In one evening, barely an hour apart, Mayor Eric Adams was confronted with two tragic events that crystallized some people’s persistent fears about New York City.
Shortly before the mayor announced the shooting death of Police Officer Jonathan Diller from a hospital in Queens, the police confirmed that a man had been fatally pushed into the path of a subway train in an unprovoked attack in Manhattan.
The two episodes underscored the defining challenges of Mr. Adams’s mayoralty as he has tried to improve public safety and boost the city’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. In recent months, he has repeatedly embraced a slogan — “Crime is down, jobs are up” — to drive both points home.
But the violence on Monday undercut the argument that the city is becoming less dangerous and raised questions about whether Mr. Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul have done enough to address gun violence and safety on the subway. Mr. Adams recently increased police patrols on the subway, and Ms. Hochul ordered the National Guard and the State Police into the transit system.
Mr. Adams, a Democrat and former police officer, found himself in a familiar place on Monday night — grieving with New Yorkers over another “senseless act of violence” and speaking out against those who have a “total disregard for the safety of this city.”
“I cannot say it any clearer — it is the good guys against the bad guys,” Mr. Adams said at a news conference at Jamaica Hospital in Queens after meeting with Officer Diller’s wife. “These bad guys are violent, they carry guns, and the symbol of our public safety, which is that police uniform, they have a total disregard for.”
The night echoed violent episodes from the mayor’s first month in office in January 2022, when two police officers were killed while responding to a domestic disturbance in Harlem and a woman named Michelle Go was killed after being pushed onto the subway tracks in Times Square. Mr. Adams responded with a major plan to address gun violence and has focused on subway safety and removing people with severe mental illness from the streets.
Mr. Adams said at a news conference on Tuesday that the city was facing three major issues: recidivism, severe mental illness and “random acts of violence.” But he contended that the city was not “out of control,” and cited police statistics showing that shootings were down and major crimes were relatively rare on the subway.
But the mayor also suggested that external political forces were impeding law enforcement efforts, and asserted that police officers, correction officers and prosecutors were leaving their jobs because of it. The “foundation of the public safety apparatus is dissolving right in front of our eyes,” he said.
Some New Yorkers have welcomed the emphasis on public safety, but the approach by Mr. Adams and Ms. Hochul has also received criticism from elected officials on the left and the right.
Progressive Democrats have argued that deploying the National Guard is too aggressive, and called for violence interrupters and community programs to address the root causes of violence rather than a militarization of the subway system. Republicans have called for stricter law enforcement and attacked efforts by Democrats to change bail laws to protect defendants.
Others have called for specific solutions not involving the police, like creating sturdy subway barriers to prevent riders from falling on the tracks.
The city has also spent tens of millions of dollars on a program to treat severely mentally ill people on the streets and in the subways for nearly a decade, but its efficacy was recently questioned by the city comptroller.
The city’s handling of mentally ill people once again came into focus on Monday night, when a 24-year-old man was arrested and charged with murder after pushing another man to his death on the subway tracks at a station in East Harlem. The attack by the man, Carlton McPherson, was unprovoked, and he appeared to have a history of mental illness, according to a senior law enforcement official.
Across the city in Queens, Officer Diller died after being shot during a traffic stop. He had approached the car because it was illegally parked at a bus stop on Mott Avenue in Far Rockaway, and asked at least one of the vehicle’s two occupants to get out of the car several times, the police said. The man seated on the passenger side, Guy Rivera, eventually pointed a gun at the officer and fired, the police said.
Mr. Rivera has 21 prior arrests, including on charges of first-degree robbery and selling drugs to an undercover officer, the police said. Mr. Rivera was released on parole in 2021. The driver of the car, Lindy Jones, was arrested on a gun charge last year.
Mr. Adams ran for mayor in 2021 on a public safety message and has returned to that theme as he prepares to run for re-election next year in what is expected to be a competitive Democratic primary. Mr. Adams has repeatedly criticized members of his party who have embraced the movement to “defund the police” and he has pushed for changes to bail reform laws that would make it easier to keep defendants in jail.
On Monday night, Mr. Adams returned to his message that the criminal justice system was failing. He cut in at the news conference at the hospital and moved to the podium to highlight how the driver of the car involved in the killing of the officer had been arrested on a gun charge in April 2023.
“This is what you call — not a crime problem — a recidivist problem,” he said. “Same bad people doing bad things to good people. In less than a year, he’s back on the streets with another gun.”
Chelsia Rose Marcius contributed reporting.
