In the wake of the protests over the murder of George Floyd, some New York City Council members called for cutting $1 billion from the Police Department’s budget. Adrienne Adams, then a city councilwoman representing Southeast Queens, did not join with them.
A few years later, after rising to become Council speaker, Ms. Adams led a rare override of a mayoral veto and pushed through the How Many Stops Act, a police accountability bill that requires police to record the race, age and gender of most people they stop.
Those decisions, Ms. Adams said, reflected a common-sense approach to policing that she believes distinguishes her from her opponents in the June 24 Democratic primary for mayor.
Ms. Adams hopes to build on that image on Thursday when she releases a detailed plan to address public safety, vowing to fill the more than 2,400 vacancies in the Police Department in her first eight months in office. She said she would offer housing and tuition support to attract new officers and modernize CompStat, the Police Department’s crime data system, to track officer recruitment, retention and trust levels between the police and community.
She said she would also move to increase police presence in the subway and have those officers focus on crime prevention while having mental health professionals and social workers deal more with homeless and mentally ill people.
Ms. Adams was the last major candidate to enter the mayor’s race and has significant ground to make up. She trails badly in fund-raising efforts and has yet to qualify for the city’s generous matching-funds program.
But backed by major unions like District Council 37 and the state attorney general, Letitia James, Ms. Adams is seeking to present herself as a seasoned, drama-free leader who might appeal to voters seeking a moderate Democrat other than the current front-runner, the former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
A Marist poll released on Wednesday found her rising to third place with 11 percent, still far behind Mr. Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani, a progressive state lawmaker.
“We have to remember that traditionally in New York, mayoral races tend to break very late,” Ms. Adams said, citing the trajectory of the former sanitation commissioner Kathyrn Garcia, who placed second in the 2021 primary. “I am still very excited about this race, and I intend to win it.”
Other candidates have also released their public safety plans. Mr. Cuomo has said he would hire 5,000 more police officers. Mr. Mamdani said he would launch a Department of Community Safety to deal with issues such as mental illness and homelessness to free up officers. Brad Lander, the city comptroller, said he would retain Jessica Tisch as police commissioner and focus on ending street homelessness.
Leaning on her background as a corporate trainer and her collaborative management style, Ms. Adams said she wants to focus more on helping crime victims, strengthen efforts to prevent crime through community-based violence interruption programs and address issues that lead to crime by investing in parks, after school programs and employment opportunities for young people.
She said she will combat retail theft by treating it as organized crime, focusing on the ringleaders while providing services for those who commit the thefts if they are mentally ill or addicted to drugs.
“New York can’t truly be safe until every neighborhood feels safe day or night,” Ms. Adams said in an interview. “That kind of safety depends on a strong Police Department that our communities can trust and that our communities can count on, but we know that’s not what we have right now.”
Ms. Adams, who previously served as chair of the public safety committee, has faced criticism from the Police Benevolent Association and a few Council members for supporting the How Many Stops Act. Robert Holden, a conservative Democrat, opposed the legislation as “unnecessary” and voted against overriding the mayor’s veto.
“You’d rather have cops making reports than out on patrol?” he said.
Ms. Adams, he said, has been a sponsor on legislation that he believes has caused many officers to flee the department, such as the ban on chokeholds. Ms. Adams has sided with the “far left” members of the City Council on policing too often, he added.
Ms. Adams said her plan calls for her to act as an advocate for police officers because they share the goal of protecting the public. The How Many Stops bill was about helping to restore public trust in the department, which would be one of her main goals as mayor, she said.
“There is still a fear of the N.Y.P.D.,” said Ms. Adams, the city’s first Black Council speaker. “There is still that talk that I had to have with my children and that my children have had to have with their children.”
Aqeela Sherrills, the co-founder and leader of the Community-Based Public Safety Collective, has worked with Ms. Adams and was impressed by her plan’s focus on viewing public safety as a public health issue.
“Community violence intervention is a complementary strategy to policing,” Mr. Sherrills said.
Jeffery C. Mays is a Times reporter covering politics with a focus on New York City Hall.
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