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    Security Firm Linked to Top Adams Aide Won Millions in N.Y.C. Business

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    The company received a $154 million contract to provide “emergency fire watch services” to the New York City Housing Authority. The firm was once owned by the deputy mayor for public safety.Before Philip B. Banks III was named deputy mayor for public safety for New York City, the security company he once owned rarely did business with the city.But two years after Mayor Eric Adams appointed Mr. Banks to the high-ranking post in his administration, the company Mr. Banks said he had sold years earlier began receiving city business worth millions of dollars, according to records reviewed by The New York Times.The firm, City Safe Partners, received a $154 million contract from the New York City Housing Authority in January 2024 to provide “emergency fire watch services” in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx, records show. Sheena Wright, the first deputy mayor in the Adams administration and the fiancée of Mr. Banks’s brother, the schools chancellor, sits on the housing authority’s board and voted to approve the emergency contract, records show.Mr. Banks’s business dealings have been under scrutiny at least since his phones were seized this month by federal agents investigating a possible bribery scheme involving city contracts. The phones of Mr. Banks’s brothers — David Banks, the schools chancellor, and Terence Banks, a consultant with clients who received city contracts — were also taken as part of the corruption inquiry.The investigation involving Philip Banks and his brothers is one of at least four separate federal inquiries focused on members of the Adams administration — inquiries that have rocked City Hall and raised questions about Mr. Adams’s political future. It was not clear whether City Safe Partners was a focus of any of the investigations.The company’s fortunes, however, seemed to have run in parallel with the political fortunes of Mr. Banks and another top Adams aide who was once briefly involved with the firm.Tracking Investigations in Eric Adams’s OrbitSeveral federal corruption inquiries have reached into the world of Mayor Eric Adams of New York, who faces re-election next year. Here is a closer look at how people with ties to Adams are related to the inquiries.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York City Is Getting Tired of Mayor Adams’s Scandals

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      No sooner did Mayor Eric Adams of New York land in Washington, D.C., on city business Thursday than he had to turn right back around to take care of his own.The F.B.I. had raided the Brooklyn home of Mr. Adams’s top fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs. Parts of a search warrant obtained by The Times suggest that federal prosecutors in Manhattan are trying to determine if the mayor’s 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and a Brooklyn construction company to direct foreign money into the campaign through straw donations.A spokesman said Mr. Adams had rushed back to New York from Washington “to deal with a matter.” You don’t say.Mr. Adams so far has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But this kind of drama and foolishness doesn’t serve the city, or him. Though he will have to answer for it, a fund-raising scandal engulfing the mayor is about the last thing New York needs.The city, home to large Jewish and Muslim communities, is reeling from the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Hate crimes against both groups are on the rise. Posters of missing loved ones kidnapped by Hamas line the city streets. Palestinian American New Yorkers are getting word of relatives killed in Israeli airstrikes.More than 130,000 migrants have arrived in the city over the past year and a half, and the city has run out of places to put them. That’s the very issue that led Mr. Adams to visit the nation’s capital on Thursday to seek federal help.Thanks to the city’s continuing housing crisis, more than 119,320 students enrolled in New York’s public schools are homeless, according to new data released this week. That figure is based on last year’s enrollment and is likely roughly 30,000 higher. The city is also still struggling to recover from the pandemic, in myriad ways.Mr. Adams is working on all of these issues. So I’m hopeful that the mayor, who is up for re-election in 2025, can take this moment to think carefully about the people he wants to surround himself with while running America’s biggest city. This seems to be a blind spot for him, as he has formed an inner circle that often appears to be particularly shaped by loyalty, sometimes at the expense of ethics or the interest of taxpayers.It isn’t just Ms. Suggs. Eric Ulrich, Mr. Adams’s former building commissioner and a former campaign adviser, was indicted on bribery charges in September. In July the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, charged six people — including a former N.Y.P.D. inspector who is also a friend of the mayor — with campaign finance violations, accusing them of being part of a conspiracy to direct public matching funds to Mr. Adams’s campaign through straw donors in a bid to seek political favors.More often, though, the mayor’s personnel decisions have simply raised questions about his judgment. There’s Timothy Pearson, a senior adviser and friend who is under review by the city’s Department of Investigation for an altercation in which he shoved a security guard at a migrant center and threatened her job, according to reports. The mayor appointed his brother Bernard Adams to a senior position at City Hall, leading to public concerns about nepotism. An agreement with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board prevented the mayor’s brother from receiving a $210,000 salary for the position. He received a salary of $1 per year and resigned in February.And far more alarming than nepotism was the mayor’s decision this week to promote the commissioner of the corrections department, Louis Molina, to a job at City Hall. Mr. Molina has run the Rikers Island jail complex since January 2022, and it is verging on collapse. In September, as the violence and chronic staff absenteeism continued at the jails, Mr. Molina and his top aides took a taxpayer-funded trip to Europe to visit jails in London and Paris, according to The New York Daily News. Instead of holding Mr. Molina accountable for this questionable use of city funds, Mr. Adams announced on Oct. 31 that Mr. Molina would serve at City Hall as the assistant deputy mayor for public safety. “Lou has demonstrated exceptional leadership,” the mayor said of Mr. Molina in a statement this week.Maybe I’m naïve to expect more from the mayor. Public corruption scandals have become commonplace. Trust in institutions is at a serious low. All the more reason to hold Mr. Adams to account for the way he conducts the city’s business, and his own.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More