Eric Adams has a singularly unique position in the controversy over the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and, well, every person of any color needlessly killed by a cop.  He’s the Brooklyn Borough President. He’s a former New York State Senator.  He’s a former NYPD captain.  He’s the epitome of the establishment guy.

He’s also the co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care.

Adams offers an op-ed in the New York Times today that addresses issues that need addressing, that admits truths that need admitting.  Remember, this is a career cop turned career politician, and there can’t be background less suited to acknowledging the harsh reality on the streets than a guy in positions dedicated to making excuses and rationalizing harm. Yet, here’s Eric Adams:

As a 15-year-old, living in South Jamaica, Queens, I was arrested on a criminal trespass charge after unlawfully entering and remaining in the home of an acquaintance. Officers took me to the 103rd Precinct — the same precinct where an unarmed Sean Bell was later shot and killed by the police — and brought me into a room in the basement. They kicked me in the groin repeatedly. Out of every part of my body, that’s what they targeted. Then I spent the night in Spofford juvenile detention center.

For seven days after that, I stared into the toilet bowl in my house at the blood I was urinating. I kept telling myself that if it didn’t clear up by the next day, I would share this shame and embarrassment with my mother, although I could never bring myself to start that conversation. When clear urine returned, I thought I was leaving that moment behind me. I never told anyone this, not even my mother, until I was an adult.

This story of abuse at the hand of police as a black youth in Queens is ordinarily offered as a prelude to why someone turned radical, gained an antagonism if not hatred.  But not for Adams. Instead, it’s a prelude to his joining the NYPD.  How and why this happened and connects is unsaid.  Something is missing. Something inexplicable.

I learned this myself firsthand. I didn’t want any more children to go through what I endured, so I sought to make change from the inside by joining the police department.

While the story of his being kicked in the groin has the ring of truth, this feeble attempt to use it to justify what follows falls short, unless Adams was the most naïve human on earth.  I doubt that greatly.

Hours after coming out of the police academy, I was told something as a new rookie officer: You’d rather be tried by 12 jurors than carried by six pallbearers. In my impressionable first days, I saw officers leave the precinct every day touching the lockers of their fallen brothers. They started their shift on the defensive, thinking about protecting themselves, as opposed to the communities they served, regardless of the complexion of those communities.

The First Rule of Policing, long version.

One of my white fellow officers once told me that if he saw a white individual with a gun, he took extra care for himself and the individual. When he saw a black individual with a gun, he took care only for himself.

The anecdote. Beware the dreaded anecdote, especially when it confirms bias. Is the message that this is one cop’s view, or all cops? Is it just white cops or all cops? Is he saying that police treat the lives of whites as worthy of equal concern to their own, but the lives of blacks without concern at all?  Is this a way of condemning some while maintaining plausible deniability that he’s not smearing the NYPD in its entirety?

There is reluctance on the part of police leadership, which has long believed in the nightstick and quick-trigger-finger justice, to effectively deal with officers who have documented and substantiated records of abuse. These individuals need to be removed from the force. That is an essential component of the larger response we must have to address this history of abuse.

He offers an internal contradiction, suggesting that police leadership promotes the use of force, including quick resort to the gun, but the problem is only those cops with “documented and substantiated records of abuse.”  The latter, as he must surely know, is laden with the politicians’ wiggle words. The former condemns all cops. Which is it?

Open, preliminary hearings in court can and should determine if a case should be stepped up to a trial. Additionally, the handling of police shootings should be wholly separated from local grand juries. These bodies cannot handle cases involving local police officers on whom they rely every day.

Replacing grand juries with preliminary hearings is an interesting proposal. Preliminary hearings are available to hold a defendant in custody beyond the CPL §180.80 period (this requires a lengthy explanation in itself, but not here and now); they are almost never used in New York City. I’ve never done one in more than 30 years.* I would love to, but the opportunity never arose. And besides, why would the prosecutor need one when he can get an indictment in an hour rather than expose his case to me and subject his witnesses to cross.

The second proposal is the special prosecutor and special grand jury, to eliminate the obvious conflict between prosecutor and the cops upon which he depends and with whom a relationship exists.  The New York Times Room for Debate today discusses the merit of special prosecutors, as well, with a fairly good discussion of the pros and cons.

The primary negative is that special prosecutors can run amok, abuse their power. The contention is that local prosecutors can, and do, prosecute cops with vigor. At times, at least.  But they also don’t, at times, and the demands of the law on police to not kill innocent people are, well, low.  Too low.

With some regularity, people who held important jobs in government have much to criticize about its workings, but only get religion after they’ve completed their service, when they no longer possess any power and authority to do anything about it.  When they were in power, they sang loud in the chorus of their patrons. Their tune only changed when it was too late.

Eric Adams, on the other hand, remains in office.  He possesses authority and power, as well as a bully pulpit from which to denounce that which he is singularly situated to challenge.  Even with some pieces of this op-ed puzzle not fitting quite right with others, some very strong and clear assertions have been made, and they condemn the New York City Police Department’s use of force, and the legal system’s response to it.

For having gone public in the Times while still in office, he should be commended.  But now, he needs to take the next step, and do what he claims he joined the police to do: “make change from the inside.”  He’s about as “inside” as it gets. Make change. Borough President Adams. Make it happen.

* I’m sure someone will say they did one once, as preliminary hearings have, on very rare occasions, happened. But the point is that they are “almost never used” in New York City. Unless you’re disputing this, please don’t share your outlier war story.