Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD - Bonus Episode: The Fall of Eric Adams

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

New York’s Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted and charged by the federal government with corruption, wire fraud, bribery and more. Could we have predicted what kind of mayor Adams would become based on the culture he was a part of in the NYPD? Chenjerai and attorney John Teufel, who has investigated police misconduct, discuss the implications of the indictment and the significance of a former cop becoming the mayor.From Wondery, Crooked Media and PushBlack.Empire City is made with a commitment to ensure the stories of those who were and are still impacted by the NYPD are always part of the stories we tell ourselves about the Police, about America, and about Democracy.Voices & References:John Teufel: https://www.johnteufelesq.com/DOJ’s Indictment of Adams: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/new-york-city-mayor-eric-adams-charged-bribery-and-campaign-finance-offensesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Empire City early and ad free. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Ginger Rye here. Thanks so much for listening to Empire City. We've been hearing so many responses from y'all, and it's incredibly exciting to see more conversation about the history of the police, what that history tells us about what this institution is, how we got here, and how we could get somewhere better. One thing I've learned making this series is that history isn't just about the past.

If you pay attention, it tells us things we need to know about the future. And I never felt that way more than when I started reading the headlines that were coming out right when we launched this series. Right now, we're seeing history being made. A former cop climbed up to New York's highest office, and he could fall because of alleged corruption. In 2022, Democrat Eric Adams became New York's mayor. I, Eric Adams, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution.

And like most mayors, Adams painted the picture of a scary and dangerous city and reassured them that he had a plan to fix it. We cannot have a city where people are afraid to walk the streets, ride the subway, or send their children to school. Because Adams sees safety and justice as key for our democracy. Oh, no wait, that's not what he said? Oh, alright. Well, maybe it was more like safety and justice are important for all of our health and well-being.

No? Not that either? Alright. Well, you know what, let's just use his words. Safety and justice are the prerequisite of prosperity. Ah, prosperity. I keep forgetting, safety and justice are important so some people can make money. When Adams was elected a lot of people celebrated and they saw the fact that he was a former cop as a good thing.

And that's why they didn't listen to folks who were worried like movement lawyer, Eliamy O'Leary. She talked about one big warning sign on her YouTube. Let's unpack who Eric Adams is at his core. A Black cop. He prioritizes the needs of NYPD above all else because he knows that there is nobody more powerful than the police in a police state. And as we learned in episode three, he's repeatedly pushed back against attempts

at police oversight. We cannot handcuff the police. We want to handcuff bad people. As someone else who was determined to handcuff bad people were federal prosecutors, and it was one bad person at the top of their hit list. For the first time in New York City's modern history, we announced criminal charges against the sitting mayor of New York City.

The feds accused Adams of engaging in what they call corruption for nearly a decade. And now the indictments of other folks in his administration are coming down so fast that it's hard to keep track. Now that Adams is drowning in indictments, a lot of people are saying it was pretty obvious that this was going to happen. In this episode, I talk with John Tufel, who's an attorney and former police misconduct investigator in New York. John and I get into how paying attention to history and looking at the NYPD culture he was steeped in could have told us what kind of mayor Adams would become. And what I really want to know is,

if there were so many red flags early on, why did so many powerful people ignore them? I'm Chenjerah Kumanika, and this is the bonus episode of Empire City, the fall of Eric Adams. City, the fall of Eric Adams. John Toofill, thank you so much for sitting down to me, man. How's it going, Chad? Good to see you, man.

Yeah. I organized all of that, by the way, the indictments, everything. This is all. Oh, that was you, huh? OK, good. I mean, I'm sorry. Sorry, New Yorkers. Yeah. Hey, it's good publicity. Yeah, yeah, everything. This is all... Oh, that was you, huh? Okay, good. I mean, I'm sorry. Sorry, New Yorkers. Yeah. Hey, it's good publicity. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. John, like, a ton has happened since we finished the show. Yeah. Including the mayor is now indicted. Mm-hmm. Maybe more to come. Since we're a show that looks at the history of police, understanding more clearly what policing is,

how is the policeness of Eric Adams responsible for this stuff? of police, understanding more clearly what policing is, how is the policeness of Eric Adams responsible for this stuff? You talk about the cop-ness of Eric Adams, right? And this notion that we're going to have a police officer be in charge of a big city like New York and what that's going to look like. I would never claim, and I don't think any reasonable person

would ever claim, that every cop is corrupt, right? That's just not the case, at least not in terms of how we usually think about corruption. Not every cop is on the take. Most cops, in fact, are not on the take. Most cops are doing their job as that job is laid out and described to them, right? Right. I mean, my argument would be to do the kind of harm that they do, that doesn't require corruption actually.

