Ashley Elizabeth Miller

Last fall, on November 15, New York City Mayor Eric Adams made highly contested cuts to the city budget. These extended to all agencies, including education, the NYPD, FDNY, libraries, and sanitation.

But some analysts speculated this was another attempt to call attention to the need for federal financial aid to handle the migrant crisis, which Adams infamously said ‘Would destroy New York City.’ The cost to care for the newcomers would range upwards of eight billion dollars, he said.

“This certainly feels like a deliberate Hail Mary to push Albany and D.C. for more help,” said Justin Brannan, a City Council member from Brooklyn. The cuts were proposed to cut 5,000 NYPD officers.

On Wednesday, January 10, Adams backtracked. He restored funding to the NYPD and announced 600 new recruits in April. He chalked up the extra dough to “better-than-expected tax revenue” and reduced caring costs for migrants.

The feud between Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams stems from a spat two weeks after his 2021 mayoral win. Adams lobbied council members before the vote in favor of Councilman Francisco Moya, a fellow pro-policing Democrat who represents the 21st District around Corona in Queens, for the Speaker position. Adams was the first mayor in history to publicly endorse a candidate. Council members spoke out against the newly elected mayor’s suspect agenda.

On the eve of Election Day, Moya posted on Twitter claiming victory before the vote. But then the spat fell flat when the announcement came out, and Adrienne Adams won. In a muted social media response, Moya retreated to Queens. Newly anointed Speaker Adams took her throne with pride. Adams and Moya, two pro-policing politicians, would have manifested a terrible oligarchy.

But in Moya’s neighborhood now, Adams is giving his old friend some help by ‘cleaning the streets’ of women sex workers outside massage parlors along Roosevelt Avenue in Corona, Queens. Adams is dismissing policing protocol and abusing the NYPD’s unchecked power to harass vulnerable communities.

Corona is home to more foreign-born residents than any other neighborhood in the city. The 7-train connecting Manhattan to Queens is often called the “International Express.” Some immigrant communities and native New Yorkers struggle with poverty in Corona and do sex work on the side in massage parlors in Queens. Street-based sex workers are vulnerable to dangerous clients due to their inability to call the police for help. They often face physical abuse, stipend pay, and nonconsensual acts.

Sex workers have been in Corona since 1964. The New York Times reported on ‘Clean the Streets’ task forces who patrolled along Roosevelt Avenue to harass sex workers and white johns lining the block.

Sixty-three years later, the feud rages on along the avenue as sex work remains commonplace in the area. Curtis Silwa, the Republican who lost to Adams in 2022, led a rally in September against sex work and claimed the police were being bribed to look the other way. Silwa famously founded the Guardian Angels, a neighborhood watch gang notorious for their retro-red berets.

The Civilian Complaint Review Board is an independent nonprofit that was defunded by Adams’ draconian cuts in November. The CCRB investigates complaints of police misconduct. And thanks to the mayor, it is now defunct.

Today, Friday, the 26th, PixNews11 (funded by City Gov) announced the NYPD shuttered six brothels in Corona along Roosevelt Avenue. What the article did not say was Adams led the charge and broke every protocol in the book by encouraging the raids. Adams is reducing police transparency at an alarming rate. We are locked out from the methods of one of the most controversial police departments in the country. Our ‘protectors.’