The Twenty-Sixth Episode of the Get Stuff Done Cast Cast

This is the Get Stuff Done Cast Cast, my name is Dave. The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, has a podcast. The only person listening to it is a dogwalker in Queens named Dave.

This podcast, the Get Stuff Done Cast Cast, is about the mayor’s podcast, The Get Stuff Done Cast. If you’re new, welcome, I’d recommend going back to the start, listening to a few episodes, getting a feel for this thing, but you do you. As frequent listeners will know, we’re actually not discussing the mayor’s podcast today. Adams stopped recording about 4 or 5 months ago, so we’ve been, in the interim, talking about books he’s written, most recently his 2009 book Don’t Let It Happen, which is just so fucking bad. He recently started recording his podcast once again, so I’m going to finish out this book in this episode, and then it’s back to his podcast, for as long as he remembers that he has it.

Like his podcast that nobody listens to, nobody seems to have read Don’t Let It Happen. If they had and it had been accurately reported on, I don’t know if he’d have been elected mayor, but that’s an agnostic statement; I really don’t know if it would have meaningfully changed things in any direction. It was a pretty close primary, Kathryn Garcia almost beat him. But she didn’t, and it’s not like he was saying normal things the whole time he was running for mayor. It seems increasingly like we have both limited amounts of time and near infinite amounts of content, and if you’re inclined to like someone you can easily never encounter things that might upset you about them, or ignore them in favor of some other bit of information. Still, someone should document this stuff, and so, I guess that’s my lot in this life, at least with regards to Eric Adams. 

At this point I am probably the world’s foremost expert on content Eric Adams has created, simply by virtue of the fact that I have actually listened to his podcast and read his books, because no one did either of those things. I don’t think Adams really pays much attention to the stuff he makes either. Adams sorta has done this throughout his life, I think. This is a pretty broad reading of an entire human existence that I’ve only encountered through media reports, but it feels like Adams has always been about the next thing and not the thing he’s doing, and that makes the things he does pretty hollow. His books are vague filler. His podcast is more or less information free as well. His mayoralty has accomplished exactly zero signature initiatives. He’s apparently writing another book, and I’m 100% certain that it’s the book that everyone writes when they run for president. Adams has a ladder to climb, we’re all just rungs on it.

How does Don’t Let it Happen fit into that? You know, pretty good question. Adams references running seminars on safety throughout the book, and I think it may be just this simple: You look more impressive as a safety expert if you’ve got a book in your credits. No one's gonna read that book, but the physical object needs to exist, and you take a bunch of them and make a little display on a folding table at your seminars, someone may buy a copy. Do the seminars need to accomplish much? No, they’re part of the climb too. Adams may not have been thinking of dizzying heights of political power that he might someday summit at the time he did all this, but you can look at it and see a guy who might well have wanted more. And I’m not talking about better. I’m just talking about more.

When this book came out, Adams was finishing his first two year term as a State Senator. Given the turnaround time for even a half-assed self-published book, he may have started writing before his first election, certainly before his second. Maybe Adams felt like he needed a hedge against losing. If he lost his election, or re-election for State Senate, and was still gonna try for mayor someday, he’d need to remain relevant, so maybe he wanted to give himself a backup position as an expert on public safety. It’s a winner of a political brand (as the current mayor could tell you), and state senate races are flukey. If he lost, maybe he’d want to be able to book himself on the local news as an expert commentator on the issues. Stay in the public eye, wait for the next opportunity to run. Just a guess. Once he won the election and then re-election, he was established enough that he didn’t need stuff like this anymore, until he ran for mayor. And you’ll notice, when he ran for mayor, he dropped another book, positioning himself as a wellness guy, which could also be a way to continue to appear on TV and local news hits if he lost (he very nearly did) and needed to wait till another election rolled around. So maybe Don’t Let It Happen is just an artifact of that time and that vibe, tossed off and more or less forgotten by the guy who tossed it off. It’s the best guess I’ve got at the moment, and I’m not entirely satisfied by it. For one, Adams was and is incredibly plugged in, and I doubt that his races for local office were much more than coronations. There’s a risk to trying to get inside too deep into anyone’s motivations. Sometimes people, especially weird people, just do weird things. This weird thing still tells us a lot about the guy who did it.