Exactly. If we're going to talk about what corruption is, think about this. Not every police officer is on the take, right? But does every police officer, if they're off duty and they're in their own vehicle and they blow a red light, or if they go too fast or something like that and they get pulled over, are they getting a ticket? No, they're not, right? Your proximity to law enforcement determines whether you're allowed to break, even if they are quote unquote minor laws, you're allowed to break those laws. That's insane, right? But that is being a cop. Then when you're on duty, you're allowed

to use force, you know that you are probably 99% of the time not gonna be held accountable, even if you use too much force, you're not gonna be held accountable. You can violate constitutional rights and not be held accountable. You will never be held civilly liable because of qualified immunity.

So you are effectively untouchable. So Eric Adams spends years and years and years Marinating in that culture, right and then he moves on to politics I mean, what does that do to a person right in most cases? It's not a big deal because cops retire they go become security professionals private investigators something like that They don't hold any power over anyone Whatever Eric Adams actually becomes more powerful than he was as a high-ranking police officer. Wow.

He was untouchable and marinating in this culture of untouchability for years and years and years, and then you make him mayor of the city of New York of 8.5 million people. What is going to happen? And I think we're seeing what's happening. I mean, this is that. What is And I think we're seeing what's happening. I mean, this is that. What is he being charged with? And who's involved? So Eric Adams is essentially being charged with two major things. One is bribery, that he was effectively taking official actions in his capacity as mayor because he was given

gratuities by entities connected to the government of Turkey, right? 100%. I know in addition to that, there's also accusations that this was influencing his choices, like what regulations to enforce around buildings and things of this nature. So it gets complicated. Right. You know, before all this stuff came out, I think most people weren't like, well, what

I don't like about Adams is he's too friendly with the government of Turkey or whatever. Right, that's right. What he allegedly did for Turkey was he pushed the department or the FDNY rather to allow a Turkish government-owned building to open even though fire inspections hadn't passed and the building should not have been allowed to operate. That's what he's alleged to have done. Is that a big criticism that people had of Adams? No. But I think in general, there has been this feeling throughout the Adams administration, mostly driven by his

choice of personnel, that there is like a lax ethical standard, that he doesn't care about the appearance of corruption. I think that is generally the feeling, that there was corruption. Adams has cultivated this larger than life persona that almost in a way hearkens back to the more corrupt politicians of yesteryear, you know what I mean? History repeats itself.

We already know that the police department has been roped into some of these investigations, that some of the corruption does go directly to the police department has been roped into some of these investigations, that some of the corruption does go directly to the police department. And we've only seen chapter one of this, and there's probably going to be quite a bit more that comes down the road. What does history tell us about how this federal indictment could play out for Adams and those in his administration? I do think that there are going to be more indictments just because of the number of

Investigations that are going on right now. These are serious charges Whether Eric Adams is able to ultimately enter a plea deal Whether he faces these charges down and goes to trial. I mean it has become more difficult to prove corruption and to prove bribery become more difficult to prove corruption and to prove bribery specifically under the laws. And we've seen other politicians manage to actually avoid conviction, like the former governor of Virginia, for example. They've managed to avoid conviction on exactly the same type of charges that have been leveled against Eric Adams because the definition of an official act in the law has become very, very narrow due

to the Supreme Court. So we reached out to Eric Adams several times for this series, but he declined to be interviewed. You can look at Eric Adams as kind of like a test case, right? Like a sort of experiment about what does it mean to have a city governed by a cop, right? I mean, he's not officially in uniform, in that uniform, but he holds his copness right out front. Absolutely.

So how did he use his credibility as a former cop? And how did he use his story about himself to climb the ladder? Eric Adams rose very high in the police department. He had an impressive career. He has always liked to paint himself as sort of a rabble rouser in the NYPD, as a troublemaker. He was an integral part of 100 blacks in law enforcement, right?

And he was a member of other black fraternal cop organizations. And he rose to the rank of captain, which is a very high rank in the NYPD. And he used that to move on to politics. And there's a way that Eric Adams is extremely talented at politics, right? He's charming and people really like him. And he managed to rise to borough president in Brooklyn. And I think as a cop, you should look at the context of when Adams ran for mayor, right? So, God, this feels like so long ago, right? So Biden had been in office for a year already,

by the time Adams is elected. Trump's in the rear view mirror, right? George Floyd, in a lot of ways, is in the rear view mirror, unfortunately. So Eric Adams comes along at a time when the sustained outrage that was really fed by having Donald Trump in office and by the visuals of George Floyd being publicly executed in front of us is fresh in everyone's mind and people are motivated.

