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    Eric Adams Is Awful. I’m Putting Him on My Ballot.

    A primary aim of American progressive politics is assembling multiracial working-class coalitions. One candidate in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary appears to be doing that. He is, unfortunately for the left, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, an ex-cop and former Republican who defends the use of stop-and-frisk, supports charter schools and is endorsed by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. More

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    Maya Wiley Takes Credit for Daniel Pantaleo’s Firing. Is That Justified?

    When she was the head of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, Ms. Wiley was criticized for not being more aggressive in pursuing discipline against officers.Maya Wiley’s bid to become mayor of New York City is based largely on her promise to overhaul the Police Department, and she often highlights her one-year stint as head of the city’s police watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, as evidence of her commitment.In particular, she focuses on the agency’s role in the 2019 firing of Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer whose chokehold led to Eric Garner’s death in 2014 — a flash point that became the impetus for the Black Lives Matter movement.But a review of her time leading the agency paints a more complicated picture of her actions in that case and of her experience holding officers accountable. Her critics say that the board felt more beholden to City Hall during her tenure, and they charge that the agency’s management and performance suffered.Ms. Wiley also faced criticism that she did not use her time at the board, where she was chairwoman from mid-2016 to mid-2017, to pursue cases more aggressively.In 2012, the agency recommended charges in about 70 percent of cases. The number declined steadily until 2016, when it was 12 percent. In 2017, it was 11 percent, according to agency reports.In the same period, the agency was much more likely to recommend training and instruction for officers, one of the least serious forms of discipline. That recommendation was issued in 5 percent of cases in 2012 and 44 percent in 2016.“The dramatic changes in C.C.R.B. recommendations over the last three years raise serious questions about the C.C.R.B.’s commitment to meaningful civilian oversight,” Christopher Dunn, then the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, wrote in a 2017 letter to Ms. Wiley.Board leaders have said that they decided to seek lesser penalties in a bid to compel police officials to agree to impose discipline more often. Ms. Wiley added in an interview that the city had also expanded the array of disciplinary actions that could be recommended, allowing the review board to opt for less severe punishment.“It’s not really surprising that you would see charges going down as you had more tools, recommendations for those things that are the less extreme versions of some of those cases,” she said.Of all the cases that came before the review board, none was as highly charged or closely scrutinized as the death of Mr. Garner. It took five years for Mr. Pantaleo, who was never criminally charged in the case, to lose his job.Ms. Wiley, on the campaign trail and in candidate debates, has referenced her role in the process that ended with the firing of Mr. Pantaleo, and recently released an ad entitled “Breathe,” a reference to Mr. Garner saying repeatedly, “I can’t breathe” as officers tried to detain him.Gwen Carr, center, the mother of Eric Garner, at a 2019 protest following a decision by federal officials not to charge Daniel Pantaleo in her son’s death. Ms. Carr has endorsed Raymond J. McGuire for mayor.Byron Smith for The New York TimesIn the ad, Ms. Wiley said it was “time the N.Y.P.D. sees us as people who deserve to breathe.”At the time of Mr. Garner’s death, Ms. Wiley was serving as counsel to Mr. de Blasio. As such, she was one of his top two legal advisers, along with Zachary W. Carter, Mr. de Blasio’s corporation counsel.The de Blasio administration settled on a legal strategy of not pursuing its own administrative charges — a necessary prelude to firing a police officer — against Mr. Pantaleo, while the city deferred to the Staten Island district attorney and federal authorities, who were considering more severe criminal penalties.Mr. Carter said in an interview that City Hall did not want to initiate an internal Police Department trial at the N.Y.P.D. that might risk producing testimony that could muddy the state and federal cases.The decision allowed Mr. Pantaleo to remain on the city payroll for five years, as investigations by the district attorney’s office and the civil rights division of the Obama administration’s Justice Department wound down with no criminal charges ever filed.Mr. Carter defended the administration’s strategy and said that it was common procedure for local law enforcement agencies to defer to federal investigators.He said that when he was U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and prosecuting the Abner Louima police brutality case, he had similarly asked other authorities to suspend their investigations until he was done with his own. Justin Volpe, the officer who sodomized Mr. Louima, was not fired until the day that he pleaded guilty, Mr. Carter said.Mr. Carter said that Ms. Wiley was a “conscientious lawyer” who understands that lawyers have to respect the law, “when it favors you and when it doesn’t.”Despite her role in the administration, Ms. Wiley has faulted Mr. de Blasio for the city’s handling of the Garner case. During a mayoral forum held by WPIX-TV last month, she said that had she been mayor, “Daniel Pantaleo would have already been off the force.”But if she ever advised the mayor to more promptly fire Mr. Pantaleo while she was the mayor’s counsel, Ms. Wiley declined to say, citing attorney-client privilege.Two people who were in meetings with the mayor and his executive staff about the Garner case could not recall an instance in which Ms. Wiley argued for swifter discipline, though she might have done so privately.Anthonine Pierre, deputy director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, said that while Ms. Wiley worked to maintain relationships with police accountability organizers while leading the Civilian Complaint Review Board, Ms. Wiley was never “out of step with de Blasio.”“When we look at the fact that it took five years for Pantaleo to be fired and part of that time was under her watch, I think a lot of people should be asking her questions about what that was about,” Ms. Pierre said. “We’re not looking for another mayor who is good on rhetoric and bad on accountability.”Mina Malik, who was executive director for two years at the police review board until November 2016, accused Ms. Wiley of overstating her role in Mr. Pantaleo’s dismissal..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Frankly, for Maya to take credit for bringing Pantaleo to justice is not accurate,” she said. “The investigation, chokehold findings and recommendations were made before Maya came on board.”But other current and former agency board members defended Ms. Wiley, who has also taken credit for ensuring that the review board’s civilian prosecutors bring the administrative case, rather than the Police Department’s lawyers.Angela Fernandez, a former C.C.R.B. commissioner whose tenure overlapped with Ms. Wiley, said that the Pantaleo prosecution was the highlight of Ms. Wiley’s leadership.John Siegal, another C.C.R.B. commissioner, still remembers the day the police commissioner ratified an internal judge’s determination that Mr. Pantaleo should be fired.“I called Maya, and I said, ‘Congratulations, you were the one official in American who utilized her official responsibilities to move this case,’” he recalled. “‘The attorney general didn’t do it. The Justice Department didn’t do it, nobody else did it, you did it. And you are to be congratulated on that.’”Ms. Wiley’s leadership also came under fire for allowing the board to make decisions out of public view — a criticism that echoed similar assessments of her work as counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio.As counsel, Ms. Wiley argued that the mayor’s emails with a cadre of outside advisers did not have to be disclosed to the public because the advisers were acting as “agents of the city.” Thousands of pages of those emails were eventually released, to the mayor’s embarrassment.Under her watch at the review board, questions of transparency arose when a highly anticipated report on the use of Taser stun guns was released in October 2016.A draft report that had been leaked that spring said the police should prohibit the use of the stun guns on handcuffed subjects and highlighted that officers used the stun guns on people who were unarmed. But in the final version, released after the draft report had been circulated to City Hall and the Police Department, that language was absent — a change that officials said was part of the usual rewriting process.In February 2017, Mr. Dunn sent another letter to Ms. Wiley asserting that “the board has ceased to engage in any meaningful public business.”“In the 16 years I have been attending board meetings and monitoring the C.C.R.B., I have never seen the board abandon its public responsibilities as it has in the last eight months,” he wrote. In an interview, Ms. Wiley suggested that should an Eric Garner-like tragedy arise on her watch as mayor, she would defer to the Biden administration before taking action herself, much as Mr. de Blasio deferred to the Obama administration.“If for any reason, there was any indication that we were not going to get movement, then it would be a different story,” she said. “But look, we’ve got the A-Team in this Department of Justice on civil rights right now.” More