So let’s talk about this weird thing. 

Chapter 10 is called Profiling.

Now, this is interesting. Adams talks about what profiling is, and why it happens and then says this: “Although I believe that there are many reasons why officers practice profiling, I do not believe that it is justifiable. Instead of spending time explaining why it is done, I would rather concentrate on you ways to prevent yourself from being profiled. While it is not my desire to tell you how to carry out your life, I want to arm you with information that will help you make an intelligent decision about what leads to profiling and how you can combat it. In addition, I will explain some of the incidents that arise from profiling.”

So, yes, there’s an obvious typo in there, a “you” that is just in the middle of a sentence for no reason, but also Adams says something really important here: profiling should not be part of policing, and that he wants to help you to avoid being profiled.

Adams starts by discussing profiling while driving. This, he says, is very dangerous because cops are trained to treat stops as very dangerous, meaning they’re already primed to react with violence. So how do you avoid being profiled? Well, Adams advises that when you’re pulled over, stop in a well lit area, turn on your dome light, put your hands in view on the wheel, hand over your documents before beginning any conversations with the police, and only have one person in the car talk. If someone else is in the car, they may wish to call a friend so that someone else is aware the stop is happening. Do not exit the car unless ordered to. Don’t consent to a search. Don’t try to prevent a search.

That’s… how you prevent profiling when driving, according to Adams, so he moves on to being profiled while walking. To prevent this Adams says that you should dress nice, and not like a gang member. However, this won’t always prevent you from being profiled, he says, so the other ways to prevent yourself from being profiled include, always carry a government issued ID, carry the number of an attorney, carry the number where a loved one can be reached. Keep your hands out of your pockets, drop whatever you’re holding when you’re stopped, don’t move in a way that could be perceived as a threat, don’t verbally debate a cop.

Adams opened this chapter with the following words “What is profiling?” He answers the question, more or less, but he doesn’t tell you how to prevent it from happening. What he seems to be trying to prevent is people being homicided to death by cops after the cops have already profiled them. To be fair, some of his advice is useful in that regard. But, as we’ve talked about throughout this mini-series about this book, Adams refuses to acknowledge that there are things the state could do, in this case to stop cops from profiling citizens, and that there are things citizens could do to pool their power and pressure the government to change. Without those things, there’s very little an individual can do to stop the police from doing just about anything to them, so keep your hands in sight at all times, dress nice, make no sudden moves, and report your injuries to the authorities that oversee and defend your injurer.

Chapter 11 is called Arrest.

When a cop shows up at your door in an official capacity Eric Adams wants you to know about your legal rights and legal obligations. Seems like maybe we could ask why cops are- eh, you get it.

So, when a cop comes to the door, request ID and if it seems suspect, call 911 to request a uniformed officer. Ask someone else like a neighbor to come over and witness the incident/get killed alongside you. Request an attorney if you or a family member are accused of a crime. Don’t keep any contraband in plain sight; even if they don’t have a warrant they can charge you for stuff they can just see. Do not consent to or allow a search that doesn’t have a warrant, and, if they’re looking for or in something specific, make sure they limit their search to that. Tell them everyone who is in the house, so that they’re not surprised by someone in another room (and therefore don’t fucking kill them for just being a person in a house).

Cops can also enter your home in pursuit of someone, if that person runs into your house, and Adams notes, they can arrest you if they see anything illegal just lying around during that pursuit. I think ‘the guy they were chasing may have thrown it there who can say’ would be a pretty obvious thing for a defense attorney to toss sand about in such a case, but you probably want to avoid that if you can, so ‘keep your bag in a drawer’ seems like reasonable advice. Adams further advises that if cops show up to your door asking just to talk about a crime or whatever, you shouldn’t let them in unless they have a warrant. I’d add, though he does not: don’t fucking say a word about any crime to a cop unless you have a lawyer present (who’ll probably further advise you not to say a fucking word). Even if you’re just a witness, or just want to be helpful, you may accidentally implicate yourself in another crime you didn’t even know you were committing, or you may say something that cops decide makes you a suspect in the crime they’re investigating. Or they may already think of you as a suspect and are building a case around you. Don’t talk. Cops are allowed to lie to you. And if they really want to solve the case, they have a billion ways they can do so. Frankly they solve very few of them.

