NYC Mayor Eric Adams to bring back controversial plain-clothes police unit

In a speech from City Hall this week, new New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced he will reinstate the controversial plain-clothes police unit that was disbanded in 2020 by former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The unit was taken off the streets amid the racial tension between police and communities after a series of US incidents in which police killed Black Americans during the Summer of 2020.

Then-Mayor de Blasio disbanded the plainclothes force due to years of alleged brutality incidents and complaints from community members about the plainclothes officers unfairly targeting people of color due to productivity goals and other departmental pressures.

The reinstitution of the unit is part of Adams’ Blueprint to End Gun Violence, and will redeploy the plainclothes units to high-crime neighborhoods throughout the city. Critics say the move will not serve to curb gun violence or reduce tensions between police and the community.

Kadiatou Diallo, mother of Amadou Diallo, who was killed by the plain clothes unit when he was mistaken for a rapist police were searching for in 1999, says bringing back the unit is “wrong,” and that “You cannot just change, rebrand, and retrain people who have been doing something not good.”

The ACLU says out of 700,000 stops by the NYPD in 2011, only 780 illegal guns were seized, and the risk is not worth the reward.

Mayor Adams has said the changes he will institute will bring about a different result this time around. The officers will wear plain clothes but will also wear body cameras, will face consequences for overstepping, and will focus more on criminals than targeting innocent civilians on the street.