Crash that killed 7-year-old boy highlights Adams' shaky street safety record in Fort Greene

In September 2021, Eric Adams, who was Brooklyn's borough president at the time, stood at the intersection in Clinton Hill where a 3-month-old girl had been killed by a wrong-way driver and declared he was fed up with young New Yorkers dying in car crashes.

“We're tired of comforting parents experiencing their worst nightmare. We're tired of reading new reports about yet another child lost to vehicle crashes," Adams said at the time. He later called for a “holistic rethinking of our streetscape to stop this carnage” in a press release.

Adams was elected mayor two months later. Now, residents and activists are criticizing his administration for its approach to street safety. An NYPD tow truck driver allegedly ran over 7-year-old Kamari Hughes in Fort Greene on Oct. 26 – just 10 blocks away from the 2021 crash.

Residents of both neighborhoods tell Gothamist that two years into the Adams administration, the streets feel as dangerous as they’ve ever been.

“If anything, it's worse,” Prospect Heights resident Enrico Cullen, 53, told Gothamist as he dropped his son off at school, just a block away from where Hughes was killed.

Adams’ time in office has been marked by a series of street safety controversies around Clinton Hill and Fort Greene.

In September, the administration recommended the termination of the city’s Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program, which seized the cars of drivers who rack up a high number of red light or speed camera tickets. It marked a reversal from Adams’ position as Brooklyn borough president in 2021, when he said the program could have impounded the car driven by the man who killed 3-month-old Apolline Mong-Guillemin at the corner of Vanderbilt and Gates avenues.

Shortly after Adams took office in January 2022, the Department of Transportation removed barriers creating a car-free “Open Street” on Willoughby Avenue through Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. It soon emerged that the order – which was reversed within hours – came from City Hall.

More recently, street safety advocates have expressed outrage that a long-planned bike lane on Ashland Place in Fort Greene abruptly stops at Lafayette Avenue. Streetsblog reported that the Adams administration abandoned plans to continue the bike lane a block south after opposition from luxury developer Two Trees Management, which owns a building on the street.

Clinton Hill resident Cora Goldfarb, 47, said enforcement of speeding in her neighborhood has been less strict since Adams took office — and blamed the mayor for not deploying enough crossing guards in the area.

“I just feel like there's just not enough care and I don't feel like the mayor cares at all about any of this stuff,” Goldfarb said. “He just doesn't care about people.”

Adams chose not to fill 483 vacant crossing guard positions last year as a cost-cutting measure, NYPD spokesperson Al Baker told the Daily News.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson, who represents the area, wrote in an email to her constituents last Saturday that her local police precinct tells her “we have a long waiting list and not enough crossing guards” any time she requests that new safety agents be deployed in her district.

At an unrelated press conference this week, Adams noted that the city has already redesigned 1,000 streets. Meera Joshi, the deputy mayor for operations, added that the city changed the crosswalk light at Myrtle and North Portland avenues after last week's fatal crash so pedestrians can cross a few seconds before vehicles get the green light.

“I've said this last week and I'm going to continue to say it. People want to reinvent my history. I have a long history on street safety and I'm going to continue to advocate for that,” Adams said. “And so we're not ‘starting’ to do things about making our streets safe, we have been doing that, and we're going to continue to do that.”

But for two years, Adams has fallen short of goals mandated by the City Council for the construction of new protected bike lanes and bus lanes. Cycling deaths are at their highest since Vision Zero launched in 2014.

The Department of Transportation emphasizes that the number of overall pedestrian fatalities is on track to be at its lowest in 114 years. But Hughes was the second child killed by a driver this year; in February, 7-year-old Dolma Naadhun was fatally run over by an SUV driver in Astoria, Queens.

On Wednesday, there were two crossing guards stationed on the corner of Myrtle and North Portland avenues, where Kamari was killed.

Plans to improve visibility for drivers by reducing space for parked cars near the intersection – a redesign known as “daylighting” — are in the works.

“One pedestrian lost to traffic violence is too many, and that is why we are using every tool in our toolbox – including daylighting – to make our streets safer,” Department of Transportation spokesperson Vin Barone wrote in a statement.

Barone noted the city has “daylit” 299 intersections since Adams took office. The City Council passed legislation this year that requires the DOT to daylight 100 intersections a year, starting in 2025.

That type of redesign has also since been implemented at the Clinton HIll intersection where Mong-Guillemin was killed in 2021.

But Katie Dranof, 37, who lives in a building at the scene of the 2021 crash, said the intersection remains dangerous.

She spoke to Gothamist after dropping off her 3-year-old daughter at a nearby nursery school. A plaque marks where Mong-Guillemin was killed.

“I feel like this intersection is cursed,” she said. “I personally don't feel safe walking around here.”