Cops may also come to your door to tell you, like, there’s been an accident involving someone you love, Adams notes.

If you’re arrested, Adams, to his credit, says to shut up immediately and only tell your story to a lawyer. Though he also says that you should use your common sense and if the cops are merely trying to resolve a dispute between you and another party, you can tell the police your side of the story and NOPE NO DON’T SAY SHIT. You’re in custody, the cuffs have gone on you, anyone involved in that is not your friend and is not on your side. The information they get from you will not be used to help you. Do not help them. Wait for the lawyer. Tell the lawyer. The lawyer will handle everything from there.

A one time friend of mine, I may have mentioned this previously, was once arrested for flashing a fake ID at a liquor store. In his telling of this incident, he called his mom and let her know that he was just going make it easy, tell the cops he made the ID, and that’d be the end of it. His mother, an extremely savvy woman who knew the law told him, “You’d be admitting to a felony if that was the case, so you’re going to tell them nothing at all and when your lawyer arrives you and he are going to tell the police the truth, and the truth is that you bought that ID from someone who made it for you and you don’t know their name or anything about them and can’t remember how to contact them, so the only thing you did that was illegal was try to buy booze with a fake ID which is a misdemeanor, do you understand?”

Not everyone has a mom who can think clearly enough that they’ll be able to go on to get the kind of work that requires a background check that returns no felonies. Don’t say shit without a lawyer.

Adams, confusingly enough, then rounds this out by saying that if you have been arrested, don’t say anything at all without a lawyer under any circumstance, so I guess he was imagining a scenario where cops don’t arrest you but are just asking questions of you and another guy and trying to establish who’s in the right, and I don’t know man, I know it’s a pain in the ass, but I think in most cases just shut the fuck up.

Adams advises having emergency phone numbers, and documenting your arrest with a camera, if you can. He also advises dressing down, without flashy clothes because, he says, holding cells are full of criminals who’ll take your nice things from you, so that’s nice of him.

Finally, he advises taking a “preventative trip” to the precinct to meet the officers on duty there at each change of shift (so really, this would be three trips at least, at different times of day, including the middle of the night) and just getting to know the officers there and meeting with people who run the various departments, and honestly, do whatever you want, but I’ve seen enough Don’t Tread On Me Flags and Make America Great Again stickers, I’ll pass.

Chapter 12 is called Police Abuse

Adams kicks off this chapter with one of the weirdest… well, here:

“Many negative encounters with police can be avoided. One of the first things one hears from a victim of police abuse is, "I know my rights." In reality, far too many people do not know their rights. The first right we all have is to not to place ourselves in harm's way. This goes for the police and for civilians. The easiest way to do this is to avoid negative encounters with police.”

Yet another typo. Also, no. What? No. We absolutely have the right to place ourselves in harm’s way if we like. Get in a car and drive it: that’s your right. Go to a bar, that’s your right. Smoke. Own a gun. All of these things are rights, and, being the person I am, I think these rights should extend to certain things that are currently illegal, but the point is this is Adams’ whole Thing around policing in a nutshell. When bad things happen, Adams tends to see the perpetrators as forces that are as natural as the rain and the victims as people who failed to bring an umbrella. Those people, Adams would probably concede, weren’t doing something wrong, but what happened to them was predictable because they failed to protect themselves. Well, what if we simply had a society that was safe? As a candidate for mayor, and then as mayor, Adams certainly indicated that this was his goal, but as for how he wants to get there? Adams wants more cops, more money for cops, more policing, and therefore, as he tells it here, less safety, unless you behave exactly as you should in front of the police.

Now, of course, it’s your right to do otherwise, you’ll just be killed, which is also your right. Adams wants a heavily policed, a heavily policed society will have police brutality, and, rather than seeking other solutions, Adams says it’s your job to avoid being a victim of that society. Adams doesn’t seem to realize that this describes a police state.

