Mayor Eric Adams Meets with NYC’s Five District Attorneys to Work Together to Fight Gun Violence

By Yehudit Garmaise

Mayor Eric Adams held today at City Hall the first of what will be regular meetings among all five NYC district attorneys, the deputy mayor of public safety, and the police commissioner “to review issues from the previous week, highlight needs, and identify the best ways to support each other moving forward,” to bring down crime rates, the mayor said on Jan. 24, when he announced his Blueprint to End Gun Violence in New York City.

Mayor Adams and District Attorneys Eric Gonzalez (Brooklyn), Alvin Bragg (Manhattan), Darcel Clark (Bronx), Melinda Katz (Queens), and Michael McMahon (Staten Island) discussed their mutually shared goals of keeping New Yorkers safe: particularly from the rising toll of gun crimes, the district attorneys and the mayor said in a statement.

Bringing in the city’s district attorneys, who prosecute criminals, to the mayor’s crime fighting agenda could provide the fear of consequences that many criminals in New York City appear to currently lack.

Sergeant Joseph Imperatrice, who founded Blue Lives Matter, said in Ami Magazine last week, “Gun violence is up because criminals feel they have the upper hand, and police officers are being shot at record highs.”

Sergeant Imperatrice said that if Mayor Adams “can have closed-door meetings with district attorneys [who are soft on crime, like DA Bragg appears to be,] and say, ‘My cops are getting hurt and killed—we cannot have this,’ then we’ll be alright.’”

Today, the mayor and the five district attorneys might have had something like such a meeting, when they “discussed ways that each of their offices, the city, state, and federal partners could contribute to the fight against gun violence, as well as the ways in which they each could use their voices and platforms to urge necessary changes to the system,” they said.

Among many other ways in which Mayor Adams wants to work together with the district attorneys to not only get the bad guys, but prevent future criminal behavior, on Jan. 24, the mayor said, “We must allow district attorneys to move forward earlier with gun charges: removing disclosure requirements that jam up the process, and we urge the state to pass legislation to that effect.”

Just as hospitals first treat patients who are most in need, Mayor Adams proposed that the district attorneys prioritize pressing charges on criminals who committed crimes that relate to gang or gun violence: “as a crucial step towards getting guns off our streets, faster,” the mayor said.

Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.