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      New York City mayor’s longtime friend now holds high-paid NYPD job

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      New York City mayor’s longtime friend now holds high-paid NYPD jobLisa White, who earns $241,000 a year, is one of a number of Eric Adams’s friends, family and former colleagues hired to top roles A career 911 dispatcher and longtime friend of New York City mayor Eric Adams who rented a room to Adams in her apartment in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights for four years now has one of the highest-paid jobs in city government, records show.In May, the NYPD appointed Lisa White as its deputy commissioner for employee relations, at a salary of more than $241,000 a year – a nearly fivefold boost over her prior salary there and almost as much as the police commissioner makes.In her new role, White attends to the health, wellbeing and morale of the NYPD’s 35,000 uniformed members, including their corps of chaplains, along with bereavement and other support services for families.‘Egregious acts of violence’: why is Eric Adams cracking down on subway buskers and mango sellers?Read moreCity Hall confirmed that Adams’s connection with White extended beyond a mere professional relationship, also characterizing it as a friendship that dated back decades and that involved sharing an address for years.Government payroll records show that White served as a 911 operator, formally known as a police communications technician, from 1995 through December 2019, when she retired with a base salary of just over $53,000. She is currently earning a pension of about $30,000 a year, on top of her current salary, according to the website SeeThroughNY.White’s bio on the NYPD website notes that “throughout her 30-year career with the Department, she served in positions within the Communications Division, including Interim Supervisor.” It also highlights her most recent job before her appointment as deputy commissioner, as a field supervisor for the US Census Bureau.White’s ties to the mayor run back for years – part of a pattern of appointments by Adams that demonstrates a determination to hire friends, family and former colleagues for top administration posts.City Hall spokesperson Fabien Levy said Adams played no role in White’s appointment.He said Adams and White both had a professional relationship and were also friendsfrom their time with the group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, which Adams co-founded while he served in the NYPD.Levy said that before becoming mayor, Adams rented a room at the Crown Heights address.Prior to White’s deputy commissioner appointment, she served as a volunteer board member and treasurer for Adams’s Brooklyn Borough Hall-affiliated nonprofit, the One Brooklyn Fund, from 2014 to 2021, according to tax records and a conflicts of interest disclosure form she filed with the city this year.The bad old days: how policing in New York City turned back the clockRead moreAdams used the nonprofit not just to hold events and offer services to residents of the community, but also to tout his government work and bolster his standing politically. The fund raised money from businesses and distributed grant dollars to local groups.The ties between White and Adams go back further still, to at least the 1990s. Media clips indicate White served as a spokesperson for 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, which Adams co-founded to draw attention to and reform the NYPD’s interactions with the Black community.One news article published in 1999, about a protest by 911 staff over their equipment and working conditions, identifies White as a 911 dispatcher and a member of 100 Blacks. Representing that group, she did an on-air interview in 2000 with the radio show “Democracy Now” about a wave of sexual assaults in Central Park.Public records show that for years, White claimed residence at an apartment on the 20th floor of Ebbets Field Apartments, which is in Crown Heights and named for the Dodgers baseball stadium that once stood there.White made eight political donations from that same address between 2008 and 2019 – including two to Adams’s borough president campaign, state board of elections records show. The contributions to Adams, both in 2012, list her employer as “NYC Police Department” and her position as “Police Communications Tech”, according to city campaign finance board records. City payroll records confirm her title was “police communications technician”.In 2013, as Adams ran for borough president, he changed his voter registration – to declare his residence as the same McKeever Place apartment where White had also declared her residence.City board of election records show Adams maintained that he lived at the McKeever Place unit between June 2013 and March 2017.Last year, when questions arose about Adams’s real estate holdings and where he was living, his mayoral campaign spokesman also said that Adams lived at the McKeever Place address from 2013 to 2017.The mayor thinks New York gets ‘special energy’ from crystals. Is he right?Read