“Some civilians believe that they have the right to engage in heated verbal disputes with law enforcement officers. Not all things that are legal are prudent. It is better to avoid verbal disputes - many officers take this as a challenge to their authority. There is plenty of time to deal with the officer's behavior later, in an atmosphere where you feel comfortable and will not have your own actions misrepresented.”

Don’t mouth off to cops is probably good advice, but it feels like we’re conceding something pretty important. The other day I was minding my own business when, as happens roughly weekly, someone nearly hit me with their car. This happens frequently because I work outside on city streets and in a city where drivers have virtually unchecked authority to drive with psychotic disregard for human life. Did yelling at that guy, who stopped his car to yell back at me but stayed in his car while yelling because he’s a little pissbaby and also I was walking 120 pounds of pitbull - did yelling at him change anything? No, but did I let him know when he objected to me yelling that he’s in America, where there’s this right to yell? Sure. Would I have done that if he was driving a squad car? Fuck no. Is that a pre-conceded, but also coerced concession of my rights? More or less, yep.

Let’s say you’ve still been a victim of police abuse, what then? Adams suggests getting all the info about the officer or officers you can and then telling their superior officers, if you’ve been arrested. What if you haven’t?

Strap in:

“Michael Jenkins was a store owner in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn when he came in contact with two police officers. The officers mistook Mr. Jenkins for a person who was stealing items out of Mr. Jenkins' store. An officer grabbed Mr. Jenkins and, during the struggle, threw him to the grown” (yes, this is yet another typo, the unfortunate person was not thrown to a synonym for matured, he was thrown to the ground, again, this was not a ghostwritten work). Continuing: “Mr. Jenkins voiced his anger and stated he was going to file a report against the officers. Mr. Jenkins made two mistakes: he advertised to the officers that he was going to file a report against them, and then he attempted to file the report at the officers' precinct.

It is never necessary to tell an abusive officer that you are going to report the abuse. This will only give the officer an opportunity to alter the story. In some cases, this has called the complainant to be placed under arrest or physically assaulted. Keep your intentions to yourself. Calling out the officer's badge number or name will only exacerbate the situation.

When Mr. Jenkins went to the police station to complain of his abuse, the person who received the complaint made sure that it was not filed. It is always better to go to a precinct that has nothing to do with the case. There, officers are less likely to prevent the complaint from going the normal route. Complaints can be filed at any police facility or at the Civilian Complaint Review Board. If you file it at a precinct, the filing officer will give you a copy of your report. Those reports are made directly to the CCRB during business hours. The investigator receiving the call will issue you a report number.”

So, what Adams is describing here is, again, a police state. You can’t report abuse to a superior officer and have it taken seriously (despite the fact that he said to do so if you’re in custody, which seems like, given what he’s saying only a couple paragraphs later, a good way to get further abused). Well, the CCRB should help, right? Go there! The NYCLU, the New York chapter of the ACLU, crunched the publicly available data, and here’s a quote from a report they wrote in 2020:

“Of the 180,700 complaints investigated by the CCRB since 2000, only 4,283 of 180,700 total cases received some type of discipline from the NYPD, of which 1,530 – or one percent of all cases – received discipline considered serious, which includes forfeiting vacation days, suspension, probation, or termination.”

One percent chance someone will take your broken jaw seriously enough to dock the officer some vacation days. Great. Oh, also, since Adams has taken office, he has repeatedly cut funding to the CCRB, and their total budget for the coming year is projected to be just 22 million dollars. The cuts to funding left over 450 allegations of police abuse completely uninvestigated last year, according to testimony from the CCRB.

Adams notes that when you report abuse you should bring a community member in high standing with you, like a member of clergy or an elected official, something we all have access to, and that, as always, you should dress nice.

“Above all, never try to physically prevent a police officer from placing someone in custody. This will probably lead to your arrest, and could lead to injury and even death.”

