Governor of New York Cathy Hochula Democrat, is looking to expand the state's involuntary commitment laws to allow hospitals to force more people with mental health problems into treatment.
This comes in response to a series of violent crimes in the New York City subway system.
Hochul said on Friday that she wants to introduce legislation during the next legislative session to amend mental health care laws to address the recent increase in the number of cases of the disease. Violent crimes In the subway.
“Many of these horrific incidents involved people suffering from serious, untreated mental illnesses, as a result of the failure to provide treatment to people living on the streets and disconnected from our mental health care system,” the governor said.
Hochul's Christmas boast of a safer subway came amid a disturbing series of violent attacks
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 Lambarski/Getty Images)
“We have a duty to protect the public from random acts of violence, and the only fair and compassionate thing we can do is provide our fellow New Yorkers with the help they need,” she continued.
Mental health experts say that most people with mental illness are not violent, and are much more likely to be victims of a violent crime than to commit a violent crime.
The governor did not provide details about what her legislation would change.
“Currently, hospitals are able to commit individuals whose mental illness puts themselves or others at risk of serious harm, and this legislation will expand that definition to ensure more people get 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 undergo assisted outpatient treatments for mental illness and make it easier for people to voluntarily sign up for those treatments.
Police officers patrol the F train platform at the Coney Island-Stilwell Avenue station, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024, in New York. (AP)
The governor said she is “extremely grateful” to law enforcement who “fight every day to keep our subways safe.” But she said, “We cannot fully address this issue without making changes to state law.”
“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 take people to hospitals for evaluation if they appear to be suffering from mental illness and their behavior poses a risk of physical harm to themselves or others. Psychiatrists must then determine whether patients need to be involuntarily hospitalized.
Requiring more people to be placed in involuntary commitment “doesn't make us safer, it distracts us from addressing the roots of our problems, and threatens the rights and freedoms of New Yorkers,” said New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman.
Hochul's statement comes after a series of violent crimes on the New York City subways, including an incident on New Year's Eve when a man pushed another man on the subway tracks before an oncoming train, and on Christmas Eve when a man stabbed two people with a knife in a subway station. Grand Central Tunnels in Manhattan, and on December 22, when a suspect set a sleeping woman on fire and burned her to death.
Police investigate the Coney Island-Stilwell Avenue station in Brooklyn after a woman on a subway car was set on fire and died in New York, United States on December 22, 2024. (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 knife attack has a history of mental illness and the suspect's father. The man who pushed a man onto the tracks told the New York Times that he became concerned about his son's mental health in the weeks leading up to the incident.
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Adams has spent the last few years prodding State Legislative Council To expand mental health care laws, she previously supported a policy that would allow hospitals to commit a person unable to meet their basic needs for food, clothing, shelter or medical care.
“Denying someone from life-saving psychiatric care because their mental illness prevents them from realizing their desperate need for it is an unacceptable abdication of our moral responsibility,” the mayor said in a statement after Hochul’s announcement.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
