Amid a recent surge in headline-grabbing subway violence, Gov. Kathy Hochul vowed on Friday to take action to make it easier for authorities to involuntarily hospitalize severely mentally ill individuals often linked to such incidents.
In a statement, the governor announced plans to include legislation in her Executive Budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year aimed at expanding the state’s criteria for involuntary hospitalization. However, details on the specific changes she seeks remain unclear. Currently, the law allows authorities to commit individuals whose mental illness poses a “risk of serious harm” to themselves or others.
Hochul’s statement comes in response to several recent acts of violence on the subway, including a woman who was set on fire and burnt alive early last week, and a man pushed onto the tracks as a train entered a Manhattan station on Tuesday. She attributed many of these incidents to the prevalence of untreated mental illness.
“The recent surge in violent crimes in our public transit system cannot continue — and we need to tackle this crisis head-on,” Hochul said. “We have a duty to protect the public from random acts of violence, and the only fair and compassionate thing to do is to get our fellow New Yorkers the help they need.”
Mayor Eric Adams, who has been pushing for the changes Hochul proposed since late 2022, lauded her announcement in a Friday statement.
“We are exceptionally grateful to Governor Hochul for listening to our calls and to the calls of everyday New Yorkers, and we look forward to working with her to develop next steps to finally codify these changes into law,” Adams said. “There is no dignity in withering away on the streets without the ability to help yourself, and there is no moral superiority in just walking by those individuals and doing nothing.”
Hochul and Adams have both pursued a variety of strategies to stem violence on the subways, including surging additional cops into the system, adding state police and National Guard troops to patrol certain stations, and equipping subway cars with surveillance cameras. But even with all of those actions, violent incidents on the subways have persisted.
For the past two years, the mayor has advocated for legislation — known as the Supportive Interventions Act — that would essentially do what Hochul proposed. Passing the legislation, Adams said earlier this week, is his top priority in the new state legislative session.
To codify the changes they are seeking into law, Hochul and Adams will need to persuade state lawmakers, who have so far resisted expanding involuntary removals.
Civil liberties groups and homeless advocates have also been critical of expanding involuntary hospitalizations.
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a Friday statement that forcefully hospitalizing more mentally ill people will not make New Yorkers any safer.
“The governor is right that the status quo response to homelessness and serious mental health issues is untenable,” Lieberman said. “But the change we need is not simply to lock more people away, especially those who pose no immediate threat to themselves or others.”
Instead, she said, the state should focus on fixing the broken mental health care system that people come into contact with after they are committed.
“The real problem is there are not nearly enough mental health care resources available, especially for those who need them the most, including people subject to involuntary commitment,” Lieberman said. “Further criminalizing people with mental health issues, who are themselves 11 times more likely to be the victim of crimes, will not improve care or our housing shortage.”
Read More: https://www.amny.com/politics/
