As federal investigations swirl and top aides walk away, Mayor Eric Adams has repeated a mantra, “I’m stepping up, not stepping down,” arguing that New Yorkers aren’t interested in that news but about what he’s delivering for them.
Talking with New Yorkers over the last week in Harlem, Edenwald in the Northeast Bronx and St. Albans in Southeast Queens — three Black voter hubs where Adams was the overwhelming winner in his last mayoral race — not everyone agreed with the city’s second Black mayor’s self-assessment even as more people than not said they still stood behind him.
“Yes, we do care about that. Don’t sweep it under the rug. Don’t speak for me,” East Harlem resident Darryl Williamson told THE CITY, referring to the investigations. “I’m concerned about anybody doing corruption – just that they have so much money and power and connections, the little guys like me can’t do anything.”
Williamson sat with a neighbor in foldable chairs in front of his apartment building, where he’s lived for the last 14 years, reflecting on a mayor who ran for office touting his 22 years as an NYPD officer.
“This is far as I go from my house because there’s so much negativity, drugs and violence,” said Williamson, while also lamenting the shift from police officers who walked a beat to ones he said are “being bullies instead of peace officers. We scared to talk to the cops today because we don’t know what state of mind they’re in. So we can get somebody in office that can get the police officer to get a different type of training, to get back to the people, like, for example, foot patrol. They don’t do foot patrol.”
He voted for Adams in the 2021 mayoral race “not just because he was a Black man, but because I thought he was a good man. It’s a difference and [he] just let everybody down,,” Williamson said. He added that “We got more immigrants over here than we can deal with” — seeming to echo Adams’ rhetoric at times about how the migrant crisis would “destroy New York City.”
“People like that keep getting in office and getting away with doing what they doing and not helping the people,” Williamson concluded. “Back then, he just made me feel like he was for the people,” but now “all I want him to do is just leave.”
While waiting with her partner for two of her children to come out of school in Edenwald, Alice Penrose, 35, said that she sat out the 2021 election because she was tired of politicians’ empty talk about “change” but planned to turn out in 2025 to vote against Adams.
“I don’t like him. I do not like the man,” said Penrose, adding that she receives “nine [hundred dollars] and some change” a month in SNAP food benefits while some migrants are now receiving cash benefits from the city.
As for her own cash assistance, she said, “I only get 250 and it’s four people in my household. And 250 can’t do because I gotta take care of kids. He gotta go because he doing nothing. He ain’t doing nothing for me. I got four kids — 250 can’t do.”
Asked about the FBI’s apparent pursuit of Adams, Penrose said she just wanted the news to go away.
“I don’t know what’s going on in 2024 but it gotta cut out. Because it’s either him or Diddy,” she said, referring to the hip-hop mogul who was arrested earlier this month on sex trafficking charges, and who Adams honored last year with an honorary key to the city.
“Every time I go on Google, it’s him and — you know what? I can’t. I can’t do it no more. I just feel like New York is being corrupted. So many people getting help but we’re not getting the help that we need.”
‘They’re Trying to Tarnish His Reputation’
Many other residents, however, voiced their support for Adams and his job performance.
“The police engage with people. There is more interaction with the public,” said George Friscoberry, 69, who has lived in the area since immigrating from Jamaica more than 30 years ago. “I feel like they’re trying to tarnish his reputation. The mayor tries to improve the situation and people come out and try to bash him.”
Friscoberry was one of three Central Harlem residents seated in foldable chairs and enjoying beverages in front of an apartment building on West 125th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard.
“The best we ever get. Yes, because with the mayor that was there before we could never sit down drinking the liquor. We could never sit down here drinking and smoking weed. We were going to jail. Guys sit on our backs and beat you up like apartheid government. Adams don’t do that with us,” said 73-year-old George Perch, Friscoberry’s lifelong friend and a fellow Jamaican immigrant.
“This is the best I seen in this country where police is concerned,” Perch continued. “One time, the police was our enemy and we were the police’s enemy — Black people. It’s not like that right now.”
While waiting for the Bx16 bus in Edenwald, Mercedes, a retired hospital telecommunications employee who declined to give her last name, said “it has nothing to do with him” when asked about all the investigations of the Adams administration.
“Like he said, he got nothing to do with none of that.” she said. “He’s doing what he can. I would vote for him again.”
At the St. Albans Long Island Railroad station in Queens, 67-year-old Tom Loyd, sporting a Mets baseball cap, told THE CITY that he was aware of the investigations into the mayor who has often described himself as “perfectly imperfect” — but still supported Adams.
“You know, he’s not an angel,” the retired transit worker and lifelong St. Albans resident said. “But the bottom line is I like the work that he’s done. It’s been pretty good.”
