Mayor Eric Adams met with embattled Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the city’s four other DAs Monday amid outrage over the deadly ambush of two NYPD cops — and concerns that lenient prosecution policies are fueling gun violence.
In a joint statement released after the sit-down, the officials were vague on details but said their conversation “was wide-ranging, candid, and productive.”
“The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the mutually shared goals of keeping New Yorkers safe, particularly from the rising toll of gun crimes,” the statement said.
“The mayor and district attorneys agreed that, among other things, safety and justice are not mutually exclusive, and must go hand in hand.”
The latter assertion echoed a statement that Gov. Kathy Hochul issued after a meeting with Bragg on Friday, during which she said, “I reiterated my belief that safety and justice must go hand-in-hand.”
Hochul has the power to remove DAs and last week put Bragg on notice that she was “monitoring the situation very closely.”
Adams, a former NYPD captain, and the DAs also “discussed ways that each office, the city, state, and federal partners could contribute to the fight against gun violence, as well as the ways they each could use their voice and platform to urge necessary changes to the system,” and “agreed to meet regularly,” they said.
The meeting came after Dominique Luzuriaga, the widow of slain cop Jason Rivera, blasted Bragg from the pulpit of Manhattan’s iconic St. Patrick’s Cathedral while eulogizing her husband, who was gunned down while responding to a domestic incident in Harlem on Jan. 21.
“This system continues to fail us. We are not safe anymore, not even the members of the service. I know you were tired of these laws, especially the ones from the new DA,” she said Friday during remarks that got a standing ovation from mourners.
Rivera’s partner, Wilbert Mora, was also killed and is scheduled to be memorialized at St. Patrick’s on Wednesday.
The next day, President Joe Biden is set to sit down with Adams in the Big Apple to discuss what the White House calls “the Administration’s comprehensive strategy to combat gun crime.”
Bragg has been meeting with a series of officials and business leaders since sparking controversy with the “Day One” memo he issued after taking office on Jan. 1.
In it, he directed his staff to not prosecute some minor crimes, to downgrade certain felonies and to not seek bail or “carceral” sentences in cases that don’t involve serious violence.
Earlier this month, Bragg held a virtual meeting with members of the pro-business group The Partnership For New York City, many of whom criticized his progressive agenda and said it was jeopardizing the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
