A former New York City police commissioner is emerging as a trenchant critic of Mayor Adams. Raymond Kelly, in an interview with the Sun Thursday evening, said: “I know Mayor Adams a long time, and I’m not a fan.” 

Mr. Kelly, who served 14 years as commissioner under Mayors Dinkins and Bloomberg, ticked off a long list of standard policing practices that have been abandoned, resulting in a less safe city. These include, among others the stop-question-and-frisk tactic, the use of plainclothes police officers, and vigorous policing of the subways. 

Not all of the retreat on these tactics came under Mr. Adams. The gist of what Mr. Kelly said over the course of an interview of more than an hour, though, was a critique suggesting the new mayor was too politically correct and was inadequately backing the city’s police officers.

When it comes to stop-question-and-frisk, Mr. Kelly offered a vigorous defense of its efficacy and repeatedly noted that it has “passed Supreme Court muster,” with the seminal case being Terry v. Ohio from 1968, which found “reasonable suspicion” on the part of an officer enough to “stop and frisk” a suspect.

Noting that tactics like question and frisk have been abandoned, he urged their resumption to “send the message that police are back in the enforcement game.” The tactic as practiced by the NYPD was found unconstitutional by a federal district court judge, Shira Scheindlin, in 2013.  

On the plainclothes front, Mr. Kelly lamented that the program was disbanded under Mayor de Blasio and brought back in “modified” form — meaning half-measures — by Mr. Adams. He noted how the absence of undercover officers has allowed those set on criminal courses to act with impunity. 

While Mr. Kelly suggested that the window for his time to personally involve himself in elected politics has shut, his frank and shrewd comments Thursday suggested that he still has much to offer those in New York City and elsewhere working toward safer metropolises.

The setting was a conversation with Sun Founder Members hosted by the publisher of the Sun, Dovid Efune, and moderated by Associate Editor Caroline Vik. During the evening Mr. Kelly pulled no punches when it came to the mayor, a man he has known for decades.   

While expressing that he hopes Hizzoner can “meet the challenge” of a city staggering under increasing crime, he shared his view that the mayor “is not liked in the police community.” Reflecting on Mr. Adams’s penchant for nightlife, Mr. Kelly asked: “If he is going to Zero Bond every night, when does he have time for meetings?”

Mr. Kelly began by reflecting on his days as a stock boy at Macy’s. He “fell in love” with police work at an early age, as the octogenarian recalled the “adrenaline flow” from his first days on the beat. Across 45 years in the NYPD, Mr. Kelly claimed to have enjoyed “every day in the department.” 

The NYPD is, however, in the throes of change. Mr. Kelly has “never seen anything like” the scale of the current challenges and has observed a “sea change after the death of George Floyd” in the summer of 2020. It sent a “clear message to police officers that you are on your own.”

Mr. Kelly pointed to the New York city council’s nixing of the protection of qualified immunity for cops in the spring of 2021. It is, in his view,  one factor that made police “withdraw,” sensing that the deck was “stacked against them.” Asked about bail reform, Mr. Kelly bemoaned the folly of denying judges the prerogative to assess the dangers posed by suspects. 

Noting that “the subways are the lifeblood of New York,” Mr. Kelly sounded a call for police on the platforms, and urged policies to “take down homeless encampments,” noting that the spike in homelesness is “not a housing issue, it is a mental health issue.”

The problem, Mr. Kelly explained, is not just that policing is tactically backsliding, but that there are fewer New Yorkers going into police work in the first place. On “efforts at retention,” the assessment of the ex-commissioner is that the “ship has sailed.” 

Mr. Kelly called it an eroding situation that has yielded “terrible response times” of more than eight minutes for what the NYPD calls “critical crimes in progress.”   

Turning his attention to the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, v. Bruen, which struck down restrictions on gun permits as afoul of the Second Amendment, Mr. Kelly observed that “people who carry permits are not committing crimes,” laying the blame for gun violence on weapons obtained illegally.   

While expressing “pessimism” in the short term in respect of Gotham’s future, Mr. Kelly said he believes in the roiling energy of young New Yorkers to make places like the Lower East Side renewably vibrant. He did offer, however, that he is “not a fan of decriminalizing marijuana.”