New York City Mayor Eric Adams has apparently learned nothing from AOC’s very literal political message dress last year and opted to attend the 2022 MET Gala in a suit that spells out “END GUN VIOLENCE.” Only his ensemble is worse, because it’s overtly hypocritical.
On Monday, accompanied by his date Tracey Collins, Adams rolled into the annual fete at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City channeling less Gilded Age-era garb, in keeping with the theme, and more gilded... well, bullshit. The back of Adams’ tuxedo jacket declared, “END GUN VIOLENCE” above an image of a gun with a red cross-out through it. A source told The New York Post that Adams had “been dying to go” to the Gala “for years,” which just adds another element of sad desperation to the whole thing.
Adams has notoriously been outspoken about tackling gun violence in New York City, even going so far as to issue a 15-page document aptly titled “Blueprint to End Gun Violence.” The “blueprint” emphasizes ending that ending problem will “require both intervention and prevention,” which is to say: Stricter policing.
Anyone with a pulse can see that Adams’s “blueprint” is all too similar to the aggressive policing and prosecution practices set forth by his predecessor, Mayor Bill de Blasio. As New York Focus reported earlier this month, his plan “underscores how little has really changed since the 2020 protests.” Their report also notes that Adams’s plan to increase policing to combat gun violence almost exactly “mirrors de Blasio’s 2016, 2020, and 2021 gun violence plans.”
While Adams has addressed New York City’s role in racist and brutal policing, he’s also claimed he’ll have the NYPD, which is riddled with cops who have histories of misconduct. He’s said that his plainclothes Neighborhood Safety Teams won’t be the same as the plainclothes anti-crime units (which were disbanded in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 due to their violent tactics) because they’ll wear body cameras, have “enhanced training and oversight,” and won’t patrol undercover.
To be clear: Plainclothes officers are often involved in high-profile civilian killings, especially in recent years.
This is also the same man who, while still a state senator, made a deeply unhinged video imploring parents to snoop on their children. The 2011 video had Adams finding everything from a crack pipe to a handgun to bullets under children’s pillows and inside jewelry boxes.
As we have learned many many a time, and most recently today as a “gang” of LAPD cops reportedly shot one of their colleagues’ tattoo off his ankle because he changed it without permission, more police are not the solution to Ameria’s horrifying gun violence problem. In fact, as of this month, gun violence in New York is up 14.5 percent from 2021 and, as per Politico, crime “has climbed in almost every category the NYPD tracks since his tenure began on Jan. 1.”
Oh, and after a horrific recent shooting on the N train in Sunset Park, a shop owner managed to find the at-large shooter and call the police after they failed to apprehend the man at the scene. Everything’s fine, guys. Eric and his sparkly suit have got it covered.