NYC mayoral rivals pounce on Maya Wiley after she waffled on taking guns from NYPD
Mayoral candidate Maya Wiley faced withering criticism from her Democratic opponents on Friday after she hinted in a debate that she might be open to taking guns away from cops.
Wiley, who has swept up significant support from progressive leaders in the final hours of the Democratic primary race, said in Thursday night’s debate that she was “not prepared” to offer a definitive answer when pressed about whether she would disarm officers.
The four other candidates on the stage — Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia, city Comptroller Scott Stringer, and businessman Andrew Yang — all said that they would not take guns from cops.
Adams, a former NYPD captain who is running on a public safety-focused platform, chided Wiley on Friday.
“It was alarming,” he said of her response, expressing incredulity at a news conference in Brooklyn. “You must give the public safety apparatus the tools they need to keep us safe. We have thousands of illegal guns in our city.”
Wiley, who has proposed cutting $1 billion from the Police Department’s budget, fired back and attempted to reframe her position on disarming cops.
“No one is seriously talking about taking guns away from cops,” she said in a statement. “Of course I don’t support that.”
In the statement, she also charged that “Eric thinks the solution to every problem is a badge and a gun.”
The topic of safety has emerged as perhaps the most salient issue in the pivotal Democratic primary that’s widely expected to determine the next mayor in deep-blue New York City. As of last Sunday, the tally of shootings in the city this year was 68% higher than at the same point in 2020, according to police data.
Wiley was also dealing with criticism from Adams and others stemming from a ProPublica report that was published on Friday and examined aspects of her time chairing the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which handles oversight of the NYPD.
During Wiley’s tenure at the CCRB, the agency scrubbed advice from a draft report that called for the Police Department to prohibit the use of Tasers on people in custody, according to ProPublica.
Adams, a relative moderate who has topped recent surveys in the crowded Democratic primary, claimed that Wiley “failed” at the CCRB.
Ray McGuire, a former executive at Citigroup, has struggled to climb in polls and did not make the debate with the leading Democratic contenders. But that didn’t stop him from sharply criticizing Wiley.
He said in a tweet on Friday that Wiley “wants to take guns away from police but is fine letting NYPD taser people who are already handcuffed.”
She tweeted in reply: “Ray, I know that you weren’t invited to the prom last night, but this is no way to get a dance. This is beneath you. No one is taking guns from cops.”
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