Savannah Hulsey Pointer, FISM News
New York Mayor-elect Eric Adams received massive pushback from the New York City chapter of Black Lives Matter who threatened “riots and bloodshed” if the New York Police Department re-enacted their “stop and frisk” practices with plainclothes officers, according to ABC 7 New York.
Adams met with leaders from the group on Wednesday where they discussed a plethora of issues, not including the controversial gun policy. However, according to local news reports, at the end of the conversation, they warned Adams to not even “think about” reinstituting the police program that was stopped in the summer of 2020.
“It’s pretty much how Eric Adams wants to go about it,” BLM’s Chivona Newsome said according to ABC 7 New York. “That’s how Black Lives Matter Greater New York will address the problem. If he wants to see the city in an uprising, we can give him that.”
New York BLM co-founder Hawk Newsome warned against the potential of stricter policing after the contentious talk with Adams.
According to a video from the staged press conference, the activist stated, “If they think they are going back to the old ways of policing then we’re going to take to the streets again,” seeming to reference the riots of 2020 following the death of George Floyd. “There will be riots. There will be fire, and there will be bloodshed,” he threatened.
In a statement over the phone to The New York Post, Newsome said of Adams, “To ignore that history and say you’re bringing it back means that he’s tone-deaf.”
Should BLM be successful in suppressing the newly elected mayor’s plans for the police force, it would be at the cost of him breaking his campaign promises made to the people of New York. During his campaign, Adams vowed he would rebuild the plainclothes policing unit, and he said on Thursday that despite the threats from BLM, that’s exactly what he planned to do:
There is no surprise on what I said. When I ran to become the mayor of the city of New York, I said I was going to reinstitute anti-gun unit in plain clothes. Voters voted on that.”
The soon-to-be-mayor also had challenging words for the BLM leaders, saying that they never looked to address the violent crime in the city, something he says he can’t fix alone. “So what I said to them, it’s time for you to be held accountable on what’s happening in your city. Don’t look to Eric. I was elected to be mayor, not the messiah…We got to do this together.”
On Thursday, following news of the violent threats, Adams was questioned about the BLM leaders’ comments, but remained unflappable saying, “New Yorkers should not allow rhetoric like that,” and calling them a “fringe group.”
He added that he was not going to back down on his promises:
There are very few things that intimidate me, there are very few things that scare me. New Yorkers are not going to live in fear, and we’re not going to be intimidated by anyone…I am not changing who I am.