People are so up in arms about police violence, right? And it was the largest spontaneous movement, possibly in American history. I mean, the streets were filled, you know? And this was kind of a problem for Democrats. Yeah. Why? Well, I mean, I think people expected

some sort of action, right? Police violence. What are you going to do to fix it? Democrats. Because we knew Trump wasn't going to do it. Right? We looked to our elected leaders on both a local and a national level to respond to this in some way.

And you remember that famous photo of Nancy Pelosi and a bunch of other House Democrats kneeling in the Kente cloth. Right? I mean, that was kind of what we were doing at that point, right? I had successfully forgotten that. Oh, listen, it's burned into my memory. I will never forget that photo.

I will never forget it. And you know, people looked at that and they said, this is dumb. Like, okay, we get it. It's a symbol, whatever, but tell us what you're gonna do. And that's when the backlash came. I mean, in New York, you're talking about pissing off potentially 30 plus thousand police,

and then what are they, like 18,000 police departments across the country? Very powerful police unions. All related to people, of course. So what happens? Adams comes along after all of that is over with, right? And campaigns on this idea that our city is lawless, right? There was a spike in crime during COVID.

There was. We can't deny that. Right. Crime did go up. But when you look at the statistics, crime went up to the levels it was at in about 2014, 2015. And that was well after people were saying New York City is a miracle of safety. New York City is generally a safe city, and it has been for decades now at this point.

So Eric Adams comes along, he buys into this right-wing framing, which is really what it is, a right-wing framing, that New York City is out of control. It's more lawless than it's ever been. Exactly. So that particular claim has zero empirical basis. Zero empirical basis. And he said that too. He said that New York is worse than he's ever seen it, right? And so he 100% buys into this completely false narrative

that the city's out of control. And you know, this is a very racialized narrative. It's fed a lot by the protests against police violence that the right wing was taking those protests and using them to paint this feeling of disorder or what have you. But you know, Eric Adams, I've looked at him as a way that the right wing has been able to launder right wing narratives into mainstream discourse and make them kind of bipartisan. And first he did it with crime and later he did it with immigration.

But this is what allowed him to really get elected was the focus on crime and disorder. I'm a cop. I can put this right. Oh, and by the way, I also am a reformer. I'm someone who was a rabble rouser in the police department. I can do that again. I can be everything to everyone. And that's eventually what got him elected.

I guess this was like shortly after he's elected. Nate Silver came out and said he was like so hyperbolically excited about Eric Adams. Yeah. That he says, I actually think he could he was in his top five who could be the next Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden. There were a lot of people of a centrist persuasion who were singing Eric Adams praises on high and who saw him as the future, quote, future of the Democratic Party. Right. And I think that's a bizarre thing to think even setting aside the policing issues and the corruption

stuff. I think it's weird for people to say that just because Eric Adams himself is such a personally odd individual, but Nate Silver was not the only one. A lot of people were saying this. So, you know, there was a lot of hopes placed on Eric Adams. So it's clear there are a lot of warning signs about Eric Adams. But what makes Adams so interesting as a case study is that he's been in office for two years and we can learn a lot from what happened in those two years with the cop mayor. So when we come back, I talk to John about how it all worked out. All right, so when Eric Adams becomes mayor, now he has the ability to appoint a new police

commissioner and he hires someone named Kishant Sewell, right? And like, for a lot of people that was exciting, you know, Sewell was the first black woman police commissioner in the NYPD's history. But what happens when she gets in office? Does she do anything different than the norm? As a little primer on police discipline in New York, the police commissioner ultimately has final say over whether cops get disciplined or not. Keach and Sewell dismissed or reduced punishments against police officers at a greater rate

than any of her prior police commissioners. And they did it at high rates too, which really tells you something. She bragged about it. The CCRB is out of control. It's bringing too many charges against police officers, right? So that's step one of what Adams does. Right.

So, you know, again, it's kind of like business as usual. But I heard about this one case that was so wild that even Kishan Suul couldn't ignore it. Could you tell us about that? Basically, what happened is this retired police officer chases these teenagers around, pulls his gun, and threatens them, right? There's some kind of, you know, ruckus where maybe they had thrown something at his house or something of that nature.

This retired cop is then arrested for doing this. This retired cop apparently has friends in high places because who shows up at the station house but the highest ranking police officer or uniformed police officer in the police department, Jeffrey Madry. Jeffrey Madry starts demanding that this retired cop be released and the charges against him be dropped. Wow. So Madri just like intervenes, right, to sort of stop this cop from having to go through the ordeal that most people have to go through when they get arrested. And I know

like some people argued he's acting totally outside of his authority and they file a complaint which goes all the way up to Kishant Sewell. So what does she do then? Sewell, to her credit, eventually comes to the determination that he should be docked vacation days. That was what was at stake here. Eric Adams is not happy about that. Madri is a personal friend of Eric Adams. Madri is a high ranking uniformed police officer.

Madri should be untouchable. So the great irony of Keech and Sewell's tenure is that she bragged about how she was not disciplining officers. When a high ranking officer broke the rules in such a way that was even too far for her, she did decide to act, and ultimately that led to her downfall.

The one time that she really did try to take a stand. And eventually this is what leads to Eric Adams firing Keech and Sewell. Now of course they did this all in a nice orchestrated way where she was able to say, I've decided to leave and I'm happy to have served the city of New York or whatever, but we know from reporting that this is what happened. Sewell was forced to step down because of this. I'm thinking about this high profile incident at a subway station in Brooklyn last September. What happened is that you have these officers who chased this guy down because he hopped

the turnstile or something like that. And if you watch the body cam footage, he's really trying to get away from them, right? Like at a certain point, he feels threatened and appears to be holding a knife, but the dude wants to get on the train and get wherever he's going. And they chase this guy all the way down to the end of the subway stop. He gets on the train, right? He's still trying to get away from them.

They tase him and eventually they shoot, not just hitting him, but two bystanders and another cop. And like with all of that, technically they were doing their job. Oh yeah, none of them will be disciplined for that. I mean, immediately after it happened, Eric Adams came out and defended them, and in fact said that they were brave. They were showing restraint.

Yeah, exactly. You see, on one hand, these police officers who now work under Adams displaying that thing you were saying that they marinate in, right? Like, this is an example of, like, how they function. And then you see this cop mayor now at the other side of his journey totally getting behind that. Yep. There's been no follow-up.

I mean, as far as the police department is concerned, the incident's over. If we understood the police historically, and then you have this kind of like former police candidate, can we have predicted how someone like Adams would be as a leader? I don't think that we can ever really know who people are until we put them in these sorts of positions. I am biased obviously. I do believe that the

psychology of policing requires somebody who is on some level corrupt and on some level power hungry. I think a lot of people are attracted to policing because of the level of power that they get to hold over others. Yeah. Does that definitionally mean that no police officer could ever be an effective mayor?

You know, maybe, maybe not. Maybe there are people who are able to detach themselves from that power that is vested in them But I didn't support Adams from the very beginning and I think a lot of people I'm not unique in that sense I think a lot of people felt the same way that he was gonna be the cop mayor and He turned out to be the cop mayor, you know, so should we really be surprised? No John thanks so much for coming and doing this man. You just keep us up to speed on this stuff. John, thanks so much for coming and doing this, man. You just keep us up to speed on this stuff. I appreciate you so much. Thank you.

Chandra, my pleasure. It's been great to be here. When you look at the indictments Eric Adams is facing, at first it might seem like they don't have anything to do with policing or NYPD history. But then I zoom out a little and I think about a culture of fear and retaliation where people employed by New Yorkers kind of operate like a gang that's against New Yorkers. I think about all the people the police chase down for minor infractions while the mayor might have been breaking the law to raise millions of dollars for his campaign. And if you've been paying attention to the history of the NYPD, it all starts to sound like it's part of the same story.

In a huge city like New York, or a country like the United States, it's convenient to believe that thousands of police and police leaders are going to be the answer to all of our problems. But if there's one thing we've learned on Empire City, it's this. Whether you're talking about politicians who love police or politicians who were police, the more power they get,

the more power we need to keep ourselves and our communities safe. Follow Empire City on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey. If you have a tip about a story you think we should investigate, please write to us

at Wondry.com slash tips. Empire City is a production of Wondry and Crooked Media. I'm your host and executive producer, Chinjaray Comenica. For Crooked Media, our senior producer is Peter Bresnan. Our managing producer is Leo Duran. Our senior story editor is Diane Hodson. Our producer is Sam Riddell. Bowen Wong and Sydney Rapp are our associate producers.

Original score by Axel Kakutye. Sound design and mixing by Karim Duweide with assistant editing by Natalie Escudero. Our historical consultant and fact-checker is History Studios. For Wondry, our senior producer is Mandy Gorinstein. Our senior story editor is Phyllis Fletcher. Our coordinating producer is Mariah Gossett. Executive producer at Push Black is Lily Worknett. Executive producers at Crooked Media are Sarah Geissmer, Katie Long, Tommy Vitor, and Diane Hodson. Executive producers at Wondry are Nigery Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall Louie, and Jen Sargent. for watching!