13 Law Enforcement Unions Endorse Eric Adams in N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race

Four years ago, Eric Adams used a law-and-order campaign message to help propel himself into City Hall. On Thursday, many of those responsible for law and order in New York City came together to try to keep him there.

Thirteen law enforcement unions endorsed Mayor Adams’s third-party bid for re-election, filling the steps of City Hall in a show of support. The participants were not in uniform, but held aloft signs displaying the seals or badges of their unions. Others waved American flags. One person held a handwritten sign: “Make Adams Great Again.”

Mr. Adams’s leadership of the Police Department has been turbulent.

He cycled through three police commissioners before Jessica Tisch’s appointment in November, the first mayor to have that many in a single term since the 1930s. On Wednesday, one of those former commissioners filed a lawsuit accusing Mr. Adams and top police officials of running the Police Department like a criminal enterprise.

The mayor, however, has tried to focus attention on the city’s receding crime numbers as a rallying point to bolster his bid for a second term, and as an argument against the candidacy of Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and a democratic socialist. Mr. Adams argued that Mr. Mamdani’s progressive policies will hurt businesses and make the city less safe.

“I know the prerequisite to our prosperity is public safety,” Mr. Adams, a Democrat, said on Thursday. “I know the answer to dealing with law enforcement is not opening the doors to 7,400 violent criminals and letting them out of Rikers Island. I know it makes no sense to tell police officers that they should not respond to domestic violence incidents.”

Crime in the city has been dropping steadily from the levels seen during the pandemic, according to Police Department data. In the first half of 2025, major crime in the city fell by 6 percent compared with the same period last year. Murders dropped by 23 percent; the city recorded the fewest shooting victims for the first half of any year since 1994; and the subway system had its fewest robberies since 2007 and its safest six-month period since 2010, the police said.