The budget rewards one of Mr. Adams, the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association. Amid the chaos and violence on Rikers Island, the union early the city to hire 3,000 additional corrections officers in April, even though there is no shortage of staff there.
In his executive budget, the mayor agreed in part, including funding for 578 additional officers. Mr Adams said they were needed to staff new housing areas in prisons.
The mayor’s housing proposal fell short of the funding levels that the city council and advocates had pushed for. Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference, urged the city to spend $2 billion more on housing each year.
“The Adams administration’s modest capital increase for housing is just a stairway of water and will not make a meaningful dent in this emergency situation,” she said.
The mental health teams that respond to 911 calls are known as the Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division, or B-HEARD. The mayor wants to use additional funds to expand the pilot program to downtown Brooklyn, eastern Queens and the South Bronx.
“Not every emergency call needs a police response,” the mayor said.
The city’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, stood and applauded at the moment. He later said he appreciated the mayor sending a message that Mr Williams said had been misinterpreted as anti-police. “Every time we think of public safety, and every time we equate it with police, we’re doing ourselves a disservice and it just hasn’t worked, as we see,” he said.
But Mr Adams also expressed strong support for the police on Tuesday, criticizing Democrats for saying “we don’t need our police” — part of his recent criticism of the “defund the police” movement.
“Let me tell you here and now: I will support my police and we will make our city a safe city,” he said to the cheers of the crowd.
Dana Rubinstein, Ashley Southall and Mihir Zaveri reported.
