Public Advocate Jumaane Williams slammed Mayor Adams on Thursday over the mayor’s attack against critics of NYPD overtime spending, saying Adams is driving “harmful narratives” with his words.
Williams accused the mayor of wrongly taking an “us vs. them” approach to the overtime issue, saying Adams has created “a false binary to marginalize and villainize legitimate criticism.”
“We see this tactic of unnecessary ‘us vs. them’ over and over,” Williams said in a statement. “This model only serves to drive harmful narratives that echo throughout our city and beyond. If one perpetuates falsehoods loudly and often enough, constituents and voters are bound to believe you. It’s proven an effective way to prevent progress or reform that this mayor opposes.”
Williams took umbrage with an apparently unscripted digression Adams made Wednesday right after he unveiled his $106.7 billion executive budget proposal.
In his comments, the mayor laid into unnamed City Council members who he said have railed against spending on police overtime, suggesting those critics are “anti-police.”
Adams — without prompting — brought up conversations he had with Council members he didn’t name about police overtime spending.
“I said, ‘Is it that you dislike overtime, or you dislike the NYPD?’ Because I never hear them talking about overtime in any of the other agencies. In all the agencies, I have overtime,” said Adams, who retired from the NYPD as a captain.
“But no one gets riled up with overtime in Parks, in HRA [the Human Resources Administration]. Nobody gets riled up in overtime anywhere else but the New York City police department,” he said.
“That’s all we focus on — NYPD,” Adams said. “So is it anti-overtime? Or is it anti-police? And if it’s anti-police, shame on us.”
Adams didn’t mention that NYPD overtime costs are far higher than overtime in other city agencies. In fiscal year 2022, uniformed officers cost the city $670 million in overtime — nearly double the $354 million allocated for police overtime in that year’s adopted budget.
Non-uniformed agencies typically spend far less, with the Department of Social Services racking up the highest cost among them at $85.2 million for OT in 2022 and the Parks Department spending about $30 million.
While he was running for mayor, Adams also called for NYPD overtime spending to be scaled back.
“Concern over the NYPD overtime is rooted in the reality that the agency is insulated from the constraints that other agencies face, including other uniformed workers,” Williams said. “The NYPD operates without these constraints on its budget or accountability for even deadly errors. It’s not anti-police to say the NYPD should be held to higher standards — if this administration can’t see that, that’s a shame.”
Adams and Williams are by no means allies, but they aren’t necessarily enemies either.
Williams, who’s far more left-leaning than Adams, launched his latest attack against the mayor a week after Adams praised the public advocate for traveling to Washington D.C. to highlight the city’s need for federal assistance with the migrant crisis, which the city struggled with since last spring.
In a broadside directed at President Biden last Wednesday, Adams singled out Williams with plaudits for his trip to D.C., saying at the time that “everyone should be joining Jumaane Williams.”
But since then, Williams has hit Adams on three fronts.
Aside from his words Thursday on police overtime, last week Williams voiced dismay over remarks Adams made during his own sojourn to Washington on Friday where he proclaimed that “the city is being destroyed by the migrant crisis.” Williams pushed back later that day, saying “the city has not been destroyed by migrants.”
Williams also threw some shade Hizzoner’s way Wednesday, immediately after Adams announced his budget, a spending plan that progressive critics have pounced on as too reliant on austerity measures.
“Our city has faced fiscal hardship many times in our history, and the prudent path has been investment, then and now,” he said. “Not funding agencies and programs adequately, or worse, cutting them, has a real cost.”