New York's mayor-elect Eric Adams has pledged to return beat cops to the city's streets in a bid to 'rebuild trust' within communities.
Adams, a 22-year NYPD veteran who ran his campaign on public safety, said he will target areas where confidence in the police is low and give officers promotions based on how they are rated by local residents.
'The goal is to rebuild trust,' Adams told the New York Daily News.
'We can show people that these officers are human beings just like them. They have children. They have families. They have spouses. They want to go home safe, and they want you to go home safe.'
The Democrat's vision for old school policing comes amid soaring crime rates in the Big Apple where murders spiked by 30 percent in 2020 and have maintained the worrying trend this year.
Mayor-elect Eric Adams attends the 'West Side Story' New York Premiere at Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center on November 29, 2021 in New York
Adams wants to see a return of the kind of community policing of the mid-20th century that saw officers posted to certain blocks.
He remembered an officer who walked the working-class neighborhood of Jamaica, Queens, where he grew up.
'He knew how to keep you out of trouble,' said Adams.
He has called for a reduction in the NYPD budget in the past but denounces the 'defund the police' rhetoric of the hard left.
Adams told the Daily News that the force could find efficiencies by taking officers off desk-based work and sending them out on the beat.
He also said that cops who are out in the community learn better to understand the people they are dealing with.
'I believe that that steady cop could differentiate between little Johnny just acting up,' Adams told the paper, 'and little Johnny carrying a gun.'
Although murders have fallen by 0.7 percent compared to last year, from 436 to 433, overall homicides have soared by 42 per cent since 2019.
Felony assaults have also shot up in 2021 by more than 9 percent, from 19,046 to 20,776 so far this year. Robberies also saw an increase of 3.7 percent, with 12,318 reported.
Rising crime: NYC has seen an explosion in the incidences of violent assaults, murders, robberies and muggings in the past two years. Overall crime this year has gone up by more than 3 percent
Rapes rose from 1,329 to 1,357, an increase of more than 2 percent, and the number of shooting victims also went up from 1,724 to 1,725.
Subway crimes have also jumped in recent week, coming at a time when companies are desperately trying to encourage workers back into the office.
Figures last week released during an MTA transit committee meeting show felony robberies more than doubled from October to November, from 40 to 88.
Overall felonies jumped 45 percent month-over-month, the documents said.
In an effort to curb the violent streak, Bank of America reportedly told its Midtown employees on Friday to 'dress down' and avoid wearing company logos while commuting to the office.
A man was bloodied following a brutal attack on a Midtown subway platform in New York City on Friday afternoon amid soaring crime on the city transport network
Senior executives at the bank's Bryant Park location have been encouraging their younger staffers to dress in order to attract less attention as they travel to work and have warned workers that wearing the company logo or dressing up could make them a target for assault, which is up 15 percent the past month.
John Yiannacopoulos, a media relations executive for Bank of America, told DailyMail.com on Friday that the company does offer 'safety guidelines' to employees.
However, Bank of America declined to let DailyMail.com view its guidelines.
A top executive of a large money management firm even said he started carrying a Taser - which has been legal to carry in New York since 2019, when a federal court reversed the state's complete ban on civilian stun guns and tasers.
The bank's office is only a block away from Times Square, with many employees using Penn Station and Port Authority as transportation hubs to commute to the office.
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