UPPER EAST SIDE, Manhattan (PIX11) The possibility of National Guard troops being deployed to New York City, much in the same way that they’ve been activated in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, has been suggested repeatedly by President Donald Trump, after he ordered the two other urban deployments. 

Mayor Eric Adams spoke about the possibility and why he and his top brass in law enforcement are advising the Trump administration against it, in an in-depth interview with affiliate PIX11 News on Tuesday. 

In the one-on-one interview at Gracie Mansion, the mayor said that his administration is pointing the White House to NYPD crime statistics that show a safe city whose record for keeping crime rates low has only grown stronger under his watch. 

“Our crime is the lowest it has been in decades, when you take out the two COVID years,” Mayor Adams said. “That’s real results.” 

“23,000 illegal guns removed from our streets,” he continued, listing other favorable crime stats. “First six months [of 2025], the lowest numbers of homicides and shootings in the recorded history of the city.” 

The mayor’s message is consistent with one his police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, shared with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi when the two of them reportedly met at police headquarters on Monday. There’s apparently a coordinated effort to prevent a federal armed forces deployment in the city.

Along those lines, said New York Governor Kathy Hochul — who has state authority to mobilize the New York National Guard — at a news conference on Tuesday in Harlem that she’d spoken with President Trump by phone “a few days ago.” In the call, she said, the two spoke about the idea of troops being deployed in the city. 

“I just said, ‘I’ll tell you what, Mr. President,'” Gov. Hochul said. “‘If I think I need help from the National Guard beyond what I’m already doing, I know where to find you.’”

It’s a mayoral election year, a fact that likely figured into the mayor’s increased media availability, including him freeing up his schedule for one-on-one interviews like the one he did with PIX11 News on Tuesday. 

Of the four major mayoral candidates — Adams, Zohran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, and Curtis Sliwa — only Sliwa, the sole Republican in the race, said that he supports having federal troops in the city. He cited a variety of high-profile crimes in New York, especially in the Bronx. On Tuesday alone, the NYPD responded to four shootings in the borough. 

“If they’re not going to bring more police to the Bronx,” said Sliwa in an interview on Tuesday, “why wouldn’t you want National Guardsmen stationed there?” 

In response to observations like that, Mayor Adams said, “Perception is sometimes stronger than reality.” 

Mayor Adams said that while crime does happen in New York City, the overall situation is one of strong crimefighting. 

“Our police officers, our PEP Parks Enforcement [Patrol] officers, our correction officers, our probation officers,” Adams said, “they all know how to do it in the City of New York.”

His comments were part of an in-depth, in-person interview on a wide variety of topics, including how he’s handling the criminal indictments of top members of his inner circle; the effects of resignations of high-ranking City Hall staff; and how he intends to overcome his last-place position in every poll and pull off a re-election win, against the odds.