Report: Drug arrests per month up 84% since NYC Mayor Adams took office

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — NYPD officers are effecting nearly twice as many narcotics arrests per month since Mayor Eric Adams took office, Gothamist reported.

The uptick, police officials reportedly told the outlet, is key to reducing community violence, while the numbers are raising concerns among public defenders and advocates.

According to a Gothamist analysis of police data, 740 drug arrests were made citywide in January 2022 when Adams was inaugurated.

Since then, there’s been a steady uptick in drug arrests, and in June, the most recent month for which data is available, there were 1,360, which represents an 84% increase, according to the outlet.

“We’re not doing the games of yesteryears where we ignore [drug crimes],” Adams said at a recent press conference. “We’re going to continue to do our part of this relationship in the criminal justice system.”

Critics of the initiative say the crackdown on street-level drug crimes does little to address larger drug trafficking patterns and unfairly targets Black and Latino New Yorkers in historically impoverished and underserved neighborhoods.