They Beat Him Bloody at 15... Now He Runs New York City | Eric Adams

Eric Adams said his teenage years were shaped by undiagnosed dyslexia, school struggles and time spent outside school with a rough group of friends. Looking back, he believed some of those friends may also have had learning disabilities.

At 15, Adams and his brother were arrested for criminal trespassing, and Adams said the arresting officers severely beat them while they were in custody. He said the officers took them into a basement, repeatedly kicked them in the groin and left them urinating blood for about seven days.

Rather than permanently turning against policing after that experience, Adams said Reverend Herbert Dory, his spiritual leader, persuaded him to join the police department. Adams described this as learning to “turn pain into purpose” by entering the institution that had hurt him and trying to change it from inside.

Adams called joining the police department one of the best decisions of his life. He said it gave him a way both to serve the public and to advocate for the kind of policing he believed New York needed.

Adams grew up with severe housing insecurity and the recurring possibility that his family could be evicted. His mother kept plastic bags near the door containing underwear, socks, shirts and pants so the children would have clothes if marshals suddenly removed them from their home.

The family became known as the “Glad Bag kids” because they sometimes carried their belongings in plastic bags. Adams remembered approaching home with anxiety, wondering whether a marshal or sheriff’s truck would be waiting outside.

Those childhood experiences gave Adams a lasting view that a home is much more than four walls. He said housing insecurity taught him resilience, compassion and not to look down on people because of their circumstances.

Adams explicitly connected his childhood housing insecurity to his housing priorities as mayor. He said his administration pursued unusually high levels of housing development and movement of people from shelters into permanent housing because he remembered what instability had felt like as a child.

A major turning point in Adams’s police career came through an 11-year-old boy who had repeatedly been arrested for armed robbery. Adams encountered the child during a midnight shift after the boy had been handcuffed in a juvenile room and was cursing and spitting at officers.

After Adams brought the 11-year-old snacks and spoke with him, the boy broke down and described extraordinary instability at home. Adams said the boy’s father was imprisoned on a homicide case, his mother was addicted to crack cocaine and selling sex, he had been absent from school for months without intervention, and he was effectively raising himself.

That encounter convinced Adams that repeatedly arresting troubled children could not solve the underlying problem. He concluded that he needed to address the conditions producing crime rather than only dealing with people once they entered the criminal-justice system.

Adams used Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s image of going “upstream” rather than continually pulling people from a river to explain his move into politics. For Adams, going upstream meant becoming a legislator and policymaker capable of changing systems before people reached crisis.

He described a progression from policing into elected and executive public service, eventually reaching the New York mayoralty. His explanation was that policymaking gave him tools to address causes that police officers encountered only after something had already gone wrong.

Adams linked his own dyslexia to his interest in identifying learning disabilities earlier. He asserted that a substantial share of incarcerated Americans have learning disabilities such as dyslexia and said he wanted screening and assistance so young people would not repeat his experience.

Adams rejected academic performance as the sole measure of future success. He argued that success in business and life often depends more heavily on dealing with people, building relationships and developing emotional intelligence than on subjects such as geometry.

Despite holding highly public roles, Adams described himself as socially awkward, extremely shy and uncomfortable around large groups. He said New York nevertheless forces him to interact constantly with people far outside his personal comfort zone.

Adams identified deep listening as one of his central methods for working across New York’s diversity. He said he tries to understand people before asking them to understand him and does not believe he always needs to be right.

He said leaders should remain willing to learn from people regardless of status or age. Adams rejected the idea that being mayor meant he could learn nothing from a student or younger person and argued that arrogance blocks useful knowledge.

Adams believed American education has historically emphasized academic intelligence too heavily relative to emotional intelligence. His view was that attitude, interpersonal behavior and the way someone makes other people feel can materially affect whether opportunities open for them.

He described himself as “perfectly imperfect” and said dedication matters more than presenting an image of perfection. He considered acceptance of his own imperfections part of his approach to leadership and public life.

Adams argued that exposure to people with different backgrounds is necessary for personal and professional growth. He said someone surrounded only by people who look, speak, eat and think the same way risks remaining trapped in a social and intellectual silo.

