The key phrase is “if he wanted to”

Right. That was the million dollar question. He had the perfect resume to do it is my point. Nobody was positioned as well to be a police reformer as him. The big if was if he wanted to do it. I thought it was in the realm of possibility… worth hoping for for sure. Would I have bet money on it? No.

De Blasio screwed up by being so loud and vocal about it. He came into office screaming from the rooftops for anybody who would listen that the cops were bad. Playing up the story of worrying about his black son with police stops... He embarrassed the cops. In my opinion they deserve it, and his complaints were totally just ones, but if you want to get anything out of them I don't think you can do that. A smart Mayor would keep it quiet, but when contract negotiations come around work it hard.

Let me rephrase a little bit... I was hopeful he would enact police reform. And I very seriously follow politics and I don't think this was too naive a hope. He definitely was going to come down hard on crime and have a very aggressive stance on policing, but I hoped he could work both sides of that knife's edge.

After DeBlasio came in guns blazing screaming 'all cops are bad' essentially, he was done as far as police reform went right out of the gate. They were never, never going to listen to him. I was hopeful, that Adams might be smarter. I was hopeful that maybe he was smart enough to not scream for police reform from the rooftops like De Blasio did, but would quietly work to make change. And elements of his history are there to make you think he might do that.

That Adams, with his backstory of growing up in NYC, having a tough run in with cops at a young age, founding 100 blacks in law enforcement, etc... That if he wanted to, he was very uniquely positioned to make change.He had all the right parts to be both listened to by cops AND the general public. IF, and it was always an IF to me, he had the will. But hopeful was probably my overall sentiment about it, he still had a lot of career politician stink on him.

Now this far into his tenure I realize that hope was just that, and will never be more.

Yup. Nobody likes a hypocrite. And you can’t demand respect, you have to earn it. They need to start by following the laws they are supposed to enforce instead of this ‘rules for thee, not for me’ attitude they’ve had in NYC for decades. It starts with the little stuff. Park legally. Wear a mask in the subways when you’re supposed to. Don’t double park for your donut. Follow the rules themselves and I think they’d see more New Yorkers giving them genuine respect, and real credibility along with it.

I was a Kathryn Garcia voter, but I always felt that if we were to get Adams, at least he would be the most uniquely situated to enact meaningful police reform if he wanted to with his background and we’d likely see some progress there.

HOOOOOOOOOOO BOY! Was I wrong!