moreWhite was also paid $1,000 in November 2013 as a consultant for Adams’s initial campaign for Brooklyn borough president – sent to her at the McKeever Place address. She surfaced once more to speak as an Adams political representative in July 2020, as he faced questions about law enforcement contributions to his budding mayoral campaign while protests against police brutality raged.Just days after Adams was sworn in as mayor on 1 January 2022, the NYPD dismissed its deputy commissioner for employee relations, Robert Ganley – opening the post that the department named White to in May.White didn’t respond to a message left at a phone number listed for her, and Ganley also didn’t respond.An unnamed NYPD spokesperson said her appointment fell within department standards.“Deputy commissioner Lisa White filed for service retirement from the NYPD communications section in 2019, after a 29-year-career with the agency,” said the spokesperson. “Her hiring was in line with the NYPD’s standards for identifying those best suited for their roles within the department.”Adams has unapologetically hired a number of close friends to top city posts, including David Banks as schools chancellor and Banks’s partner, Sheena Wright, as a deputy mayor.The mayor tapped Banks’s brother Philip Banks – who resigned as NYPD chief of department in 2014 amid a federal bribery probe in a case that later identified him as an unindicted co-conspirator – as deputy mayor for public safety, reporting directly to Adams.Adams also tried to give his own brother, Bernard Adams, a $242,000 gig as the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of governmental affairs, the New York Post revealed. City conflicts of interest prohibitions on nepotism forced Adams to significantly curtail his brother’s responsibilities and pay him only a nominal salary of $1 for overseeing his personal security.Another of Adams’s longtime friends from the police department, Tim Pearson, was quietly handed a $242,000 role at the city’s Economic Development Corporation overseeing public safety and Covid-19 initiatives.New York’s mayor is getting paid in bitcoin. But can he pay the bills with it?Read moreAt the start of his tenure, Adams brought on the longtime counsel for the Brooklyn Democratic party, Frank Carone, as his chief of staff, and later gave a $190,000 job to the husband of party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who had staunchly backed Adams’s mayoral candidacy. The Adams administration has also brought on at least half a dozen former city council members who had endorsed his mayoral run – one of whom, department of buildings commissioner Eric Ulrich, recently resigned amid a federal probe into alleged organized crime and illegal gambling, according to the New York Times.When questioned about these and other hires, Adams has repeatedly maintained that he picks the best people for the job.Adams’s years living at McKeever Place in Crown Heights got little scrutiny amid the wider questions that arose last year during his campaign for mayor about his real estate holdings and where he actually lives.At the time that he was living at McKeever Place, Adams already owned a four-unit townhouse on Lafayette Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant and co-owned a co-op in Prospect Heights that he had bought years earlier with a woman he called a “good friend”.During the campaign, Adams repeatedly insisted that he had turned over his 50% share of the co-op to his friend, Sylvia Cowan, back in 2007 – but he acknowledged after the election and this year on city financial disclosure forms that he indeed still co-owned the unit. He has said he wasn’t aware that Cowan didn’t finalize the transfer of shares.In 2016, Adams bought a co-op in Fort Lee, New Jersey, with his current partner, Tracey Collins. At a later point, Cowan also bought a unit in that same building, one floor below Adams.Adams responded to the questions raised about his residence by providing the media with a tour of the ground floor unit of his Bedford-Stuyvesant townhouse, which is where he and his campaign spokesperson said he has lived since 2017.This story is posted in collaboration with The City.TopicsEric AdamsNew YorkUS politicsNYPDUS policingnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Food is doing more injustice than mass incarceration’: New York mayor Eric Adams on veganism

