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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – On the heels of another fatal shooting in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams told Fox News Digital that he isn’t worried about federal intervention in the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
On Monday morning, Adams announced an expansion across Staten Island of the NYPD’s Quality of Life Division, a program that aims to clean up homeless encampments, address outdoor drug use and respond to noise complaints, among other public safety-related issues.
The announcement was made one day after a fatal shooting in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Adams confirmed on Monday that 14 victims have now been identified, including three fatalities.
Adams told Fox News Digital that his announcement on Monday had no correlation to President Donald Trump’s ongoing crime crackdown in Washington, D.C.
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Trump moved to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department last week, sending hundreds of National Guard troops and federal agents to Washington, D.C., to fight crime and “beautify” the city.
“As we indicated over and over again, we got this,” Adams said of New York City’s ability to fight crime without the federal government’s involvement. “Our numbers speak for themselves.”
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The NYPD touted record-low shootings and murders during the first five months of the year, calling May the “safest in recorded history for shootings and murders.”
Despite those statistics, a Midtown Manhattan shooting shocked the city last month when four people were killed.
Adams said on Monday that New York City does need “assistance on the federal level to deal with the flow of illegal guns onto our streets.”
And he lamented that when a “person who drives across the country and creates havoc with an illegal gun,” like the suspect in the Midtown shooting, it “really hurts these inner cities.”
But Adams remained confident, telling Fox News Digital that, “Our numbers are clear. We’re willing to share what we’re doing successfully here with other cities, and we’ve done that before.”
The mayor, who is running for re-election as an independent candidate, said the city knows how to collaborate with federal authorities and “New Yorkers are handling the crime crisis.”
“We are an example of what all cities can do, but we’re not responding to some of the things that we’re reading about this,” Adams said, referencing Trump’s crime crackdown in the nation’s capital.
The NYPD launched its Quality of Life Division, or Q-Teams, on April 14. Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said those teams have made “significant improvements to New Yorkers’ quality-of-life concerns.”
Several Staten Islanders who attended Monday morning’s announcement confronted Adams with complaints about their quality of life.
One woman told Adams that the floors in her apartment building had not been mopped, the garbage had not been picked up, elevators did not work, and she did not have hot water in her building on Monday morning.
Adams told the residents to form a tenants’ association and promised to set up a meeting with them to discuss the issues impacting their community.
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