Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is running for mayor of New York City, the Democrat announced Wednesday, joining an already crowded field of candidates for the 2021 election.

Adams, who entered politics after a two-decade career as a police officer, announced his candidacy in a  video posted overnight.

"Whether it's the pandemic or violence in our streets we don't feel safe, and too often city government makes things worse with inefficiency that leads to inequality and holds our people back," the 60-year-old Adams says in the video, in which he also describes being victimized by police brutality in his youth and joining the police in order to fight for reforms from the inside.

Adams served as a New York state senator from 2007 to 2013 and has been Brooklyn borough president since Jan. 1, 2014.

If elected, Adams would be the city's second Black mayor. Other candidates who have announced they are running for the Democratic primary to succeed the term-limited Mayor Bill de Blasio include City Comptroller Scott Stringer, civil rights lawyer and former MSNBC legal analyst Maya Wiley, former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, and former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan.