Mayor Eric Adams revealed Monday that a relative called him over the weekend to say she overheard some men plotting a shooting — and that both then alerted 911, prompting cops to rush to the scene.
At an unrelated press conference in Brooklyn, Adams was asked about a report claiming his sister had seen a trio of men suspiciously wearing hooded sweatshirts Sunday — when temperatures reached the mid-70s — at the ferry terminal at West 39th Street and 12th Avenue in Manhattan and heard one of them say something like, “Don’t shoot until you get inside.”
“A family member was at the ferry [terminal], and we were going to pick her up, I was en route to pick her up,” Adams recalled. “And while she was waiting, three men walked in with hoodies on.
“And yesterday was very hot, and they had hoodies on. And she overheard one of them state something to the tune of, ‘Don’t shoot until you get inside.’ ”
Adams said he told his kin to dial 911, before also doing so himself.
“She called me, I said immediately, ‘Call 911,’ and I got on the phone and called 911 to make sure they got the call,” he told reporters.
The mayor, a retired NYPD captain, then went to the scene, and cops surveyed the area.
“When we got to the ferry, my security team and I went to the boat and said, ‘Don’t let the boats move out.’ Police responded and did a canvass of the area, and now they’re going to continue the investigation,” Adams told reporters.
An NYPD rep told The Post on Monday that police responded to Pier 79 near West 39th Street and 12th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen about 3 p.m. Sunday after a caller said there was “a group of four unknown males” who were in the waiting room for a New York water taxi. The caller claimed she overheard the group discussing a shooting, cops said.
When cops got to the scene, no one fitting Adams’ relative’s description of the group of men was there.
It was unclear which of Adams’ female relatives saw the suspicious behavior. A news outlet reported Monday morning that it was one of the mayor’s sisters, but a City Hall spokesman insisted a different relative notified him of the suspicious activity, without specifying her identity.
During the news conference, Adams commended his kin for keeping her head on a swivel, citing her actions as a model for Big Apple residents.
“I want to thank my family member. They listened. ‘See something, say something,’ do something. Nothing would have been worse than if someone would have gotten on that boat and something would have happened to innocent people,” he said.
“And that’s what we encourage New Yorkers to do, and I feel great that at Thanksgiving, when I drill it in the heads of my family members, that they did that.”
Sunday afternoon was not the first time Adams has dialed 911 since taking office Jan. 1.
While riding the subway to City Hall on his first day as mayor, the former transit cop alerted authorities to three men fighting on the street as he stood on the platform of the Kosciuszko Street J train station in Brooklyn.
Adams told the dispatcher, “I have an assault in progress of three males.”
Two squad cars arrived as the men who were fighting were getting into a car. The officers left without questioning anyone — a decision Adams criticized several days later.
“The officers, I believe, should have stopped, carried out a more thorough investigation, interview people at the scene,” Adams told PIX 11 at the time. “I don’t believe they did that properly.”
Additional reporting by Tina Moore, Bernadette Hogan and Oumou Fofana