The man who believes in redemption: One of Eric Adams’ best, but potentially most problematic, qualities

One of the most interesting and sometimes admirable things about incoming Mayor Eric Adams may also prove to be one of the most frustrating for New Yorkers and politically costly for him.

That’s his belief in second chances, and his resistance to “canceling” people who have made serious mistakes or judging people before the courts have done so, and sometimes even after that.

Those beliefs may be informed by his experience as a Black man and a police officer in New York City. Adams — who made lots of waves in the NYPD as he battled abusive and racist policing from within — managed to retire as a captain (the highest rank achieved through a competitive civil service exam rather than at the discretion of the commissioner) in good standing after 22 years on the job. Despite multiple NYPD investigations arguably intended to tarnish him or even force him out, they came up with basically nothing.

At a time when the same people who fought to ban the box, so that ex-convicts don’t have to disclose that information on job applications, are often at the front of the line demanding that other people accused of misdeeds be written off for their real or reported sins, Adams has taken a different approach.

When he was an elected official in the state Capitol, Adams tried to help find a staff job in the state Senate for a convicted sex offender he met who was working at a restaurant in Albany. (“Some people deserve a second chance after they’ve been punished by the law, but they must also prove that they’ve earned it,” he said.) He helped find volunteer work with Councilwoman Inez Barron for a former aide to David Paterson who was fired after he was arrested for assaulting a woman he was romantically involved with and eventually pleaded guilty, with the woman’s support, to harassment. (Noting that he’d been counseling at-risk youth, Adams, then the Brooklyn borough president candidate, called him “an excellent spokesperson for somebody who has stumbled and can get back on with their lives“; the man later ended up working for the borough president’s office.)

Adams maintained a close relationship with Hiram Monserrate, another ex-cop turned state senator, long after Monserrate was caught on camera viciously abusing his girlfriend and then convicted of misdemeanor assault and ousted from the Legislature in 2010 (and who, despite also pleading guilty in 2012 to steering government funds to a nonprofit group he controlled, has been trying to make his way back into elected office ever since). Adams broke publicly with Monserrate early this year, even as insiders said they remained chummy.

And Adams was, I’m told, the only candidate to call competing mayoral candidate Scott Stringer after an accusation from a former campaign worker that he’d pressed himself on her decades earlier abruptly derailed his campaign.

There’s some good in Adams’ instinct against simply writing off people. He’s had, for better and worse, the courage of his convictions along with a suspicion of convictions in the court of public opinion.

The question comes down to what second chances, for what people, and under what circumstances.

* * *

I wrote last Sunday about Philip Banks III, the former chief of department for the NYPD, its highest-ranking uniformed officer who was widely seen as the commissioner in waiting after Bill Bratton until he suddenly quit in 2014 rather than accept a promotion to the number two spot in the department.

Banks — who was conspicuously absent on Thursday when his brother, David, was announced as the incoming mayor’s education chancellor — has been holding meetings at One Police Plaza ahead of his own potential appointment as deputy mayor for public safety, a role that would mean overseeing the department he’d once hoped to lead.

Adams said during the campaign that he was getting advice from Banks, which was a smart and probably also a decent thing to do; installing him as deputy mayor for public safety may not be either.

When he retired from the police department, Banks said that he left because the move up — which would have meant leaving the uniformed ranks and undergoing a new Department of Investigation background check — was really a step down, and also that he was being used as a token Black face among the NYPD’s very white leadership. He’s repeated that rationale or something like it since.

It later emerged that he’d left the day after a judge had approved a wiretap on him after the feds had stumbled across big bucks deposited in small amounts into his bank accounts in the course of a separate investigation that eventually led to the convictions of: jail workers union boss Norman Seabrook (for stealing funds from his members); Harlem restaurateur Hamlet Peralta, who feted top cops at his restaurant while using rank-and-file ones as private security (for running a Ponzi scheme that Banks had sunk money into); and power brokers in Orthodox Jewish circles and cop wannabes Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg (for bribing cops and Mayor de Blasio, who wasn’t even charged with taking those same bribes thanks in large part to a terrible Supreme Court decision that means public officials can now pocket any and all quids from “friends” so long as they don’t provide government quos in exchange).

Banks took several plane trips with those last two bribers, including one with the full fivesome mentioned above to the Dominican Republic, where Rechnitz later testified that he paid for prostitutes for the whole group. All of them are now convicted felons except for Banks, who was later named an unindicted co-conspirator in the case originally brought by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara against Reichberg, who was convicted of giving bribes, and former NYPD Deputy Inspector James Grant, who was acquitted of receiving them.

