Mayor Eric Adams said Sunday that the Big Apple has become “a laughingstock” as it grapples with surging crime and homelessness — and claimed he’s the “wartime general” who can fix it.
Hizzoner pointed to separate shootings last week that injured a 7- and 3-year-old as he decried the wild gun violence he’s been trying to tame.
“It’s just not OK to leave a daycare center with your baby and hear gunshots, or walk across Kings Highway with your 7-year-old and hear shots,” Adams said at the annual NYPD Holy Name Society communion mass and breakfast at the Midtown Hilton, referring to the pair of Brooklyn shootings.
He also bemoaned the spike in petty crime and homelessness as contributing factors.
“Anything goes in the city of New York,” he said. “The most important city on the globe has become the laughing stock of the globe. And the dysfunctionality of our city has cascaded throughout the entire country. And the audacity that someone comes along and says, ‘I want to be your mayor,’ and simply says, ‘Follow the rules, follow the rules.’
“It’s called swiping a Metrocard. If you don’t have enough to pay the fare, there’s a process that you can get the help that you deserve,” he continued. “Or if you go into a drugstore, do what my neighbor does — pay for what you want.”
Homeless vagrants have flooded city subway stations and streets in recent months, with dozens of random attacks on straphangers and tourists alike — some fatal.
Last week, The Post reported that 2,500 sorely needed units for mentally ill homeless New Yorkers have been left vacant due to a bureaucratic snafu — even as more cops have been sent into the transit system to reel them in.
Adams, a retired NYPD captain who sources said is weighing using drones to fight crime, also rallied the roughly 500 cops in attendance to reclaim the streets of their city.
“Don’t let anyone break your spirit, tell you that New Yorkers don’t love the men and women of the NYPD,” the mayor said. “Everywhere I go they say, ‘Protect our police.’ Ignore the noise. Ignore Instagram, social media. Facebook.
“Ignore all of that because the people of the city are watching,” he said. “The people of their city want their city back.”
In a bizarre comparison, he likened the state of the city to a high school science experiment where a frog is placed in water that is slowly brought to a boil — and remains in the water until it dies.
“Let’s acknowledge that the heat is being turned up,” he said. “We want to turn it down so we don’t watch our city boil to death.”
Adams told the NYPD audience that he will do his best to boost morale.
“There are wartime and peacetime generals. I’m a wartime general,” he said. “I’m going to be on the front line. Those of you in transit, I’m in the subway system at 2, 3 a.m. with you. I’m going to your precincts. I’m going to call you up when you make those arrests.
“I’m not sending you to the front line and leaving you there,” he added. “I’m going to be at the front line with you. I’m going to lead you into battle.”
