Bernard Adams

Of Eric Adams’s five siblings, the mayor appears to be the closest to Bernard, his younger brother who calls the mayor his “role model” and joked at his election night party that they are “twins separated at birth.” Another similarity:both of them were in the NYPD, Bernard for 20 years (though he doesn’t list his tenure with New York’s Finest on his LinkedIn). Bernard even told the New York Daily News that when he had doubts about his choice to join the NYPD, Eric walked with him on one of his first nights on the beat.

After being elected, Eric compelled Bernard to leave Virginia—where he and his wife, Sharon, moved after Bernard’s 2006 retirement from the NYPD—and his job as a university parking administrator. Back in New York City Eric had a job lined up for his baby bro. 

Days into the mayor’s tenure, the New York Post reported that even before he took office,  the mayor-elect had tapped Bernard to be the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for governmental affairs, which would put him in charge of not only his brother’s security detail, but that of other elected officials. The Post noted that the role typically comes with a cushy annual salary of around $242,000. Shortly after this act of nepotism was publicly revealed, City officials then said that actually, Bernard wasn’t a deputy commissioner, but the NYPD’s “executive director of mayoral security,” and that his salary would be $210,000. 

“Personal security—my life, my life—I want in the hands of my brother with his 20-year law enforcement experience,” the mayor said at the time. “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.”

Unsurprisingly, the City’s Conflicts of Interest Board, whom the mayor had neglected to notify of his intention to appoint his brother, quickly shot that idea down, forcing Bernard to instead take a job as a “special adviser for mayoral security” with a salary of just $1. No City officials would report to him, and he’d have no command over NYPD officers. After about a year of working for his brother, Bernard stepped down.

In an interview with PIX11 News, responding to criticisms that this sequence of events demonstrated “stunning nepotism,” as Reinvent Albany’s John Kaehny put it, Bernard said he didn’t “listen to the noise.” He told PIX11 that he was moving on from his $1-a-year job because he had hand-selected Eric’s security detail andwas satisfied that his brother was in safe hands. Maybe he was just tired. “Working with the mayor is a 24-hour job,” Bernard said. 

End of story, back to Virginia for Bernard, right? Nope. A week after he stepped down, his wife Sharon was appointed to a $150,000 job as a “special initiative specialist” at the Department of Education. On that same day, she left her position as a teacher in the Richmond Public Schools system in Virginia, a job that paid her under $73,000, according to a Richmond official who spoke to the CITY. DOE spokesperson Nathaniel Styer told Chalkbeat Sharon’s new role involved “training and coaching school staff on systems meant to support students academically and emotionally.” 

Styer added that Sharon applied for the job and was interviewed among other candidates, noting that she “exceeds the qualifications for this role, and immediately added value to a critical team that supports schools.”

So, what did Bernard get up to after leaving City government? It’s unclear (he didn’t respond to our messages, and the DOE didn’t respond to our questions about Sharon) but in Virginia, both he and Sharon got involved with LegalShield, a multilevel marketing company that provides prepaid legal services and identity theft protection, so maybe they fell back on that. Their performance with LegalShield earned them a spot in the MLM’s “Performance Club,” and in LegalShield’s “BMW Program,” an “incentive program designed to reward associates who continually and consistently produce a quality book of business.” (In the program, one isn’t given a BMW, but rather, a monthly $500  “Performance Club bonus” one can use to buy or lease a BMW.)

Fabian Taylor, a parking officer supervised by Bernard, told Hell Gate in a phone call that at VCU, Bernard got Taylor involved with LegalShield. “He was an awesome guy. He was an awesome supervisor,” Taylor said. “And that’s why, when he told me about the opportunity with LegalShield, I trusted him. And he was right, it worked out pretty well for us.” 

Taylor told us he couldn’t say how many other people Bernard recruited to LegalShield, but said he “went on a few vacations because of it” and “ended up getting a free BMW out of it.” 

“It was super awesome. He helped me out a lot,” Taylor said. “He let me drive his BMW before I got mine. I can’t say anything bad about him.”

It’s clear the city never truly left Bernard’s heart, though. In the spring 2024, Bernard returned to public life in New York City, ready to put his brief time in the Adams administration behind him. But he’s still apparently eager to capitalize on his brother’s name—Bernard’s latest venture is the nonprofit Angels Helpers NYC, a group with the goal of “providing New York City’s youth with access to arts and culture” that he founded with the philanthropist Alisa Roever, a former model who parties with the Trump family and hobnobs at some of the mayor’s favorite hotspots, like Zero Bond and Osteria La Baia.

Roever told the New York Times that she and Bernard met at the Noel Shoe Museum Gala at the Metropolitan Club in October 2023, and that they “connected on a passion to help people in need.” Bernard’s contribution to that event? He apparently donated a pair of his brother Eric’s shoes.

That passion is evident in the salary that Bernard is receiving from Angels Helpers, which the New York Daily News noted is a paltry $10,000. In their article about Bernard’s new gig, the Times wrote that “his leadership role raises the potential that donors to the mayor’s campaign, which is currently the subject of a federal criminal investigation, will contribute to the organization as a way to curry favor with him.” If those suspicions strike you as a little overblown, consider that the Daily News found that Angels Helpers’s very first fundraiser was attended by several people who also donated to Eric Adams’s legal defense and campaign funds, like the high-powered lawyer Jeff Sklar and hedge fund manager Barry Feirstein, and that the nonprofit’s second event was originally supposed to happen at Osteria La Baia, owned by the long-time allies of Adams, the Petrosyants twins. It ended up at the Harmonie Club, and was hosted by Anna Zaiachkivska, Miss World Ukraine, “who ensured the evening flowed smoothly and memorably” according to the Angels Helpers website. It also included what Angels Helpers’s Instagram account called a “powerful speech” by big bro, Mayor Adams. More recently, Bernard even auctioned off a dinner with Eric at an Angels Helpers fundraiser in the Hamptons.

In the spring of 2024, as reporters looked into the sexual harassment allegations against Timothy Pearson by an NYPD sergeant, they found Bernard in the mix—he was mentioned by Pearson in a tape obtained by the New York Daily News as someone playing peacemaker between Pearson and the sergeant’s supervisor, who had protected the sergeant from Pearson’s retaliation. “He came out and talked to him directly, Bernard, came out and talked to him direct,” Pearson said in a recording from April 2023, adding, “He told him what he had to do to rectify this, and he chose not to do it.” Exactly why Bernard, who officially stepped down from his role as his brother’s head of security at the end of February 2023, would intervene in an NYPD matter is unclear. 

Last updated: 9/17/24 by Hell Gate