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    N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Name Rivals' Worst Ideas

    The candidates were encouraged to sling a little mud when moderators asked them to name the worst idea they’d heard from one of their competitors.As might be expected in a race where concerns about crime have dominated, most of the answers and at least one heated exchange were about police and public safety.Both Kathryn Garcia, who has been hesitant to criticize other candidates on a debate stage, and Ray McGuire took issue with rivals who they claimed were oversimplifying the issue of policing.“These are complicated times,” said Ms. Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, “and several of my opponents are using hashtags, #DefundthePolice. I just don’t think that’s the right approach. You need to sit down and really think through these things.”Mr. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, said that he thought the movement to defund the police “will end up in disaster for New Yorkers.”Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer and a progressive, then said that she believed that suggestions by Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, to bring back stop-and-frisk policing and a plainclothes anti-crime unit were the worst ideas she had heard on the campaign trail.Then the sparring started, in a lengthy exchange over race and policing that involved the four Black candidates on the stage.First, Mr. Adams deflected Ms. Wiley’s criticism of his proposals by pointing out that her family had helped pay for her neighborhood’s private security patrol. Ms. Wiley tried to deflect the deflection, saying that New Yorkers understood that public safety meant more than increasing policing and required other investments.Then, Mr. McGuire jumped in to say that he thought both defunding the police and the return of stop and frisk were detrimental for “Black and brown” communities. He was quickly attacked by Dianne Morales, who is Afro-Latina, and who noted that many of the activists who started the defund the police movement were Black and Latino and said that Mr. McGuire could not purport to speak for them.“How dare you assume to speak for Black and brown communities as a monolith,” she said. “You cannot do that.”“Yes, I can. I just did,” Mr. McGuire shot back. “You know what else I’m going to do? I’m going to do it again.”After the heated crossfire, Shaun Donovan declined to answer the original question, speaking about one of his own campaign ideas instead of criticizing a rival’s proposal. Ms. Morales then said that she thought adding more police officers to the subway system, an idea supported by several candidates, was the worst suggestion she’d heard.At the start of the segment, Andrew Yang criticized Mr. Adams for once telling off-duty officers to bring their guns to churches to keep them safe. Mr. Adams shot back by criticizing Mr. Yang’s modified version of a universal basic income plan, which would give payments to the poorest New Yorkers. He called the idea “Monopoly money.”Scott Stringer also said the worst ideas he’d heard were Mr. Yang’s, highlighting his suggestions to put a casino on Governors Island, which is not legal, and to entice “TikTok hype houses” to come to the city. More