He used an incident on his family’s roughly 118-acre property in Alabama to illustrate learning from other cultures. When a tractor broke down while moving hay, Adams attached a motorcycle to the wagon, saying the idea came from transportation practices he had observed in Thailand.

Adams said a leader who wants a global outlook should have people around them who reflect the wider world. Although he considered New York exceptionally diverse, he said residents can still remain isolated within their own communities and miss opportunities to learn from one another.

Safety and police reform were not opposites in Adams’s account of why he became an officer. He said he had lost friends to violence during New York’s crack era and wanted communities to be safer while also correcting unjust or poor policing practices.

As an officer, Adams taught people how to handle encounters with police. He believed fear and misunderstanding could exist on both sides of a police stop and that young people needed practical instruction on navigating those interactions.

A parent later told Adams that one of those classes had helped their child successfully navigate an encounter with an officer. Adams said that feedback made him feel his police work could save lives while improving relations between police and communities.

Adams described running New York as an overwhelming stream of competing demands, joking about “8.5 million people and 35 million opinions.” His management method was to funnel the volume by determining what required his personal attention and what could be delegated.

His stated daily routine began around 5 a.m. with prayer, meditation, exercise, a green smoothie and reading newspapers before work. He said his days frequently ended late because the city’s responsibilities continue into its nightlife hours.

Adams viewed New York’s nightlife as a significant economic sector that deserved direct mayoral attention. He said he had deliberately focused on the industry rather than treating nighttime activity as peripheral to city management.

Public safety was Adams’s first stated priority when deciding what demanded his attention. At the time of the interview, he cited concerns involving gangs, terrorism threats and large protests as examples of matters that could require major decisions with the police commissioner.

After immediate public-safety matters, Adams said housing and employment were among his major priorities. His schedule also included meetings with international leaders because events abroad can affect New York and because the United Nations makes the city a major diplomatic center.

Adams said decades in policing trained him to handle rapid changes in subject and emotional intensity. A single police shift could move from a missing child to a homicide, a suicide or another major emergency, which he said gradually developed a form of “mental muscle.”

His later experience supervising other officers as a police captain added a management layer to that training. Adams said that by the time he became mayor, responding to many simultaneous crises felt partly like institutional muscle memory developed through policing.

Adams said major political decisions cannot simply be based on polling or on trying to satisfy every constituency. He said a mayor inevitably makes unpopular choices and should instead act sincerely from what he believes is a good place.

His Christian faith was presented as an active part of his decision-making process. Adams said he sometimes asks himself how Matthew, Mark, Luke and John would approach issues such as homelessness, crime victims and unemployment.

Adams openly acknowledged that leaders will make mistakes and have good and bad days. Using a baseball analogy, he said he was not expecting perfection; performing well in important situations mattered more than an impossible record of getting everything right.

Adams supported adding practical life and financial education to schools rather than concentrating almost exclusively on conventional academics. The discussion included financial literacy, entrepreneurship, money management and interpersonal skills.

He described health, finance and romance as three major forces shaping a person’s life. His view was that getting finances and health under control creates a better foundation for the rest of life.

Adams said his own credit was poor after high school and college because he fell into excessive credit-card use and was effectively “wearing” his wealth instead of accumulating it. He later worked to improve his credit and used the experience as an argument for teaching financial literacy earlier.

He wanted students taught how to invest, spend intelligently, understand interest rates and save for a home or college. He also wanted young people exposed to cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, digital assets and digital wallets so they would understand emerging forms of money.

Adams confirmed that he converted his first three mayoral paychecks into Bitcoin. The discussion used this as a bridge into his broader beliefs about money and financial decision-making.

He told his son Jordan, who attended American University, that grades were important but character and interpersonal behavior mattered too. Adams wanted him to become the kind of person people were happy to see enter a room rather than relieved to see leave.

Adams argued that accumulating money without psychological well-being does not produce a good life. He placed meditation, breathing exercises, reflection and time with family alongside financial security rather than treating wealth as the sole objective.

His broader philosophy was that financial, physical, mental and spiritual health must be developed together. He said a strong bank account should not come at the expense of a weak body or unhealthy inner life.

