NYC Mayor Eric Adams Warns Protesters: ‘We Will Not Allow You to Destroy Our City’

VAN SUSTEREN: “Mayor, all the big city mayors in the country are having protests, sometimes riots. But it seems like New York had a reasonably successful night last night, only 86 arrests, which was a low number based on the number of protesters out there. What do you attribute to what I see is actually a pretty successful night for New York?”
Adams: “Well, it’s a combination of things, and it’s something experience helps. And seeing protests of this magnitude throughout the years, not only in law enforcement, but also as the county executive of Brooklyn. We know that there are those who travel our country and embed themselves into issues like Antifa and others. And they have one goal in mind, and that is to provoke and to create disruption and disorder, particularly with our law enforcement community. We identify them immediately, remove them from the crowds and take proper police practice when they cross the line.”
VAN SUSTEREN: “I thought it was actually quite impressive last night in New York, because actually I studied about New York getting ready for this interview today, is that the police really did a great job in New York. From what I can understand, I mean, a lot of insults were hurled at them, a lot of terrible things were said, but they seem to do their job very professionally.”
Adams: “And listen, we all have human emotions when someone is disrespectful to you or someone wants to egg you on. These officers go through a great deal of training. We use the terminology, don’t get hooked, don’t let anyone take you out of your professional responsibilities. And that’s crucial. And Commissioner Tisch gave a very loud and clear message. We will allow peaceful protests, but we will not allow you to destroy our city or harm innocent people. And we will take action whenever that takes place.”
VAN SUSTEREN: “You were a former police officer, captain of the police force. Do they have special training, do they do any special training in New York that maybe the other cities aren’t doing?”
Adams: “I’m not too familiar with what they are doing in other cities, but we go through an extensive level of training and we have specialty units that will come in when you have large protests like this. And you have people who criticize these units, but we have to just ignore the noise when it comes down to public safety. Whatever equipment that’s needed, whatever training that’s needed, we’re going to do it. I’m not taking any shortcuts and keeping our city safe. We know what any type of major disorder or riot can do. It could cost billions of dollars in property damage, lives could be lost. And I just refuse to take any chances when we do that. And my specialty units are going to do just that. They’re going to respond to these incidents.”
VAN SUSTEREN: “Do you have expectations for tonight? Do you have any idea whether or not there are going to be more protests/riots tonight?”
Adams: “Well we’re hearing reports from our intel that there are those who are mobilizing throughout the city and we’re going to respond accordingly. It’s a combination of what my deputy commissioner of intelligence, Rebecca Weiner, what she’s doing of making sure to listen, to find out wherever intel can assist us, and we’re going to respond accordingly. There are many pop-up protests. Sometimes you’ll see two, three hundred people at a particular location and sometimes you’ll see a larger number of several thousand. But this department is really trained to handle large crowds and disruptive environments and we respond accordingly.”
VAN SUSTEREN: “During the antisemitic protests that I covered recently at Columbia University, there were outsiders. Are these some outsiders coming in specifically to stir up trouble? Do you have that?”
Adams: “I’m glad you brought that up because if you recall, during the Columbia protests, I talked about the outside agitators, professional agitators that want to come on our college campuses and radicalize our students. Some of the leaflets and pamphlets that were handed out talk about hating America, hating Israel, hating Jewish people. Just real mean and nasty things that were targeting our young people. We went in and took appropriate action when they broke into a dorm room and we got the authorization to come in. So yes, and we found that there were those who were professionals, that they came from other parts of the country and actually agitated and pushed to participate in the taking over of Hamilton Hall. We’re seeing that here as well. These are professional people who believe in disruption and destruction of property and we’re asking parents to say, it’s 10 A.M., do you know where your children are? They should not be on our streets destroying property in the city.”