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    N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates on Police Reform

    We interviewed the eight leading Democratic candidates for mayor about the biggest issues facing the city. Here’s what they said.The protests last summer following George Floyd’s death sparked a national outcry over police brutality. Here are the most important police reforms eight of the leading candidates for mayor of New York say they would pursue:Eric AdamsWe’re no longer going to allow police officers who are abusive to remain in the department for such a long period of time. I’m going to have a fair but speedy trial within a two-month period to determine if that officer should remain a police officer. The goal here is to rebuild trust, look at our police budget, look at areas such as overtime and civilianization of policing.Shaun DonovanWe need to reform policing by creating real transparency, real accountability, weeding out the bad apples. But we also need to reduce what we’re asking the police to do. They’re asked to be mental-health experts with our homeless and in so many other situations.Kathryn GarciaThe most important police reform that I would pursue as mayor is to ensure that we have very clear and transparent discipline for our officers. We have to instill new training programs, and make sure that we are promoting those officers who are rebuilding trust with communities.Raymond J. McGuireI would create an emergency social services bureau, 24 hours, seven days a week, given that four to five out of the 10 calls that go into 911 have to do with mental health issues.Dianne MoralesI don’t believe that we can reform the Police Department. I think we need to transform it. And that means divesting from the department, investing in the services that we need, and then fundamentally transforming the way the department operates in our communities.Scott M. StringerI will put forth a community safety plan that meets the challenges of reducing police interaction in communities of color but at the same time recognizing that we have an ability to keep our city safe. They’re not mutually exclusive. We can do both.Maya WileyPolice brutality has been at a crisis point in this country. I have many plans on transforming policing in the city. That starts by putting people back in public safety, and that means focusing on the job of policing that police should be doing to keep us safe, but taking those functions police did not sign up for the force to do and should not be doing, like mental health crisis response.Andrew YangCultures change from the top. We need a civilian police commissioner who’s not of the N.Y.P.D. culture to help our police force evolve. More

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    N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Divided on Calls to 'Defund the Police'

    The idea of “defunding” the police, which a year ago became a rallying cry after the murder of George Floyd, proved to be a contentious proposition during the debate, dividing the candidates along ideological lines, particularly as New York City reels from an uptick in crime.“The police are going to be a core way for us to address the public safety concerns that so many New Yorkers have and let me be clear defund the police is the wrong approach for new city,” Andrew Yang, considered a more moderate candidate, said.But Maya Wiley, who is viewed as a more progressive candidate, argued in favor of shifting resources away from the police.“I’m going to take a billion dollars from the New York City Police Department and shift that money to create trauma-informed care in our schools, because when we do that violence goes down and graduation rates go up” she said.Dianne Morales, also considered one of the more progressive candidates, said that “safety is not synonymous with police.”“We actually need to recognize that police respond to crime they don’t prevent crime,” she said. More

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    New York's Mayoral Candidates Pledge to Tackle Gun Violence