What would the world look like if Adams wasn’t right about this? How would we get to that point? I don’t really know. During the George Floyd protests, I went to a couple, but mostly I sat on my computer watching livestreams of cops just being completely out of pocket. I personally saw streams of them pepper spraying and arresting elected officials, driving their squad cars into peaceful protesters, literally throwing people on the ground so hard they had seizures, clotheslining cyclists who weren’t involved in protests at all, arresting nurses who were just walking home, black bagging people off the street - these are just the ones I can remember as I’m writing this, and I have to cut myself off or this will go on forever. Anyway, like over a year later, when crime was falling, a guy at a family gathering out of state buttonholed me asking in hushed tones how bad it was in New York, and when I told him it was fine he more or less ignored me to tell me, confidently, that the reason crime was so high (it was, again, falling rapidly) was that the cops stepped back after the protests because they got too much backlash. 

A fun thing about living in New York is that everyone who doesn’t live here wants to tell you what it’s like. But, for the record, the cops never stepped back, there was no meaningful backlash, certainly not one that robbed them of any authority, and, I mean Eric Adams is now the cop mayor. Crime continues to trend downward but crime only rose incrementally relative to the historical highs of the 80s and early 90s, when America’s worst generation, their brains rotted by leaded gasoline fumes, started to get too old to aim properly and instead went into politics. Crime is now falling back towards a pre-pandemic baseline. That seems, to me, to indicate that its rise was based more on the things Covid changed than anything else. Crime also rose nationwide, and is similarly falling nationwide, at least as far as I can tell; I’m not a criminologist, I’m a dog walker with a podcast, but I can see the same charts everyone else has access to, and anyway this stuff just seems common sense to me. Do you still see violence in New York City today? Well, I saw it yesterday, when two drunks started wailing on each other on the 7 train. So, the answer to that question is that this is still New York City. Like, what do people expect? It’s a place that’s been known for having the hottest and most dysfunctional people on earth for at least 100 years. Go to buy ice cream and come back with a story you’ll tell for the rest of your life. It’s not always gonna be a fun story. You don’t live here to be comfortable. Regardless, vis a vis cops and bystanders to their brutality, I don’t know how we would get from point A to point B, if point B is a place where Americans simply have the rights the founding documents assure us that we do have. But I don’t like that Adams is correct here: that in order to come home alive you need to make sure you never ever interfere with a cop brutalizing someone, and that “interfering with” could include filming. I don’t like that any more than I like that Eric Adams is the mayor. I will note that none of this advice Adams offers accomplishes his stated goal. None of it tells you, really, how to avoid police abuse if the cops decide they want to abuse you. That’s because there is no way. If the cops want to stomp you, they’re gonna, and you’re just gonna have to take it, hope you live, and hope, as well, that someone records a video of it that’ll get a judge mad enough that someone loses a few vacation days and the taxpayer covers some of your medical bills.

Chapter 13 is called Crime Victimization. I’ve given this book a blanket trigger warning in past episodes, but you know, heads up here, we’re talking about specific crimes, including sexual violence, and there’s a brief discussion of suicide at the end.

Adams writes “Every year, millions of Americans find themselves the victims of crime. Fortunately, many of these incidents are avoidable. This chapter will give you soon (again with the typos) common sense approaches to fighting crime and reducing the chances of you or your family members becoming a victim. You will also learn how your actions after a crime has occurred can help or hinder the police effort to apprehend a criminal. By the end of this chapter, you will not necessarily be an expert on crime, but you will be one step ahead of the common criminal, and that one step can mean the difference between life and death.”

Adams talks about sexual assault, mostly in terms of defining the various legal definitions of the crimes associated with it, which is probably not information that helps anyone, really. We’ve got dictionaries. I do find this line interesting in light of the accusation made against him: “It must also be pointed out that rape is one of the least falsely reported crimes.”

That’s just straightforwardly true. He also talks about the fact that it’s under reported, but, uh, not really why, and then says “Law enforcement’s primary concern is what is best for the victim and ensuring that medical care is provided” and you just have to look at the massive backlog of rape kits in this country or, you know, listen to a single person who has ever reported their assault to know that that’s weapons grade horseshit. The Washington Post released an incredibly upsetting investigation just the other day that found that from 2005 to 2022 over 1,800 cops nationwide have been charged - not accused, not quietly investigated, charged - with not just sexual assault, but sexual assault against a minor. 90% of those minors were not related to the accused. Most of the accused met their victims while doing the job of policing. I’ll link to it in the show notes, it goes into a lot of detail, and is, as I said, really awful to read. Anyway, Eric Adams, accused of a sexual assault as an officer, wants you to know you can trust cops if you are assaulted. That’s nice.

https://archive.is/BayBu

There’s a lot more about sex crime here, and, look, we’ve had our fun, we’ve dunked on Adams, we’ve established that he’s bad at writing, doesn’t know what he’s talking about and has a terrible case of Cop Brain, and though he may use this subject to provide further evidence of that fact, we don’t really need further evidence, so let’s just move on.

