In September 2021, Eric Adams, who was Brooklyn’s borough president at the time, stood at the intersection in Clinton Hill where a 3-month-old girl had been killed by a wrong-way driver and declared he was fed up with young New Yorkers dying in car crashes.
“We’re tired of comforting parents experiencing their worst nightmare. We’re tired of reading new reports about yet another child lost to vehicle crashes,” Adams said at the time. He later called for a “holistic rethinking of our streetscape to stop this carnage” in a press release.
Adams was elected mayor two months later. Now, residents and activists are criticizing his administration for its approach to street safety. An NYPD tow truck driver allegedly ran over 7-year-old Kamari Hughes in Fort Greene on Oct. 26 – just 10 blocks away from the 2021 crash.
Residents of both neighborhoods tell Gothamist that two years into the Adams administration, the streets feel as dangerous as they’ve ever been.
“If anything, it’s worse,” Prospect Heights resident Enrico Cullen, 53, told Gothamist as he dropped his son off at school, just a block away from where Hughes was killed.
Adams’ time in office has been marked by a series of street safety controversies around Clinton Hill and Fort Greene.
In September, the administration recommended the termination of the city’s Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program, which seized the cars of drivers who rack up a high number of red light or speed camera tickets. It marked a reversal from Adams’ position as Brooklyn borough president in 2021, when he said the program could have impounded the car driven by the man who killed 3-month-old Apolline Mong-Guillemin at the corner of Vanderbilt and Gates avenues.
Shortly after Adams took office in January 2022, the Department of Transportation removed barriers creating a car-free “Open Street” on Willoughby Avenue through Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. It soon emerged that the order – which was reversed within hours – came…
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