A new and non-white mayor is squaring off with Black Lives Matter in New York City, giving a hardline speech in Manhattan on Dec. 10 and repeating a warning to BLM leader Hawk Newsome not to try and make trouble in New York.
“We’re not going to surrender to those who are saying, ‘We’re going to burn down New York.’ Not my city,” Adams said at a Police Athletic League event at the Harvard Club, as reported in the New York Post.
Last month, Newsome threatened “riots, fire and bloodshed” if Adams makes good on a plan to reinstate the NYPD’s anti-gun unit.
“If they think they are going back to the old ways of policing then we’re going to take to the streets again,” Newsome warned at the time. “There will be riots. There will be fire, and there will be bloodshed.”
In his speech, Adams also addressed activists like the ones who destroyed property in Queens, after the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse.
“We’re not going to have a city where anarchists come from outside our city and go into a community such as Queens and destroy the community for their own selfish needs or desires,” Adams said.
Adams also praised former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton for slashing the city’s murder rate, and for the “broken windows” policing style that targeted seemingly minor issues like graffiti as a route to making the city safer from violent crime.
Adams said he is glad to have prevailed in the Democratic primary over “People who were talking about disarming police, running out business people from our city.” He was referring to third-place finisher Maya Wiley, who declined at a debate to say whether she intended to take away firearms from NYPD officers.