Adams described a serious personal health crisis involving uncontrolled diabetes. He said blurred vision became so severe that he woke unable to see his alarm clock clearly, while he was also experiencing tingling in his fingers and toes.

He initially sought medical attention partly because abdominal pain made him fear colon cancer after a friend had died from the disease. Doctors instead found a small ulcer, while Adams said he was warned that diabetes posed the greater threat and could cost him his eyesight and potentially fingers or toes.

Adams said he subsequently learned from physicians, including a doctor he identified as Dr. Esther, about changing his diet. He shifted predominantly to plant-based eating and attributed major health improvements—including restored vision and disappearing nerve symptoms—to that change.

He summarized his interpretation of that experience with the phrase that the problem was not his “DNA” but his “dinner.” This was Adams’s personal account of his health improvement, not a general medical conclusion established within the conversation.

Adams said one thing he dislikes about government culture is pressure on public figures to pretend to be someone they are not. He deliberately presents authenticity as part of his leadership style.

He used his enjoyment of cigars and cognac as an example of refusing to manufacture a cleaner public persona. When advised that he should not be photographed with those things, he said he preferred simply acknowledging that he smokes cigars and drinks cognac rather than hiding it.

For Adams, transparency reduces the vulnerability created by pretending to be someone else. He accepted that authenticity would not make everyone like him but believed public figures should be willing to own who they are.

Adams uses his personal history to argue that someone’s present circumstances do not determine their future. He pointed to dyslexia, housing insecurity, arrest and imprisonment in his youth as experiences that did not prevent him from later reaching elected office.

He summarized that message as “a bend in the road is not the end of the road.” He hoped people facing jail, homelessness, learning difficulties or other setbacks could look at his trajectory and conclude that they did not need to be perfect in order to become successful.

Adams’s central leadership advice was to lead from the front rather than merely delegate difficult work downward. He compared leadership to generals entering battle alongside their troops rather than sending others into danger and asking afterward what happened.

He gave concrete examples of putting that principle into practice: personally sweeping garbage, entering the subway to speak with homeless people and responding to shooting scenes. He said direct exposure helps him understand what employees and residents face before he creates policy or directs others to act.

Adams criticized “armchair generals” who want authority without frontline experience. He said he expected to finish public service with figurative dents and scratches in his armor because he wanted to be directly engaged in difficult problems.

He cited Braveheart and Gladiator among his favorite films when explaining this leadership philosophy. The lesson he drew from them was that leaders should be visibly willing to share the risks they ask others to take.

When asked why he was willing to work across political divisions, Adams connected his answer to his uncle Joe, who died in Vietnam at age 19. Adams said his uncle served the country despite living during a period that was particularly difficult for African Americans.

Adams described himself as a “true blue Democrat,” blue-collar and strongly patriotic at the same time. He said that once a president is elected, the office represents the country regardless of whether that president belongs to his own party.

That patriotic framework was Adams’s explanation for working with people across party lines. He said he believed officials should reach “across the aisle” and within their own side when necessary to deliver results for working-class people.

Adams framed New York’s success as having significance beyond the city itself. He expressed the view that developments in New York can shape the wider country and therefore treated effective city government as part of a larger national responsibility.

His final advice to younger people was to “be you.” He said other people will continually try to shape what someone should become, but young people should listen to advice while keeping responsibility for their own final decisions.

Adams said he never stopped believing in himself despite moving through dyslexia, arrest, rejection and housing insecurity. His message was that difficult starting conditions do not dictate where someone must end up.

After his arrest, Adams’s mother gave him a sign bearing the word “impossible” and taught him to reinterpret it as “I’m possible.” He said he never forgot the exercise and encouraged young people to use the same phrase as a reminder not to accept other people’s limits for them.

Asked how he wanted to be remembered, Adams chose “compassionate, caring and committed.” He added that persistence was central to the legacy he wanted, saying he wanted the idea that “he never quits” associated with him even on his tombstone.

At the time of the interview, Adams said an election was approaching and that he looked forward to seeking reelection. He also said he would not ultimately judge himself solely by winning or losing but by what he believed God intended for his life.

Faith supplied his closing framework for uncertainty about his future. Adams used “GPS” as a religious metaphor—“God Positioning Satellite”—and ended with the message to “let go and let God.”