Introduced with mariachi music, mayoral frontrunner Eric Adams was in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, today, June 15, to rally the Mexican-American community to get out the vote for him.
The neighborhood has a large Mexican-American immigrant population and Adams seemed at home in rallying not only for the Mexican vote but the Latino vote overall. According to the latest polls, he is leading all candidates with the Latino vote.
“This vote is crucial. And if you consolidate this vote, you are going to be on the major pathway to become the mayor of New York City. And that’s why I’m here focusing on letting them [Latino community] know I’m going to be a mayor of this community, the same way I’ve been the borough president of this community,” said Adams.
“I didn’t come to this community when I wanted to run for mayor. I was in this community when I was a police officer. Fighting against immigrant harassment, fighting the targeting of this community. We have a long relationship for so many years, and when I come to this community. I am not introducing myself, I’m saying ‘hello old friend’ and I don’t believe other candidates can do that,” he added.
Adams also addressed the need to reform the police department. He noted he was both arrested by police officers as a youth and was also a member of the NYPD rising to the rank of captain before retiring.
“I understand the dynamics of the police department, where we need to be allowing communities here to interview and choose that precinct commander to build out a real trust between police and community because our streets are going to be controlled by the good guys or the bad guys. We can’t allow the bad guys in between us and on our streets,” said Adams.
“I’m going to show how to build back that trust between police and community. We are going to weed out those officers that are abusive, and ensure they can’t take down the importance of public policing,” he added.
Adams noted many tourists come from China and they might reconsider coming to the city if they feel criminals are targeting them with anti-Asian hate crimes or being slashed or assaulted in the subway and on city streets.
“If we don’t get the anti-Asian violence under control it is going to have an impact on tourism, which will impact our recovery. So we have to get crime under control and we can do that,” he said.
Adams campaign stop comes as early primary voting takes place all week. The primary election day is next Tuesday, June 22.
