In a current interview, New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner sat down with ABC Information Correspondent Jonathan Karl to debate the issues plaguing the nation’s 4 largest cities, that are all being led by Black mayors for the primary time in historical past.
“It’s a second for us,” Adams instructed Karl throughout an annual assembly of the international locations’ mayors in Washington, D.C, per ABC Information. “It’s a second that we at the moment are actually going after these robust challenges and historic issues that we fought for a few years to be within the driver’s seat.”
When requested what’s the No. 1 situation their cities are going through, Turner and Adams mentioned “public security,” whereas Bass mentioned she’s grappling with homelessness in Los Angeles.
“In Los Angeles, surely, it’s homelessness,” Bass mentioned. “Nevertheless it’s the intersection of earnings inequality and in addition public security. And since earnings inequality is so extreme in Los Angeles, probably the most excessive manifestation of that’s 47,000 folks [sleeping] on the streets in tents, each evening, within the metropolis.”
Adams, a former New York police officer, campaigned on preventing crime, but his metropolis continues to be combating main crimes, which elevated by 20 p.c final 12 months.
All three mayors agreed that public security is on the root of many points of their cities. Turner mentioned that “revitalizing our communities which have been underserved for a protracted, very long time” is vital to “coping with problems with homelessness and people issues that put folks on the road.”
When requested, Bass addressed her stance on defunding the police, which she beforehand known as “in all probability one of many worst slogans ever.”
“What I consider is that over time, particularly the federal authorities, state, and cities have divested, defunded social companies,” Bass mentioned. “So I feel when an individual goes into the academy, they don’t go in to deal with homelessness, dependancy, psychological sickness. And so we have to refund our communities, construct out the social security web so that individuals don’t fall into crime.”
Turner mentioned the “defund the police” motion, which gained traction amid the nation’s racial reckoning following the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, obtained “an excessive amount of play within the first place.”
“Should you take a look at most of the cities, they had been funding their police. Town of Houston by no means defunded its police,” Turner mentioned. “It’s not about defunding police, it’s about investing in communities.”
Through the interview, Turner, who’s serving his second time period in Houston, famous that whereas the trio’s mayoralities counsel “progress is being made,” he hopes that extra Black mayors are elected “to the purpose the place it doesn’t stand out.
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