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(Bloomberg) — New York City “will not be controlled by crises,” Eric Adams declared in his first speech as the city’s 110th mayor, during a frenetic first day in which he visited a police officer hit by gunfire and dialed 911 after witnessing a fight from the subway.

In a brief but optimistic address shortly after noon, Adams pledged to unite New Yorkers and root out waste and inefficiency, all while overcoming a resurgent Covid-19 outbreak that’s hitting the city hardest in the state.  

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Adams was sworn in just after midnight on Saturday morning in Times Square, seizing on one of New York’s most iconic events, the annual New Year’s Eve ball drop. He said he wanted to remind “New Yorkers and the world” that “despite Covid-19 and its persistence, New York is not closed.” 

“It’s still open and alive, because New York is more resilient than the pandemic,” said Adams, the city’s second Black mayor. 

But the scope of the challenges Adams faces became clear within just hours of his taking office. The first meeting of his cabinet focused heavily on the city’s viral outbreak, with an average of 22,000 new cases recorded each day the past week. Later the state reported a record 85,476 daily infections. 

View From Subway

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Early Saturday morning, as he prepared to board a subway train in Brooklyn to make his first official trip to City Hall in lower Manhattan, Adams saw a fight taking place on the street below the platform and called 911. Police officers drove by, but didn’t intervene. 

On the train, Adams encountered an apparently intoxicated man and another sleeping on a bench. 

A few hours later, shortly after Adams delivered his brief inaugural speech, the mayor’s planned schedule was derailed by news that a police officer had been shot and injured, a symbol of the city’s growing gun violence problem. Adams and the new police commissioner Keechant Sewell visited the officer at a hospital in upper Manhattan. 

Addressing reporters outside the hospital, Adams said he wanted to send a “clear message” that “this is not a city of disorder, a city of violence.” 

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“I want to tell our police officers, we have their backs,” he said at yet another press conference, outside a police precinct in Jamaica, Queens. “We are establishing a covenant where we will give them the tools that they need but we are also going to hold them to a high standard.”

‘Radically Practical’

The new mayor suggested a sharp break in tone from his predecessor Bill de Blasio, even though Adams retained many current officials, including, for the time being, the city’s health commissioner, Dave Chokshi; the city’s budget director, Jacques Jiha; and the city’s former Covid recovery czar, Lorraine Grillo, whom Adams appointed his first deputy mayor.

De Blasio took office eight years ago on a sweeping promise to “end the tale of two cities,” pledging “transformational” and “transcendent” changes. Adams said his administration would focus its first 100 days on the theme of “get stuff done.” 

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“Now is the time to be radically practical,” Adams said. 

Adams promised to reach out to businesses and focus on rooting out waste and inefficiency in city government. He said that for many years “New York’s government struggled to match the energy and innovation of New Yorkers. That changes today.” 

Adams’ short speech Saturday, delivered from the Blue Room at City Hall, wasn’t part of the original inaugural plan. Less than a month ago, he said he’d be sworn in at Brooklyn’s Kings Theater, before a crowd of 3,000 people. But the surge of Covid cases driven by the omicron variant foiled those plans. 

‘Live Our Lives’

The Times Square swearing-in was just the first of several pieces of political theater during Adams’ first hours in office. 

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His packed schedule, with events that began before 8 a.m. and spanned three boroughs, was also a departure in style from the de Blasio era. The former mayor had a reputation for arriving at City Hall after 10 a.m. and rarely used public transit. Adams also traveled with a smaller, less visible security detail than de Blasio’s. 

“It’s not only again substantive but it’s symbolic,” Adams told reporters later Saturday afternoon, adding that lighter security would show New Yorkers the city is safe. 

“I just take walks sometimes,” he said. “I don’t want to live in a bubble. I want to enjoy my city the way I always enjoyed it.”

Adams takes office at a time of uncertainty, where more than 35,000 residents have died from causes related to Covid-19, and almost two years of closures still threaten the once-thriving tourism economy and commercial districts. The city’s unemployment rate, 9%, is the highest since 2013. 

Even as the omicron variant overwhelms the city, Adams said New Yorkers needed to be less fearful, for the economy and their own mental health. 

“We have to really be careful of the hysteria that many people are feeling,” Adams said. “We’re not doing what the southern states are doing which is totally disregard Covid.” 

“We’re saying let’s be smart and practical, but we have to live our lives.”

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