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      Interview‘Food is doing more injustice than mass incarceration’: New York mayor Eric Adams on veganismEd Pilkington in New York Adams appears to have had some personal success with a vegan diet after a health scare, but can he replicate it among all New Yorkers?One morning in March 2016, before Eric Adams burst onto the national stage as the charismatic new mayor of New York City, he had a very rude awakening.The then Brooklyn borough president was startled to find that he could barely see the alarm clock that was sounding his morning call. His bedroom looked shrouded in mist.“I thought it was just sleep in my eyes and my eyes adjusting to the light,” Adams says. “But the cloudiness didn’t change. Something wrong was going on here.”He leapt out of bed only for the horror to intensify. Through the fog he could see that his right eye was bloodshot. His left eye was totally blind.“I had a piercing pain in my stomach which didn’t leave. I guess everything was breaking down all at once.”Adams is no stranger to fear. As he lays out in his book, Healthy At Last, he experienced plenty of it over more than two decades as an NYPD officer, patrolling the streets at night, raiding drug dens, investigating homicides, investigating the dark side of urban American life.This was different. This was the start of a journey into his physical dark side and the ugly truths he found there. He was quickly delivered a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. Doctors told him that his condition and the multiple pills he would now be forced to swallow every day would define him for the rest of his life.American politics thrives on personal narratives of overcoming adversity, and Eric Adams is no exception. He didn’t accept the medical advice. He kept on searching until, with the help of scientists at the Cleveland Clinic, he discovered a way to beat his ailment with a radical whole-food plant-based diet.Now 61, Adams is reveling in his new stature as New York’s second Black (after David Dinkins in the 1990s) and first (almost) vegan mayor. Since he started in the post on 1 January he has been ubiquitous, popping up all over the city brandishing his trademark swagger. “When a mayor has swagger, the city has swagger,” is his mantra.There are many aspects of Adams’ first month in office that beg attention. He likes to present himself as the future of the Democratic party, a “radically practical” politician who is tough on both police brutality and crime, who gives working-class New Yorkers what they need and want while being scathingly dismissive of the progressive left.The stance clearly resonates with many New Yorkers who narrowly gave him victory in the Democratic primaries in July and with it the keys to Gracie Mansion. But Adams has had a troubled start, some of it self-inflicted.He tried to put his brother Bernard into a $210,000 job as his top bodyguard (the city’s conflict of interests board whittled that down to a $1 salary as an adviser). He appointed as head of public safety Philip Banks, who in 2015 came under federal investigation as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a major NYPD corruption scandal.Adams doesn’t want to talk about all that. Before he sits down for an interview with the Guardian, his press team stipulates that he will answer no questions about politics – he will only talk about his journey back from ill-health and his exuberant championship of a plant-based diet, as laid out in his book. Even here Adams is placing himself in choppy waters. A few days after the Guardian interview, he incensed groups helping those impacted by the opioid crisis by likening excessive cheese consumption to heroin addiction.Then Politico came out with a report that quoted several people claiming to have seen Adams regularly dining out on fish. The story inevitably spawned the Twitter handle #FishGate, and forced Adams to put out a statement saying “I am perfectly imperfect, and have occasionally eaten fish.”Adams clearly needs to get his story straight. Is he a strict vegan who only ever eats plant-based foods? (No.) Is he a pescatarian? (Maybe.) Is he someone who was given the scare of his life by contracting a devastating disease and drastically changed his life as a result?At least that last one is a definite yes. After Adams received his diabetes diagnosis, he began asking himself difficult questions about his lifestyle. He started reflecting on all those years of NYPD night shifts and the terrible diet that entailed.There were the inevitable McDonald’s drive-throughs and Wendy’s shakes and burgers. He became a connoisseur of the dollar menu, the double cheeseburger, coffee and fried chicken at KFC. It took its toll – by the time of the blindness episode he had such a stunningly elevated blood sugar level that his doctor said it could have put him in a coma.And then Adams dug deeper. Looking further into the root causes of his condition, he thought about the soul food that he had grown up with in New York and that his mother Dorothy and forebears had consumed in rural Alabama. He thought about the sugared buttered rolls, the chitterlings (pigs’ intestines), pigs’ feet and ears, fried chicken, ham hocks, fried steak and catfish.He thought how delicious. And how deadly. So much of it smothered in sugar, high in cholesterol and saturated fats, contributing to the epidemic of modern American diseases – diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and heart conditions.And then he thought, picking up on a debate that has been happening in African American communities for many years, this is not soul food, this is survival food, slavery food. “This was the diet our slave masters gave to us hundreds of years ago,” Adams writes. “We adopted a diet born from slavery and made it our own.”I asked Adams to elaborate upon the idea that the modern diet of millions of Americans today, in 2022, has its roots in the scraps of food tossed at slaves from the master’s table. All these years later, he replied, the long tail of slavery is still killing African Americans through morbid ill health.