Surely New York Politics Doesn’t Have to Be This Bad

Two things are happening in New York City at once: the Eric Adams administration is mired in police and corruption scandals, and New Yorkers are suffering greatly under austerity. It’s a perfect opportunity for a mayoral challenger from the Left.

New York Mayor Eric Adams Holds News Conference

Mayor Eric Adams speaks during a news conference at City Hall in New York on November 21, 2023. (Yuki Iwamura / Bloomberg via Getty Images)


This is probably the craziest time in New York City politics in a while. Last week, the FBI seized the cell phones and computers of top officials in Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, as part of an ongoing corruption investigation. His police commissioner resigned as a result. Unrelatedly, an internal report revealed that Department of Education employees took their families on trips to Disneyworld that were intended for homeless kids. Two former fire chiefs were indicted Monday for bribery and corruption. This comes on top of earlier investigations related to the Turkish government. It’s obvious to everyone that the federal government has something massive to drop on Adams or people very close to him — we just don’t know yet what it is.

And then there’s Sunday’s mass shooting on the subway — by cops.

After evading the $2.90 subway fare and then wielding a knife against them, police confronted and ultimately shot Derell Mickles, age thirty-seven, in the stomach, at the Sutter Avenue L train stop in Brownsville, one of the poorest — and, some residents say, overpoliced — neighborhoods in Brooklyn. By the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) own admission, the officers also shot three other people in the melee: one of their own officers, plus two civilians.

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