Mayor Eric Adams has called an emergency meeting with the Big Apple’s top business leaders for Thursday afternoon in the wake of the fatal Q-train shooting of a Goldman Sachs executive on his way to Sunday brunch in Manhattan.
“[Adams] asked us to convene a meeting of corporate leaders on Thursday afternoon,” Partnership for New York City CEO Kathy Wylde told The Post.
“I texted him saying yesterday’s subway shooting is going to cause more negative reverberations and he came back and agreed. Then he said let’s set up a meeting with corporate leaders,” she explained of the pair’s Monday morning text conversation.
Wylde said she expects at least 100 business leaders to join the call with Adams, including Goldman Sachs CEO David Soloman – shooting victim Daniel Enriquez’s boss – real estate executive Rob Speyer of Tishman Speyer and Steve Swartz, CEO of Hearst.
Adams hinted at the hastily scheduled meeting earlier in the day during a press conference at the Polo Grounds Towers public housing facility, admitting he’s worried the weekend killing will have a “chilling” effect on his efforts to get workers back into offices.
“We already have pre-existing relationships with my corporate leaders,” he said.
“Now we’re going to get on either face to face or a zoom and give them an update. This is what we have, so that they’re not in the dark so they can go back to their employees and give them information. That is what we have been doing.”
Lately, the mayor has been trying to get CEOs like JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon to ride the subway to work.
But Wylde told The Post that right now, public safety is an even bigger concern than COVID-19 for employers.
“The concern about irrational, dangerous behavior is far more prevalent than the concern about the COVID,” she said.
“We thought it reached a crescendo with Michelle Go, then the Sunset Park subway event happened and then yesterday – on a Sunday morning – was bizarre. The statistics show shootings going down in the city as a whole, but clearly the dynamic with the subways is serious.”
“Every New Yorker can identify with the terror of being trapped on a moving subway with a deranged gun man because we all take the subways and when they’re not moving – you can’t get off,” she said.
Subway crime has also increased since the start of the coronavirus pandemic – according to NYPD and MTA data – up from 1.47 felonies per million riders in 2019 to 2.11 felonies per million riders in April 2022.
Meanwhile, he made a point to ride the subway back to City Hall from the upper Manhattan NYCHA facility – telling reporters he needs to lead by example.
“I cannot tell everyday New Yokers to get on the subway system, if I’m not on the subway system. I’m on the subway system often. I have to lead the city from the front,” he told reporters at the 155th Street subway station before taking the D train up to 165th Street, and then the 4 train to City Hall.
“I have to continuously send a message out that our system is going to be safe. Just a horrific incident. It’s a horrific incident,” he added.
“They have not witnessed in a long time the type of policing that I’m going to do in our subway system. We have not seen this in a long time. You know, we’re moving to that real omnipresence, having police officers carry out patrol.”
He recently rolled out his summer violence prevention plan, which includes adding more officers to the night patrol.
“This type of policing is going to be different and that’s the uniqueness of me being here because no other Mayor understood the real deployment of police personnel like I do.”
Although when asked whether he’ll add more cops to the subway system, he failed to provide a specific number.
He also touted City Hall’s ongoing efforts to get homeless individuals out of the tunnels and into shelters.
“We are going to have officers do their job, not ignore quality of life issues, fare evasion,” he said. “We were ignoring all of this in the past. We’re not ignoring this anymore. It’s about the quality of life – looking at it, the little things, the omnipresence and deploying the police properly.”