The Governor of New York. Kathy Hochula Democrat, wants to expand the state’s involuntary commitment laws so hospitals can 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 laws to address the recent surge in care violent crimes in the subway.
“Many of these horrific incidents involved people with serious, untreated mental illness, the result of the inability to get treatment for people living on the streets and disconnected from our mental health system,” the governor said.
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New York Governor Kathy Hochul wants to expand the state’s laws on involuntary commitment so hospitals can 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 we can do is get 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 be victims of violent crime than to commit a violent crime.
The governor did not provide details on what her legislation would change.
“Currently, hospitals can admit individuals whose mental illness puts themselves or others at risk for 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 treatment for mental illness, and to make it easier for people to voluntarily sign up for those treatments.
Police officers patrol the F train platform at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024, in New York. (AP)
The governor said she is “deeply grateful” to law enforcement officers who “fight to keep our subways safe” every day. But she said, “We cannot fully address this problem without changes in state law.”
“Public safety is my top priority and I will do everything in my power to ensure the safety of New Yorkers,” she said.
State law currently allows police to force people to be taken to hospitals for examination if they appear to be suffering from a mental illness and their behavior poses a risk of physical harm to themselves or others. Psychiatrists must then determine whether the patients should be involuntarily admitted to the hospital.
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said requiring more people to be placed in involuntary commitment “does not make us safer, it distracts us from addressing the roots of our problems, and it threatens the rights and freedoms of New Yorkers.”
Hochul’s statement comes after 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, on Christmas Eve when a man stabbed two people in Manhattan’s Grand Central subway station and on December 22 when a suspect set fire to a sleeping woman and burned her.
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Police investigate at Brooklyn’s Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station after a woman was set on fire and died aboard a subway train on December 22, 2024 in New York, United States. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The medical history of the suspects in these three incidents was not immediately clear, but New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, has said that the man accused in the Grand Central knife attack had a history of mental illness and that the father of the suspect who pushed a man onto the tracks told The New York Times that he worried about his son’s mental health in the weeks leading up to the incident.
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Adams has been pushing for the state legislature to expand mental health laws and has previously supported a policy that would allow hospitals to involuntarily confine someone who cannot meet their own basic needs for food, clothing, shelter or medical care.
“Denying a person life-saving psychiatric care because his mental illness prevents him from recognizing his 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.