Rechnitz testified at Reichberg’s trial that the two of them regularly used Banks’ office at 1PP, the same building he’s doing some work out of again now, even storing a million dollars worth of diamonds in the chief’s safe. They parked in a spot for Banks, and giggled about making “regular” cops salute them as they drove in.

There’s video of that, and another of them dressing up as elves for Christmas to deliver gifts to the wives of some of the same cops whose prostitutes they were paying for, including as in-air entertainment on a private flight to Vegas.

“We decided to get into the political game,” Rechnitz later testified about paying for access to de Blasio. “We had the police going for us and now it was time to get into politics.”

When Banks put in his retirement papers — he was one of four chiefs tied to the bribers who ended up resigning, which meant they were no longer subjected to NYPD discipline — he disclosed that he’d received somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000 in “investments” from Rechnitz’s real estate company.

After I went through some of this history, detailed in legal proceedings including an affidavit from an FBI agent detailing suspiciously structured deposits into Banks’ bank accounts and separate rental income that wasn’t reported, the Adams camp asked for some additional context to be included, specifically that:

The feds never subpoenaed Banks (who said he would plead the Fifth when Grant asked him, as well as Bratton, to testify in his defense).

The IRS never penalized or even contacted Banks over the allegations in that affidavit.

Not only was Banks never convicted or charged with any crime, he was never questioned by any investigatory body.

Banks’ attorneys have repeatedly stressed that he never knowingly did anything illegal, and Banks himself made some of the same points much more bluntly in a rare interview with Post reporters in 2018, where, “visibly shaking,” he denied that his decision to resign had anything to do with any of this.

“I beat the IRS investigation, the U.S. attorney investigation and the FBI investigation. They found nothing. Why would I be concerned about a DOI investigation?” he asked, and then answered himself: “I would have passed that DOI bulls–t investigation.”

In that same interview, Banks said he resigned because Bratton’s “old-boy network” of “all white males” “was using me” as “a local Black just to color him….This n—– was going to be his f–king puppet. I saw this act before.”

And in an NYPD Confidential column later that year, Banks wrote that “I, for one, believe readers are smart enough to decide for themselves, to form their own opinions when presented with facts covering both sides,” noting that Rechnitz had testified that “Banks was very careful not to bend the rules within the NYPD as favors for us.”

* * *

This history, from court records and public reporting, is in a weird grey zone where it’s mostly old news to people who follow the NYPD and City Hall closely but is brand new information to most New Yorkers.

A lot of it is based on the account of Rechnitz after he flipped, and while he may well be a dirtbag and a “liar,” as de Blasio — who clearly interacted with Rechnitz enough to form an opinion of his character — has called him, federal prosecutors don’t typically put unvetted witnesses on the stand or let them just lie there. His testimony was persuasive enough that jurors convicted his old partner Reichberg and Banks’ old friend Seabrook.

Banks, who didn’t reply to an email, appears to have shown terrible judgment about friends, gifts and access while serving in a position of public responsibility even if he scrupulously followed the rules and kept it all legal.

So it’s troubling to see Adams — whose tight inner circle includes the Banks brothers along with David’s partner and United Way of New York City CEO Sheena Wright, who’s leading his transition team — poised to place Phillip in an even higher position without any real accounting for his actions and judgments.

There’s no confirmation process for deputy mayors other than the court of public opinion, and Banks has mostly pleaded the Fifth there aside from those two outbursts in 2018. (If he was speaking now, I might be writing a very different column about him or writing about something else.)

* * *

I’m pulling for Adams, because I like a lot of what he says and because I live here. Every incoming administration deserves some benefit of the doubt and, like most journalists, I don’t want to prejudge things or burn bridges at a moment when we’re trying to win trust and access. I think I understand why Adams, who had his own fight with the NYPD to leave with his reputation intact and who’s known the ridiculously high-achieving Banks family for a long time, wants to get Philip off the bench, as he put it.

And I know that if an Adams administration succeeds in controlling violent crime and restoring a sense of order, he’ll earn more than enough political capital to pay off what he’s spending to give a friend a second chance to get back in the game.

But I also know that this isn’t a game, and that bringing someone who’s shown such bad judgment in to watch over the NYPD would be a worrying sign about what’s to come.

harrysiegel@gmail.com