After 21 years with the NYPD and a decade with 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement,
Eric Adams retools as a state senator

I know that face,” said the gray-haired woman in the coral dress. “I saw him on the news with the brother Al Sharpton.”
She was at St. John’s University in Queens to see her daughter graduate from W. E. B. DuBois High School in Crown Heights. Before the ceremony began, she approached State Sen. Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn) to chat him up and ask for a picture with him.
Earlier that day at another high school graduation, this one at Medgar Evers College, a campus security guard greeted Adams.
“How’s everything, Mr. Adams? All right?” he said while opening a door for the 46-year-old retired police captain.
“The graduations are great,” said Adams, driving through the district that morning in a silver BMW SUV. “Gives you a chance to meet the public, talk to students.”
His staffer and driver for the day, Lamona Knight, owns the SUV. Adams also drives a BMW, though his is a convertible.
He has come a long way from the young teen with a criminal record raised in Jamaica, Queens. Long before he won his Senate seat last year, he had been recognized for his distinguished career in law enforcement and vocal criticism of the police department.
His brainchild, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, attempts to mend the relationship between New Yorkers and police officers. He started the group in 1995 with Kelvin Alexander, who is now the deputy chief of staff for his Senate office.
Adams criticized the police when anybody, regardless of race, was a victim of brutality. That helped his appeal in a district that includes both wealthier, gentrified neighborhoods like Park Slope and Windsor Terrace and poorer areas like Crown Heights and parts of Bedford-Stuyvesant.
In the past, Adams said of Crown Heights’ main thoroughfare, he would never see “a white guy walking down Franklin unless he’s into S&M and wants to get robbed.”
Adams, who has lived in Prospect Heights for 18 years, understands that each neighborhood in his district has its own issues—Park Slope residents are concerned with overdevelopment, while those in Bedford-Stuyvesant complain about underdevelopment, he said.
Though the black population in his district increased by over a third during the 1990s, the people who vote have remained essentially the same.
Adams’ predecessor, Carl Andrews (D), is black. Andrews’ predecessor, current Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz (D), who is white, held the seat for 23 years.
“Many people said I couldn't win that district, it’s too white,” Adams said.
But he was determined. To win last year’s three-way primary, he reached out to different ethnic groups in the district, notably Crown Heights’ large Jewish community, picking up local Assembly Member Dov Hikind’s (D-Brooklyn) endorsement along the way.
He is the ranking Democrat on the Crime and Corrections Committee and the Homeland Security and Military Affairs Committee. He still speaks about the State Senate as a natural extension of his experience in the police department and his 10 years with 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement.
“First I was the marine,” he said, referring to his police background. “Now I’m the general.”
At the end of the spring session, he successfully fought a bill sponsored by another former police officer, State Sen. Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn). That bill would have made lying to the police a crime. Adams believed the bill would have increased the arrest rates of blacks and Hispanics, who are more likely to be randomly stopped for police questioning.
Adams leapt into this debate, as he did with several others, refusing to be cowed by his freshman status.
“I don’t walk. I strut on the Senate floor,” he joked at one of the graduations.
Adams is not focused solely on law enforcement issues, though. In August, he is hosting a “Parent Empowerment Seminar.” It will address how to deal constructively with the police, but will also tackle nutrition, college preparation and more.
Throughout his endeavors, the former juvenile delinquent who rose through the ranks of the police department stresses education and responsibility. Looking out at the “scholars,” as he called them, he preached that message at elementary graduations. He preached it at high school graduations.
More like a man who had spent 21 years behind a pulpit rather than a police badge, Adams told the girls to keep their legs closed and the boys to raise their children should they become fathers.
He directed much of his message, however, to the parents, encouraging them to search their children’s rooms.
“If there’s Bambu, there may be a joint. If there’s a bullet, there may be a gun. If there’s a cut-off straw, there may be cocaine,” he advised them.
Every school he went to, the parents applauded, with the occasional “Mmhmm,” and “That’s right” audible amid the clapping.
The children responded, too.
At the Acorn Community High School graduation, one student was very eager to show Adams and the crowd how much he was taking the message to heart.
After Adams insisted on the importance of parents teaching their sons to wear belts, one graduate stood up, catching Adams’ eye. He lifted his long blue gown and pointed right to his belt buckle.