“Sometimes we think of being enslaved and we think about physical restraints,” he said. “Our hands and feet are in shackles. And we don’t acknowledge that the term ‘enslaved’ also applies to something you can’t free yourself of – and that’s what bad food is.”He goes on: “We have to free ourselves of it mentally. Sometimes physical restraint is easier to free yourself from than emotional restraint.”It’s striking that at a time when the enduring injury of slavery is increasingly being studied and debated, whether in terms of racial inequality or the injustices of the criminal justice system and mass incarceration, the same unbroken link to enslavement is rarely drawn when it comes to American food.“Food is doing more of an injustice than mass incarceration,” he says. “They are both bad, but the number of lives we are losing from bad food are X times the number lost to mass incarceration.”That’s a bold statement, given that there are about 670,000 Black people currently behind bars in the US. Yet Black Americans are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes than white Americans, and that more than five million of them are assailed with the illness today.Certainly, he has witnessed the impact of food-related ill-health within his own family. He describes how diabetes was so rampant among his relatives that they even had a pet word for it – “sugar”. His aunt Betty died of sugar aged 57 – one year older than Adams was when he was struck with temporary blindness.No matter how prevalent disease has been among his community, it must have been a tall order trying to persuade people accustomed to soul and fast food to follow him into the strictly vegan, no-oil, non-processed, plant-based and whole food diet he has adopted. Among the recipes offered in his book are quinoa and tempeh stir-fry, chia oats with berries, and sweet potato and flaxseed smoothies. Try selling that to someone accustomed to St Louis ribs, hush puppies and oxtail.Adams said there have been times when friends would accuse him of elitism, turning his back on the traditional foods of his community and going all “white” on them. “There is a lot of pushback,” he told me.“Remember, when you talk about what a person is eating you are also talking about the emotions attached to what they are eating. When you talk about not eating soul food, people tend to believe that you are too good for it. ‘My grandmother was raised on this’, they’ll say.”So how does he go about trying to get beyond such resistance? “I give them the history. I make the connections. Sometimes people just need to connect the dots. When you start showing them the origins of fried chicken, the origins of chitterlings and pigs’ feet, of all the other food that were the scraps and waste from the slave master’s table, that hits folks and they begin to think differently about it.”It is ironic that his book, with its recipes and self-help bullet points, is focused very much on the individual. But out in East New York or in Brownsville, where Adams was born, and other low-income areas of the city, African Americans have scant chance of eating healthily even if they wanted to, given the food deserts they live in.Isn’t it the case that in neighborhoods where fast-food restaurants and delis stocked with sugary fatty products are the only outlets, a more systemic – rather than individualist – approach is needed?Yes, he says. “What I’m hoping to do, it’s almost like the Marines taking control of the beach. If I plant this seed in the minds of people while we are transforming these communities to have access to healthy food, then we will go from ‘Wait a minute, I don’t have access to it’, to ‘Hey, this is what Eric was talking about’.”I ask him what he means. “Imagine you see something on the shelf like quinoa and couscous, and you have no idea why you would want to eat those meals. But if you are given information before you walk into the supermarket then you might try this healthy meal next time round.”That’s all very well, but how are the food deserts in low-income African American neighbourhoods ever going to get access to the kinds of whole-grain, plant-based foods that Adams espouses? There is no shortage of guidance that Adams could draw on from other parts of the country where Black communities have long experimented with community gardens and vegan hot lunches in schools.When he was Brooklyn borough president he initiated “meatless Mondays” in local public schools, and campaigned to have all processed meat removed from school meals. Now that he’s mayor, he is expanding his push for healthy food. This week he introduced “vegan Fridays” for all New York public schools – a reform to the quality of school food that Adams still stands by despite his difficulties with #FishGate.Will there be more coming, and if so how will he use his new power to make lasting change? “How do I do