solid staunch supporter of the NYPD and other officers in uniform. The question is, what has he done to address some of the longstanding challenges?

For example, the Pearson lawsuit brings up a culture of sexism and sexual harassment. What has he done to address something like that in the NYPD?

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth Kim covers City Hall for WNYC and Gothamist. The mayor generally only takes reporters' questions about a variety of topics on Tuesdays, so Liz generally comes with us on Wednesdays with clips and her analysis and to take your calls. Until next week, thanks a lot, Liz.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Brian.

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