Eric Adams Cuts His Brother’s Duties After Giving Him Top Police Job

When Mayor Eric Adams named a Virginia parking administrator and retired police sergeant to a top position in the New York Police Department, he said the man had one qualification that no one else there possessed: He was the mayor’s brother.

Bernard Adams, 56, a former police sergeant who retired from the force in 2006 after 20 years, has been given one of the most sensitive, elite jobs in city government: overseeing the unit that will protect the mayor’s physical safety.

As a community affairs sergeant, Mr. Adams helped support the security effort at various big events, including the U.S. Open, city officials said. His most recent job was at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where he worked in parking administration.

The mayor, who said on Sunday that white supremacy and “anarchists” are on the rise, suggested that he can trust no one in the Police Department as much as he can his own kin.

“Personal security — my life, my life — I want in the hands of my brother with his 20-year law enforcement experience,” Mr. Adams said. “He has the police experience, but he also has the personal experience. He knows his brother, and he’s going to keep his brother safe.”

The mayor’s fund-raising methods have, in the past, tested the boundaries of campaign-finance and law, and the hiring has amplified concerns that Mayor Adams pays too little heed to ethics.

New York City law prohibits public servants from using, or attempting to use, their position “to obtain any financial gain,” for themselves or close associates, including siblings.

That provision, city officials note, is not ironclad. The law allows for the hiring of siblings if the Conflicts of Interest Board determines that the “position would not be in conflict with the purposes and interests of the city.”

Bernard Adams started work on Dec. 30, before his brother was sworn in as mayor, city officials said. The Adams administration, however, did not begin the process of seeking approval from the Conflicts of Interest Board until Jan. 7, city officials said, when Bernard Adams’s hiring was first reported by The New York Post.

That same day, Philip Banks III, an unindicted co-conspirator in a public corruption case, announced his own hiring as Mr. Adams’s deputy mayor for public safety in an opinion piece in The Daily News.

“This does appear to be a serious problem,” said Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School and the former chair of the Conflicts of Interest Board. “A public servant, which includes the mayor, can’t use his position as mayor to obtain a financial gain for a sibling.”

City Hall officials have yet to determine their course of action, should the conflicts board deny their request for approval. It is not unheard-of for mayors to flout the board’s advice.

Initial reports said that Bernard Adams would serve as a deputy commissioner, a role that typically comes with a salary of about $240,000. Mayor Adams said on Sunday that his brother would be responsible for other elected officials’ security, too.

But city officials on Tuesday said that Bernard Adams’s actual title will be executive director of mayoral security. They could not say whether the title had existed before. Mr. Adams will only oversee his brother’s security, officials said. They did not explain why the position had apparently been downgraded, but added that his salary was $210,000.

Mr. Adams will not receive any pension payments from his prior service while serving in his new role; for that to happen, the administration would have to show that no one else was qualified to serve in the position, City Hall officials said. Nor, they said, will he oversee other officials’ police details.

It remains unclear what experience Mr. Adams has that would make him particularly well equipped to protect the mayor — beyond the fact that they are brothers — during a time that Mayor Adams and his aides describe as particularly perilous for public officials.

Indeed, the mayor’s selection of his brother seems to underscore his apparent distrust of the Police Department, which he often rallied against as a police officer and activist against police abuses in the 1990s. He has publicly suggested that a police officer might have shot out his car’s rear window in 1996.

City Hall officials did not make Bernard Adams available for comment; attempts to reach him directly were unsuccessful.

Other mayors have appointed family to high-level government positions, though historians struggled to come up with a recent precedent where those positions were paid. Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appointed his sister, Marjorie Tiven, as commissioner for the United Nations, Consular Corps and Protocol. She did not receive a salary.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed his wife, Chirlane McCray, to run the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City. She also ran ThriveNYC, the mayor’s mental health care initiative. She did not receive a salary, thanks to nepotism rules that her husband publicly lamented.

Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani also drew criticism for placing a handful of relatives on the city’s payroll, though none held high-level positions.

“Many mayors have had family members as close political advisers,” said Jonathan Soffer, a professor of urban history at the N.Y.U. Tandon School of Engineering, citing mayors going back to Robert Wagner in the 1950s. “But none of those people ever had paid positions.”

Mayor Adams and his brother appear to be close. In an October interview, Bernard Adams recalled his older brother’s shielding him from the precariousness of their impoverished childhood.

“Being the younger child, it wasn’t my responsibility to provide for my older brothers and sisters,” Mr. Adams said. “Eric and my older brother Conrad, they kind of took that responsibility on.”

On Oct. 31, Bernard Adams told his neighbor in Mechanicsville, Va., outside of Richmond, that if his brother won the election, he would be in New York City to support him. On election night, Bernard Adams introduced the mayor-elect.

Mr. Adams graduated in 1992 with a Bachelor of Science in criminal justice from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. During his years at the Police Department, he rose to the rank of sergeant, overseeing a staff of more than 40 as commanding officer of community affairs for Queens North.

During his 13-year tenure at Virginia Commonwealth University, Mr. Adams “did not provide executive protection services,” Thomas Gresham, a university spokesman, said. His most recent position there was as assistant director for parking at one of the university’s two main campuses.

A current job posting for that position, at the university’s health campus, the Medical College of Virginia, says its responsibilities include “proactively identifying and resolving issues related to both parking and transportation on the M.C.V. campus.” The job also calls for overseeing “the enforcement operation and Operations Center on the M.C.V. campus.” The position does not require its occupant to carry a weapon.

Mr. Gresham said the job entails, among other responsibilities, “the enforcement of the university’s parking rules and regulations.”

Keith Taylor, a former undercover narcotics detective and then detective sergeant who supervised an Emergency Service Unit at the New York Police Department, described the mayor’s protective detail as an “elite” assignment often given to veterans of emergency service units and detective bureaus.

“It’s as much an art as it is a science, because you want someone who is able to handle high-stress situations with a level of professionalism and actionable intelligence,” said Mr. Taylor, who now teaches at John Jay College.

The Police Department offers training for executive protection positions, which Mr. Taylor recalled as lasting three to five days. City officials said Bernard Adams has received that training. They did not specify when.

Reporting was contributed by Jeffery C. Mays and Emma G. Fitzsimmons in New York City, and Leah Small in Richmond, Va.