NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Mayor Eric Adams spent over three hours on the Albany scorching seat on Wednesday making an pressing request for extra hospital beds to deal with the mentally ailing and enhance public security.
However as CBS2’s Marcia Kramer reported, the mayor bumped into some tense moments over his demand for adjustments to bail reform laws.
Adams needs judges to have the ability to maintain folks arrested on gun prices in jail with out bail to contemplate the dangerousness in setting bail. He calls it a “tweak” to the state’s liberal bail reform legal guidelines.
“Dangerousness shouldn’t be a tweak, however it’s a wholesale change,” Brooklyn Assemblywoman Latrice Walker stated.
In the course of the marathon listening to that featured Adams repeatedly holding up indicators with statistics to make his factors, Walker was one in every of a number of lawmakers who challenged his name for bail adjustments to get weapons off the road.
“One other one in every of my indicators right here, 2019 to 2021, the quantity arrested for murder out on bail for gun offenses tripled, tripled. Your speaking homicides. We misplaced lives,” Adams stated.
“Are you additionally conscious that in 2019 95% of all folks weren’t rearrested on felony offenses and since bail reform that quantity rose to 97%?” Walker responded.
The assemblywoman challenged the mayor to a debate, insisting bail reform had nothing to do with the rise in crime.
Adams had none of it.
READ MORE: Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman Says Bail Reform Is Leading To Uptick In Violent Crime
“I don’t suppose you need to debate me. It’s best to debate the 11-month-old child’s mom. It’s best to debate the 2 cops that we misplaced ….,” Adams stated.
“No, it’s you who’re making this a political challenge,” Walker responded. “When you find yourself adopting the rhetoric of people who find themselves male, pale and off on this state, to say that racially, insinuated prison justice reform in our nation is harming our metropolis? I simply suppose it’s unsuitable.”
“I’m not utilizing rhetoric, sister. You realize I don’t use rhetoric. You realize my work,” Adams stated.
The bail reform debate took heart stage because the freshman mayor made his first look, remotely due to COVID-19, at what has develop into often called “Tin Cup Day” — mayors and county executives asking lawmakers for cash for pet tasks.
Adams stated he needs cash for extra psychiatric beds to accommodate the mentally ailing.
“We now face a humanitarian disaster in our streets and on our transit system that threatens our metropolis’s security and restoration,” Adams stated.
In the course of the free-wheeling session, lawmakers requested Adams to ensure the Rent Guidelines Board won’t hike rents this yr, and to make Diwali, the Hindu competition of sunshine, a faculty vacation.
MORE NEWS: Nassau County’s Republican Majority Calls On Albany To Repeal Cashless Bail Law
Adams, who was a state senator for eight years, stated he plans to go to Albany subsequent week to foyer lawmakers in particular person.