it?” Adams says. “I look at where as government we are feeding people and I change that. We feed 1.1 million New Yorkers every day at school, people in hospitals, correction facilities, senior centres. How about giving them all healthy food?”It’s early days for the Adams administration, too early to make firm assessments. So far there are no signs of detailed plans emerging for actually carrying out such a food revolution.It leaves a question mark hanging over his undoubtedly powerful and positive mission to change what we eat. In his own life, the results of the transformation are dramatic and unanswerable, fish or no fish. He shed 35lbs, kicked diabetes, and now exudes glowing good health.He appears to have had some personal success, but can he replicate it among all New Yorkers?TopicsEric AdamsNew YorkUS politicsVegan food and drinkVeganismFoodinterviewsReuse this content More

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      New York will allow non-citizens to vote under controversial law

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      New York will allow non-citizens to vote under controversial law A watershed moment for the most populous US city as opponents vow to challenge the law More than 800,000 non-citizens and “Dreamers” could vote in New York City municipal elections as early as next year, after Mayor Eric Adams allowed legislation to become law on Sunday.Opponents have vowed to challenge the law, which the city council approved a month ago. Unless a judge halts its implementation, New York is the first major US city to grant widespread municipal voting rights to non-citizens.More than a dozen communities across the US allow non-citizens to vote in local elections, including 11 towns in Maryland and two in Vermont. Non-citizens cannot vote for president or Congress, or in state elections.The New York board of elections must begin an implementation plan by July, including registration rules and provisions to create separate ballots for municipal races.New York mayor Eric Adams faces nepotism claim over job for brotherRead moreIt’s a watershed moment for the most populous US city, where legally documented non-citizens comprise nearly one in nine of 7 million voting-age inhabitants. The movement to win voting rights for non-citizens prevailed after numerous setbacks.The measure would allow non-citizens who have been lawful permanent residents of the city for at least 30 days, as well as those authorized to work in the US, including Dreamers, to help select the mayor, council members, borough presidents, comptroller and public advocate.Dreamers are young migrants brought to the US illegally as children who would benefit from the never-passed Dream Act, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows them to remain in the US if they meet certain criteria.The first elections in which non-citizens would be allowed to vote are in 2023.“We build a stronger democracy when we include the voices of immigrants,” said former council member Ydanis Rodriguez, who led the charge for the legislation.Rodriguez, who Adams appointed transportation commissioner, thanked the mayor for his support and expects a vigorous defense against any legal challenges.Adams raised concern about the month-long residency standard, but later said those concerns did not mean he would veto the bill. While there was some question whether Adams could stop the bill, a 30-day time limit to take action expired at the stroke of midnight.Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Adams said: “I did not change my mind. I supported the concept of the bill. The one aspect of that I had a problem with and I thought was problematic was the 30-day part.“… I’m a big believer in conversation, we have to start talking to each other and not at each other. And after hearing [colleagues’] rationale and their theories behind it, I thought it was more important to not veto the bill.”Adams added: “In New York City, 47% of Brooklyn speak a language other than English at home. And so I think it’s imperative that people who are in a local municipality have the right to decide who’s going to govern them, and I support the overall concept of that bill.”Former mayor Bill de Blasio had similar concerns to Adams but did not move to veto the measure before vacating City Hall at the end of the year.Opponents say the council lacks the authority on its own to grant voting rights to noncitizens and should have first sought action by state lawmakers.Some states, including Alabama, Arizona, Colorado and Florida, have adopted rules that would preempt any attempts to pass laws like the one in New York City.Asked what he would say to people who say the bill “makes a mockery of the idea of American citizenship”, Adams told CNN: “You know, membership has its privileges.“Being a member of what we call United States of America is a great privilege and I would tell them to keep doing it … don’t let anything take you away from that mission. This legislation is not going to do that. Keep becoming a citizen of this country.”TopicsNew YorkEric AdamsUS politicsUS immigrationnewsReuse this content More