Eric Adams offers few details after NYC ‘criminal justice summit’ with DAs

Mayor Eric Adams on Sunday touted to the media his two-day “mayoral summit on criminal justice’’ that he just held with city district attorneys — but fuggedabout him offering any major details.

Aside from downplaying the role that the state’s controversial bail-reform laws may have on rising city crime, Hizzoner and his team threw around terms such as “infrastructure’’ and “urgent action items,’’ which left more questions than answers.

“We’re having an issue around the infrastructure of our criminal-justice system,” Adams told reporters during a conference call, referring to the discussions between his office and district attorneys, law enforcement agencies, judges and advocates over the weekend. “This antiquated infrastructure is impacting on the ability of New Yorkers seeking justice on both ends of the spectrum.”

City Hall plans to form working groups with the various participating entities to focus on pre-trial discovery, mental health and “urgent action items,” officials said.

But Adams provided few details about what the criminal-justice system exactly needs to change, other than his wish to create a “centralized portal” for pre-trial discovery and to reduce the amount of time defendants spend waiting for their comparatively brief trials.

Officials also hope to introduce what they called “care vans” to greet defendants as they come out of their first court appearances and offer them mental-health resources, Chief Counsel to the Mayor and City Hall Brendan McGuire said.

“We’re obviously just coming out of this, and so we’re still formulating the list of urgent action items,” McGuire told reporters.

City Hall held the summit just two days after the mayor blamed the news media for fueling a “narrative” that New York City and its massive subway system are unsafe. Violent crime was up 39% in August citywide compared to 2019, according to NYPD.

Yet Hizzoner on Sunday downplayed the role of bail reform in the city’s crisis of crime and recidivism, echoing comments from earlier in the weekend that there are “many rivers in the sea of violence.

“Any time we engage in this conversation around the criminal justice system, people highlight one term, and that is ‘bail reform,’ ” the mayor said.

“There are so many other aspects of the justice system that we were able to talk through and discuss.”