As a stunned New York City comes to terms with the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams, it’s worth examining the idea, deeply embedded in the city’s psyche, that helped lead to his election: Keeping the city safe means allowing the Police Department to do whatever it wishes.
Over three decades and nearly half a dozen mayors, New York has given its Police Department freer rein while demanding little accountability in return. Then the pandemic hit, and crime rose in New York, as it did in most American cities. Along came Mr. Adams, a former police captain, promising to restore order.
That Mr. Adams seemed more concerned with swagger than accountability was seen by many in New York as a minor detail, perhaps more of a bug than a feature. The assumption seemed to be that in its desire for greater security, the public would overlook excessive force, would overlook harassment of residents and unconstitutional stops, would overlook the gushing tide of taxpayer money pouring into police overtime.
Mr. Adams brought the Police Department’s culture of impunity into City Hall.
The mayor’s political career was born in the Police Department, and his election symbolized the dysfunctional, toxic relationship the city has with the force. In time, his term in office may come to represent the pinnacle of power for an organization the city had vested with enormous power and allowed to operate without serious oversight for as long as living memory serves.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani launched his campaign for mayor by supporting a police riot at City Hall to protest the decision to make the Civilian Complaint Review Board more independent. (The police union later turned on him for not knuckling under to its contract demands.) The political juice of the Police Department grew still more in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the department as it conducted five million pedestrian stops in his three terms in office, a campaign that traumatized Black and Latino New Yorkers and destroyed Mr. Bloomberg’s political ambitions and tarnished his legacy.
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