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Governor of New York. Kathy Hochula Democrat, wants to expand state involuntary commitment laws to allow hospitals to force more people with mental health problems into treatment.
This is in response to a series of violent crimes in the New York City subway system.
Hochul said Friday she plans to introduce legislation during the upcoming legislative session to change mental health care laws to address the recent surge Violent crime in the subway.
“Many of these horrific incidents have involved people with severe, untreated mental illnesses that result from a lack of treatment for people living on the streets who do not have access to our mental health system,” the governor said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to expand the state’s involuntary commitment laws to allow hospitals to force more people with mental health problems into treatment. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)
“We have a duty to protect the public from random acts of violence, and the only fair and compassionate thing to do is to give our fellow New Yorkers the help they need,” she continued.
Mental health experts say most people with mental illness are not violent and are far more likely to become victims of a violent crime than to commit a violent crime.
The governor did not specify what her legislation would change.
“Currently, hospitals can admit people whose mental illness puts themselves or others at risk of serious harm, and this legislation will expand that definition to ensure more people receive the care they need,” she said.
Hochul also said she would introduce another bill to improve the process by which courts can order people to receive supervised outpatient treatment for mental illness and to make it easier for people to voluntarily sign up for that treatment.
Police officers patrol Platform F of the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station on Thursday, December 26, 2024 in New York. (AP)
The governor said she is “deeply grateful” to law enforcement who “fight to keep our subways safe” every day. But she said, “We cannot completely solve this problem without changing state laws.”
“Public safety is my top priority and I will do everything in my power to keep New Yorkers safe,” she said.
State law currently allows police to force people to be taken to hospitals for evaluation if they appear to be suffering from a mental illness and their behavior creates a risk of physical harm to themselves or others. Psychiatrists must then decide whether patients need to be involuntarily hospitalized.
New York Civil Liberties Union executive director Donna Lieberman said the call to send more people into involuntary housing “does not make us safer, it distracts us from addressing the roots of our problems, and it threatens the rights and freedoms of people.” New Yorkers.”
Hochul’s statement follows a series of violent crimes on New York City’s subways, including an incident on New Year’s Eve when a man pushed another man onto the subway tracks in front of an incoming train, and on Christmas Eve when a man slashed two people with a knife at Manhattan’s Grand Central subway station and on Dec. 22 when a suspect set fire to and burned a sleeping woman.
Police investigate at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn after a woman aboard a subway car was set on fire and died on December 22, 2024 in New York, USA. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The medical history of the suspects in those three incidents was not immediately clear, but New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, said the man accused of the Grand Central stabbing had a history of mental illness and the father of the suspect The man who pushed a man onto the tracks told the New York Times that he had worried about his son’s mental health in the weeks before the incident.
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Adams has spent the last few years pushing for it state legislation to expand mental health care laws and has previously supported a policy that would allow hospitals to involuntarily commit a person who is unable to meet their own basic needs for food, clothing, shelter or medical care.
“Denying a person life-saving mental health care because their mental illness prevents them from recognizing their urgent need for it is an unacceptable abdication of our moral responsibility,” the mayor said in a statement following Hochul’s announcement.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