To avoid being the victim of a pickpocket, or subway snatch and grab or ATM hold up Adams gives the advice you can find in just about any travel guide. 

For locks and windows to prevent a burglary, he gives the advice that all of us who rent have gotten and none of us can legally implement because we don’t own the building we have a subscription to. (I stole that bit about subscribing to a home from internet hippo on bluesky).

And Eric Adams wants you to tell you about con-artists and scammers: “This area of the book will not be complete without discussion some of the non-violent crimes that may effect members of your household. Although confidence crimes are not normally associated with violence, they can be quite devastating. Many teenagers have lost college loans, car down payments and other cash savings to this type of crime, and many of these cons affect the elderly. Consult with your local police department to find out about some of the common confidence crimes in your area.”

You missed an “a” before discussion, and an “of” there between discussion and some, Mr. Mayor, and effect vs affect still confuses me, so I get it, but you used the wrong one, sorry. That’s it, that’s all he has to say about scams, and… this book was never useful, but it definitely got… less written as it went along. More obvious typos, a higher ratio of filler to content, and then, here, it just is like ‘cons exist, and you should talk to a cop about them.’ It’s about as useful and actionable as any advice he gives. It’s also advice I literally followed once. Maybe 8 years ago a guy started calling my business claiming I owed a gambling debt some guy with my name had racked up in the midwest. Since they couldn’t find the guy who’d done it, the guy on the phone said, they were transferring the debt to me. I was like no you aren’t, come on. His story was obvious nonsense, and full of details that were designed to get people to think you’re nuts if you start to talk to them about it (he claimed, among other things, to be calling on the behalf of a man named Anaconda Sam), but he was also insistent and vaguely and occasionally explicitly threatening and he called me over and over and over and this seemed like it shouldn’t be allowed, so I called the non-emergency line of the local PD just to see what they’d say and they told me not to give him any money and hung up on me.

He stopped calling after I figured out how to unmask his number and read it to him. This was before the days of every other call you got being a scammer, before phone masking software got really good, so it wasn’t too difficult to figure out that he was calling from NYC, a fact that the police in NYC didn’t care at all about. I think about him pretty often. I think, as well, about how a huge percentage of posts on social media, emails, phone calls, texts, podcast ad reads, advertising in general, how much contact we have in a given day that has to be considered hostile, a threat, an effort to take from us, and in taking from us, harm us, and how no one is doing anything about it. Humans weren’t meant to intake the amount of information we intake now, and we weren’t meant to spend this amount of time treating literally every contact we receive as hostile or bad faith. We weren’t meant to be so alerted that we aren't even concerned when we see “scam likely” pop up on our phones. No one is trying to stop this! It’s lunacy!

The final chapter is called Teen Suicide and you know what? Fuck this book. As with sexual assault, we’re not going to learn anything by looking at this issue from his perspective that we don’t already know about this guy, so, Mr. Mayor, we’ve traveled this far with you, but this last five page journey is one you’ll take on your own. 

Well, I read the book. Good for me. We’ve talked about different lessons learned about Eric Adams, and I’ll spare you a summary of those. A major takeaway I have, one that I don’t think we’ve discussed, is that Eric Adams doesn’t want be useless, but he doesn’t really care about being useful. He doesn’t really want to help, he wants to look helpful. He wants your attention as he looks helpful, he wants his brand to be a helpful person. But that’s not how helping works.

We’ll have more to say about that and other lessons learned as we go, I’m sure, now that Adams is back on his pod grind. If it’s possible to be eager to listen to his podcast, I am, or at least eager to leave this book behind. But, if you have thoughts about it, I’d love to hear them. I’m gonna give my email in just a few seconds, so please write.