    Three more mayoral candidates highlighted fresh plans to address a recent spate of shootings that has overtaken the contest just six weeks before the primary.One mayoral candidate, Kathryn Garcia, said that she would let New Yorkers trade in guns for $2,000 in cash.Another, Shaun Donovan, said he would demand the city’s five district attorneys fast-track gun cases.A third, Maya Wiley, considered one of the more left-leaning candidates in the race, stuck to her message, pledging to appoint a civilian police commissioner.Following a shooting in Times Square on Saturday that injured three bystanders, including a child and a tourist, nearly all of the leading mayoral candidates used campaign appearances this week to describe how they would reduce crime without discriminating against New Yorkers of color.The frenzy of barnstorming comes at a potentially pivotal moment in the most important New York mayor’s race in a generation. With just six weeks to go before the Democratic primary, New York is still facing an economic crisis and other fallout from the pandemic. Yet the city’s rising wave of shootings has taken center stage.It has transformed the race for Manhattan’s chief prosecutor, too, shifting a contest that in January was almost wholly focused on making the criminal justice system more fair.In recent weeks, some of the former prosecutors in the race have taken pains to emphasize the importance of public safety, and Liz Crotty, the most consistently safety-focused candidate, was endorsed by four different police unions and a former police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly. Several candidates with non-prosecutorial backgrounds have scrambled to add plans for protecting the public and stemming the violence to their websites.An officer stands inside a blocked-off area in Times Square where three people, including a toddler, were shot on Saturday.Dakota Santiago for The New York TimesAs of May 2, 463 New Yorkers have fallen victim to shootings, compared with 259 in the same period last year. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is now in his final year in office, routinely blames the rise in shootings on the mass unemployment wrought by the pandemic, and a coronavirus-related slowdown in court proceedings. His police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, has an alternate theory: that the criminal justice reforms recently enacted by the state government make it too hard to jail people suspected of crimes.Criminologists say that it is difficult to say with any precision what has led to the increase in gun violence, which has risen sharply in cities across the country.Several experts said that the surge in violence might be related to the pandemic. Richard Berk, a professor of criminology and statistics at the University of Pennsylvania, said that specific Covid-related causes could include the lack of after-school programming and slowdowns in prosecutors’ and courts’ ability to process cases.Ray McGuire was one of three mayoral candidates to hold news conferences in Times Square following the shooting there on Saturday.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesRather than speculate on the cause for the shootings, the mayoral candidates criticized their opponents for not paying closer attention to the phenomenon.On Tuesday, Mr. Donovan, a former Obama administration housing secretary, invited reporters to join him in front of the station house for the 73rd Precinct, which includes Brownsville, a neighborhood in Brooklyn that has had 26 shooting victims this year, compared with 12 in the same period last year.“A tragic shooting in Times Square should not wake candidates up for the first time on this issue,” Mr. Donovan said in an interview, echoing similar comments made earlier this week by Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president. “There was a man shot and killed on Church Avenue last week that didn’t get nearly the same amount of attention.”Mr. Donovan argued that as mayor, he would lean on the city’s five district attorneys, over whom he has no formal control, to fast-track felony gun cases, which he says take twice as long in New York City than in the rest of the state..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Mr. Donovan, who also worked in the Bloomberg administration, rarely mentions the former mayor on the trail, but on Tuesday he praised Mr. Bloomberg’s efforts to stem gun violence, and said he would seek to emulate them.“We’re not manufacturing guns here in New York, we are not selling them at stores in our neighborhoods, they are coming from out of state,” Mr. Donovan said. “The only way to end the flow of illegal guns into the city is to build partnerships with President Biden with Attorney General Garland, with all our law enforcement agencies but also with mayors and governors across the region and across the country.”Across town, Ms. Wiley, a civil rights advocate, held forth outside of City Hall. After she left her position as counsel to Mr. de Blasio, he appointed her as chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which has some oversight of police disciplinary matters.Ms. Wiley, who is Black, said she knows what it means to both fear the police and to fear crime, and she decried the “false choice” between being “safe from crime” and being “safe from police violence.”She said that with her as mayor, the false choice would end. She would send more resources to the board she once chaired, and she would appoint a civilian police commissioner who did not rise “through a culture of silence” at the police department. She said she would appoint a commission to revise the police guide so that it clearly penalizes excessive force.And while she took pains to humanize police officers — “police officers are people,” she said — she also said the police force is far too large, and she would cancel two years of new police cadets.Back in Brooklyn, outside of the 90th Precinct station house in Williamsburg, Ms. Garcia, Mr. de Blasio’s former sanitation commissioner, said that her administration would make getting illegal guns off the street a priority. Among other things, she would expand the Police Department’s gun violence suppression division, which focuses on the trafficking of illegal guns, and induce New Yorkers to trade in guns by increasing the rebate per gun to $2,000 from $200.“We want New Yorkers to have the money to buy necessities and pay rent, not guns,” Ms. Garcia said.Three other candidates had held crime-related news conferences earlier this week. Two have not held events to discuss the issue: the New York City comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive who has proposed to cut the Police Department’s operating budget by more than half.Alicka Ampry-Samuel, a councilwoman who represents the Brownsville neighborhood in Brooklyn, said she endorsed Mr. Adams for mayor because he would amplify initiatives that were already underway to reduce gun violence, such as an experiment called the Brownsville Safety Alliance, in which police withdrew from a crime hot spot for five days and were replaced by groups that work to defuse gun and gang violence.“We do know when people get shot in Brownsville because they are always talking about it,” she said, taking issue with Mr. Donovan. “I would love for folks to talk about solutions.” More