NYC Mayor Adams defends controversial appointments of brother and ex-cop with ties to corrupt businessman

“Let me be clear on this: My brother is qualified for the position,” Adams told CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked about making his sibling Bernard Williams a deputy NYPD commissioner.

The mayor confirmed his brother Bernard Williams, a former NYPD sergeant, would “be in charge of my security,” pending approval from the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board.

Security “is extremely important to me in a time when we see an increase in white supremacy and hate crimes,” Adams said. “I have to take my security in a very serious way.”

During the 2020 mayoral campaign, Adams, a former NYPD captain, told a NY1 podcast he wouldn’t need a security detail and that he would carry a gun himself.

But Adams on Sunday indicated he would need protection as he continued his frequent public appearances throughout the five boroughs.
 

“I don’t want the people of this city to believe the mayor is not approachable and he’s not willing to engage with them on the level that I want to represent,” he said. “You saw I took the subway system [on] my Day One in office, and those are the types of things that I am going to do.”

Asked about his appointment of Phil Banks — who abruptly resigned as the NYPD’s chief of department amid a federal corruption probe in 2014 — Adams said he was not worried about the message he might be sending.

“Phil acknowledges there were some real mistakes and errors that were made. He was not accused of a crime,” Adams said of Banks, the new deputy mayor for public safety.
 

Banks was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a sweeping corruption probe that led to guilty pleas from two businessmen for bribing former Mayor de Blasio. Banks received as much as $500,000 in income from one of those businessmen, Jonah Rechnitz, though he himself was never accused of wrongdoing.

“I can’t leave bad people doing bad things to good people on the bench when I have a talented person that just made some bad decisions,” Adams said. “He didn’t do anything that was criminal. Phil is a great person [at] the right time to do this job.”