Johnny Grima has been arrested five times on the East Village block where police and homeless people experiencing find themselves in a cycle of sweep, return, sweep.

“They’re willing to spend all this money to attack homeless people, but they’re not willing to spend that some money on apartments for homeless people,” Grima said.

Grima's story is indicative of the enforcement-heavy approach Mayor Adams is taking to the city’s crises.

What You Need To Know

  • Adams deploying police to address violent crime and nonviolent offenses

  • Mayor showing no tolerance for those who criticize NYPD

  • But some say city must invest in more non-police resources to truly combat crime

The former NYPD captain is deploying officers to address the proliferation of guns and violence, saying Wednesday, “New Yorkers should be living in a safe city right now, based on the actions of the police department.”

But he's also having police detain people for nonviolent offenses like turnstile-jumping and unlicensed food vending.

“Next day is propane tanks being on the subway system, next day is barbequing on the subway system. You just can’t do that,” Adams said Monday after a food vendor was arrested at a subway station.

Some activists, everyday New Yorkers and elected officials are more critical than others, speaking out from the stage of an abortion rights rally or a City Council hearing on the NYPD’s budget.

“Mayor cop Adams cut and reduced, every agency has been cut, except for NYPD,” Council Member Charles Barron said of agencies’ effectiveness, noting that crime is on the rise.

But very few have said, as Adams alleges, that NYPD isn’t needed at all.

Most have said solutions to street violence must involve more non-police resources.

“When we spend more of our time, energy and effort, resources on consequences and accountability and less on preventing it from happening in the first place, we don’t get the desired results,” Public Advocate Jumaane Williams told NY1.

“Not to say that folks are not in fear of gun violence and the current status of what’s happening in our communities, but they also are in fear of police officers,” said Maya Williams of the Brooklyn Movement Center.

Several problems facing the city are institutional, with no quick solutions, as desperately as they’re needed.

Adams, who was a reformer and whistleblower within the NYPD, has insisted that his version of law enforcement isn’t the same as the unconstitutional versions of the past.

“I don’t believe in broken-windows policing,” he said. “I believe in not allowing the quality of life to erode in our city.”

“I don’t support solitary confinement,” he explained last month, describing more Department of Correction funding needed for “punitive segregation.”

With civilians and police being hurt and killed by gun violence, the mayor has no tolerance of NYPD critics.

“Who the hell will protect the innocent New Yorkers in this city?” he asked early Wednesday from Lincoln Hospital where a shot cop was being treated.

A reporter recently noted that Adams himself was once among those sounding the alarm on the NYPD’s alleged abuses of power.

“I was not criticizing police. I was criticizing bad practices,” he responded.