Mayor Eric Adams asks City Council to rethink closing Rikers Island in 2027
NEW YORK -- Mayor Eric Adams is calling on New York City Council to rethink the plan to close Rikers Island in 2027.
He says it's a public safety issue and if Rikers is closed, thousands of dangerous criminals will end up on the street.
"Are we as a city willing to say that 2,000 extremely dangerous people, because we don't have enough space, we're going to turn them back onto the streets and back to the communities that they committed these crimes in in the first place?" Adams said.
The mayor also pointed out that the cost of building four community jails in the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn has skyrocketed.
