Eric Adams and the Qualitative Critique of Policing

Eric Adams speaking at a press conference in front of New York City Hall. Photo courtesy of Thomas Good.

Whether revered by conservatives as the savior of a crime-plagued city or reviled by progressives as a law-and-order strongman, Eric Adams has become the face of pro-police politics. Amid amplifying calls to defund the police, Adams climbed the polls in New York City’s mayoral primary with a tough-on-crime platform. As he surpassed less police-friendly candidates to secure the Democratic nomination, progressives prophesied the return of Rudy-Giuliani-era over-policing. Meanwhile, conservative commentators declared his election a vindication of traditional law enforcement. But the seemingly bipartisan consensus that Adams is a pro-cop hard-liner obscures the nuance of his message. Recognizing both the promises and perils of policing, Adams argues that law and order can be maintained without bias and brutality. This qualitative critique of policing is a reflection of his complicated history with the New York City Police Department.

As a teenager, Adams was involved in Queens’ criminal underbelly as a bookkeeper for the 7-Crowns gang. At fifteen, he was sentenced to probation for stealing a money order. During his arrest, two white cops subjected Adams to a “beatdown” until a Black officer intervened. As the NYPD began soliciting minority applicants in the 1980s, he saw an opportunity to serve policing’s more ethical ends, much like the officer who intervened on his behalf ten years prior.

Adams rose through the ranks quickly, moving from transit cop to sergeant in under a decade. His ascendance came at a pivotal moment for the department and the city. Record-high murder rates propelled Giuliani to the mayoralty in 1994, and his administration began a crackdown on petty crime. This initiative targeted Black adolescents, who, like a young Adams, resorted to crime in the absence of quality education. Adams knew the dangers of this lifestyle and the propensity for petty crime to metastasize into outright lawlessness. But he also knew the trauma of being mistreated by officers given free rein to arrest at will. Adams leveraged his newfound status to advocate responsible policing, attempting a balance between public safety and social justice. He backed the focus on “gateway” crimes, but not the disproportionate targeting of Black offenders; he supported stopping, but not frisking.

As New York faces another crime spike, Adams has attempted a similar balancing act in his mayoral platform. Even as calls to defund the police sweep the country, Adams holds fast to his belief in the necessity of law enforcement. Arguing that “Defund” jeopardizes public safety, he makes the case that New York can both invest in and reform the police. Hardly an apologist for dirty cops, Adams plans to release the names of officers on notice for bad behavior. But, by the same token, he intends to empower upstanding officers, moving cops off desk duty and onto beat patrol. Refusing the forced choice between more or less law enforcement, Adams argues for a shift in who polices and how they police. This position constitutes a qualitative critique of policing that finds fault not in the size of the NYPD but in the tactics it deploys and people it employs.
Meanwhile, prominent figures in the Defund movement have advanced a quantitative critique of policing. In this view, a police department’s malfeasance can be remediated through budget cuts. Defund defenders reason that public funds may be better served “addressing budget shortfalls.” These critics view policing as a poor return on investment given its high costs, low clearance rates, and propensity for brutality. The language of the movement—“reallocate,” “disinvest,” “defund”—is technocratic, rendering police reform an exercise in money management. Fixating upon a police department’s top-line budget rather than its on-the-ground conduct risks reducing the lived experiences of civilians and officers to a line-item in a budget. It is no surprise that the Defund movement has its roots in academia, where scholars often deal in abstraction rather than experience. But activists and academics’ preoccupation with budget cuts left an opening for Adams’ qualitative critique, which aims not for more cops or fewer cops but better cops.

Regardless of its power as an activist slogan, “Defund the Police” proved electorally damaging in New York’s mayoral primary. A pre-election poll showed cuts to police funding polling poorly, particularly among those most at risk of violent crime. On election day, Adams and runner-up Kathryn Garcia, who also did not heed calls to defund the police, bested competitors who did. The communities that broke for “Defund” candidates skewed affluent and white. Maya Wiley, who called for divesting one billion dollars from the NYPD, performed best with white voters in waterfront Brooklyn. Dianne Morales, the most ardent “defunder” of the bunch, found her strongest support in rapidly-gentrifying Bushwick. In New York, the Defund movement found its core constituency in hipster havens home to a college-educated professional class. Working at NGOs, startups, and consultancies, these young professionals have a managerial disposition that emphasizes budgeting, making them receptive to the quantitative critique of policing. But these privileged progressives also have the least stake in conversations around policing, experiencing relatively little mistreatment at the hands of law enforcement.

Meanwhile, Adams swept East Brooklyn, South Queens, and the Bronx—the Black and brown neighborhoods most at risk of both violent crime and police brutality. Like Adams, these communities have seen police at their best—preventing street crime—and their worst—harassing minorities. While the quantitative critique of policing speaks the language of professionals and academics, Adams speaks the language of his constituents, for whom police have been a source of both justice and injustice. Polls have shown that Black and Hispanic Americans are most likely to want increased police presence and most likely to expect negative police encounters. Adams’ qualitative critique of policing succeeded by reconciling these seemingly contradictory viewpoints, promising both more police and better police. While “Defund the Police” appeared to sacrifice public safety for social justice, Adams promised both. If he can make good on this promise, Adams may succeed in paving a third way between “Back the Blue” conservatism and “Defund the Police” progressivism.

Micah Weese (CC ‘22) is a staff writer at CPR and an Urban Studies major. His interests include urban politics, industrial policy, and labor law.