NYC Mayor Eric Adams Apologizes For Calling White Cops ‘Crackers’

New York Mayor Eric Adams apologized Friday for calling white police officers “crackers” at a 2019 event.

“I definitely apologize. Inappropriate, inappropriate comments should not have been used,” Adams said of the racist term he had used, according to the New York Daily News.

“I apologize not only to those who heard it, but to New Yorkers because they should expect more from me. That was inappropriate,” he explained at a City Hall news conference.

Adams told a Harlem business group as he was preparing to kick off a campaign for mayor: “Every day in the police department, I kicked those crackers’ ass.” The comments, captured on video, were first reported early Friday in the Daily News.

Adams, who served in the New York Police Department for 22 years and retired as a captain in 2006, was boasting about how he excelled amid colleagues, the Daily News reported.

“Man, I was unbelievable in the police department with 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement,” he said on the video, referring to a police advocacy group he co-founded in the 1990s. “Became a sergeant, a lieutenant and a captain.”

He claimed Friday that he was quoting the epithet in his response to a question from someone who was using the same slur.

“Someone asked me a question using that comment and playing on that word. I responded in that comment, but clearly these comments should not have been used,” Adams explained, according to the Daily News.

“My fight in the police department was fighting racism throughout my entire journey,” he said Friday, according to Politico. “I was serious about fighting against that and that is what was attached to the question that was asked.”

Patrick Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association union, told the Daily News that he had talked with Adams about the video. Lynch cautioned against a “rush to outrage.”

“Whenever a controversial video of a police officer surfaces online, we ask for fairness instead of a rush to outrage,” he said in a statement.

“We have spent far too many hours together in hospital emergency rooms these past few weeks, and we’ve worked together for decades before that,” Lynch added. “A few seconds of video will not define our relationship. We have a lot of work to do together to support our members on the streets.”