New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the former police captain-turned-Democrat leader of the nation's largest city, entered City Hall with some assuming his background would mean better treatment for NYPD officers. Adams made a point to emphasize his law enforcement background to position himself as something of an anti-crime hero for the Big Apple, sprinkling in anecdotes to demonstrate his commitment to standing up for the police.
However, according to a new report in The New York Times, one such anecdote often repeated by Mayor Adams was not true — forcing his office to scramble to put together "proof" after the fact.
Not long after taking office, Adams held a press conference following the tragic killing of two NYPD officers in Harlem. As The Times reminded, Adams said the situation made him remember a friend who'd been killed in the line of duty decades earlier, Officer Robert Venable. "I still think about Robert," Adams said before adding, "I keep a picture of Robert in my wallet."
The week following the press conference in which Adams made the claim, the mayor posed for a photo while holding an old-looking picture of Venable after The Times asked to see it, supposedly the one he'd kept in his wallet since Venable's death in the 1980s. Adams has since shown the photo at other public events during remarks about the police and repeated his claim about it in multiple interviews.
According to The New York Times, however, the photo Adams has used publicly is not what it seems:
...the weathered photo of Officer Venable had not actually spent decades in the mayor’s wallet. It had been created by employees in the mayor’s office in the days after Mr. Adams claimed to have been carrying it in his wallet.
The employees were instructed to create a photo of Officer Venable, according to a person familiar with the request. A picture of the officer was found on Google; it was printed in black-and-white and made to look worn as if the mayor had been carrying it for some time, including by splashing some coffee on it, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Two former City Hall aides, who asked not to be identified, said they were informed about the manipulated photo last year, not long after it was created.
So, allegedly, the same method used by Hollywood prop masters to make documents look old was used by the mayor's office to create an old wallet-weathered photo after Adams had said he carried the photo in his wallet.
The Times got in touch with a spokesman for Mayor Adams who "did not dispute that Mr. Adams had shown a photo to The Times...that had been recently created by a City Hall aide" but "insisted that Mr. Adams had carried a photo of Office Venable for decades."
What's more, after making the initial statement to The Times, Adams' spokesman "ignored repeated requests to elaborate about the authenticity of the photo" and "did not respond to questions about whether the photo was made to look old in part by staining it with coffee."
As The Times noted, this isn't the first time one of Adams' everyman anecdotes proved dubious:
As mayor, Mr. Adams frequently shares personal recollections, helping him connect to his working-class base. Many of his stories are difficult to verify, and at times, he has been caught stretching the truth. The mayor, for example, said he was vegan before being forced to admit that he eats fish; he said that a story he told in a 2019 commencement address about intimidating a neighbor was true, but acknowledged it did not happen to him.
More recently, Mr. Adams’s claims to have sold his stake in a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn were once again contradicted by recent financial disclosure forms that show he still retains ownership.
But in his retelling of carrying the photo of Officer Venable, the mayor and his staff went a step further. City resources were used to create a photo that Mr. Adams surely knew had not been in his possession for decades; city employees were pressured to get involved.