Feb. 3, 2022: What Eric Adams taught Joe Biden about the politics of crime

BREAKING OVERNIGHT — via AP’s Ghaith Alsayed, Lolita Baldor and Bassem Mroue: “U.S. special forces carried out what the Pentagon said was a large-scale counterterrorism raid in northwestern Syria early Thursday.” President Joe Biden travels to New York City today for a pair of events on crime policy with Mayor Eric Adams. Two years ago, if Democrats knew their next president would be meeting with an ex-cop mayor of New York at the NYPD’s Manhattan headquarters to discuss “historic levels of funding for cities and states to put more cops on the beat,” it would have been a big surprise. Low levels of crime combined with outrage over white police officers abusing and killing unarmed Black Americans sparked a fierce backlash against cops, especially among progressives, and birthed the “defund the police” movement, which was embraced by a surprisingly wide spectrum of Democrats. What happened to make it safe for Biden to reorient the Democratic Party’s positioning on crime? Subscribe to POLITICO Playbook. Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the Senior Producer of POLITICO Audio.