In 2014, after two police officers were ambushed in their patrol car — shot and killed at point-blank range — many in the NYPD directed blame at former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall in the office of the mayor,” Patrick Lynch, the former head of the city’s largest police union, said in a remarkable rebuke on Dec. 20, 2014.

What You Need To Know

  • Mayor Eric Adams faces the challenge of calming a city after a police officer was shot and killed
  • After the assassination of two police officers in 2014, police directed blame at former Mayor Bill de Blasio for a perceived lack of support
  • NYPD officers turned their backs on de Blasio at the hospital and at officer funerals, but Adams has not faced excessive backlash from officers
  • Adams notes that crime is down, even as a series of high-profile crimes fuels public perception of a crime wave

Officers turned their backs on de Blasio at Woodhull Medical Center and, later, at police officer funerals.

The shooting came barely two weeks after a grand jury chose not to indict the officers involved in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, leading de Blasio to describe warning his own biracial son about police.

“We’ve had to literally train him, as families have all over this city for decades, in how to take special care in any encounter he has with a police officer,” de Blasio said on Dec. 3, 2014.

For Mayor Eric Adams, his first month in office saw the shooting of five police officers.

He used the violence to illustrate the challenge he faced in bringing down crime.

“It’s our city against the killers,” Adams said on Jan. 21, 2022, after two officers were shot responding to a domestic violence call.

Officer Jason Rivera died that night, while Wilbert Mora died days later.

Adams now routinely cites statistics that show crime has declined over the past two years. But the fatal shooting of police officer Jonathan Diller on Monday, combined with a rash of recent high-profile crimes, has fed public perception of a crime wave, the mayor acknowledged Tuesday.

“When we highlight these severe acts of violence on social media, these random acts of violence, it just makes people afraid,” Adams said. “And then we hear this over and over again. ‘The city’s out of control. The city’s out of control. The city’s out of control.’ It’s just not true.”

Critics say the mayor himself has fueled fears of crime, in part by flooding the subway with extra officers and, just this week, launching a massive crackdown on fare evasion.

Adams, a former police captain, has not faced excessive backlash from officers.

Still, he says he struggled early in his term after visiting hospitals where wounded officers had been taken.

Adams said he remembers “sitting inside that vehicle after leaving there, trying to just figure out, ‘What am I going to have to say at the funeral? What am I going to say to this family? What am I going to say to New Yorkers?’”