By Elizabeth Keogh
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Mayor Adams stopped by the beleaguered Rikers Island jail complex on Thanksgiving, he said on social media.
The trip followed appearances by Hizzoner at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the National Action Network headquarters in Harlem on Thursday.
“I wanted to visit the inmates and engage in a conversation to tell them that where they are is not who they are,” Adams said in a video posted on Twitter. “It’s about re-engaging themselves, learning from whatever placed them here in the first place and coming out with the desire not to return.”
https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/1595954261422374912?s=20&t=qwiB6XrHrIZpsYg4fwrazA
Adams also thanked the “under-appreciated” correction officers who were spending their holiday at the troubled jail complex.
“It’s a very difficult job dealing with some of the most violent offenders in this city, but they do it everyday,” the mayor said.
In a video shot at the Thanksgiving Day Parade in the morning, he said he planned to break bread with a detainee and her newborn baby at the jail.
The circumstances of the woman and her child were not provided, and a mayoral spokesman declined to provide the Daily News with details about the visit.
“No matter what an individual does in their lives, we need to treat people in a humane way,” Adams said on Twitter.
Eighteen inmates have died in NYC jail custody so far this year, the most recent fatality occurring Oct. 31. Still, the mayor has resisted calls for the feds to take over the jail.
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