Mayor Adams headed for showdown with elected officials over closing Rikers Island
NEW YORK -- Mayor Eric Adams wants the New York City Council to rethink its plan to close Rikers Island in 2027, but Speaker Adrienne Adams says "no way."
Mayor Adams said it's a simple equation: 6,200 inmates at Rikers, minus 4,000 or so who can fit in the new community jails, equals thousands of criminals put back on the streets.
Council leaders and advocates who staged an emotional rally Thursday said that's fuzzy math and insist on saying "ta-ta" to the troubled jail.
Passion ran high at the rally in City Hall Park to insist that the mayor stick to the timetable for closing Rikers in Aug. 2027 or, as the countdown clock said, 1,460 days.
In recent days, the mayor raised questions about whether closing Rikers is the right move for public safety. But advocates and elected officials were having none of it.
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso compared the "law-and-order" Adams to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
"What he is doing is increasing the population of Rikers Island the way Giuliani did, increasing stop and frisk the way Giuliani did, increasing the budget of the police department the way Giuliani did," Reynoso said.
Speaker Adams, whose body would have to approve any changes to the close Rikers law, issued a statement insisting the deadline is the deadline. The mayor needs to take steps to reduce the jail population, she said.
"The City must make consistent investments in pretrial services, alternatives to incarceration, and reentry services, while addressing unacceptable lengths of stay with the courts, district attorneys and public defenders," the speaker said.
"We stand here today, four years from the deadline for closing Rikers and we have to be honest, we are not on the path that was set out for closing Rikers Island, and we're here to organize and demand that we get back on that path," said Comptroller Brad Lander.
A spokesperson for the mayor insisted the administration is moving forward in building the four community jails that are to replace Rikers, and is even increasing the capacity of the planned Brooklyn lockup by more than 150 beds, given the realities of the city's jail system.
But earlier in the week, the mayor asked the City Council to reconsider the plan.
"Are we as a city willing to say that 2,000 extremely dangerous people, because we don't have enough space, we're going to turn them back onto the streets and back to the communities that they committed these crimes in in the first place? I'm not ready to say that," the mayor said.
All of this comes as the city is locked in a battle to continue running the Rikers complex for however long it stays open.
Lawyers from the inmates, and even the Manhattan U.S. attorney, have asked a judge to appoint an outside receiver. They're due back in court in November.