New York Gov. Hochul calls for expanded involuntary commitment laws on violent subway crimes

The governor of New York. Kathy Hochula Democrat, is seeking to expand the state’s 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 that he wants to introduce legislation during the next legislative session to amend mental health care laws to address the recent increase in violent crimes in the metro

“Many of these horrific incidents have involved people with untreated serious mental illnesses, as a result of the lack of treatment for people living on the streets and disconnected from our mental health system,” the governor said.

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“We have a duty to protect the public from random acts of violence, and the only just and compassionate thing to do is to get our fellow New Yorkers the help they need,” he continued.

Mental health experts say most people with mental illness are not violent and are more likely to be victims of violent crime than to commit a violent crime.

The governor did not provide details on what his legislation would change.

“Hospitals can currently commit people whose mental illness puts them or others at risk of serious harm, and this legislation will expand that definition to ensure more people get the care they need,” he said.

Hochul also said he will introduce another bill to improve the process by which courts can order people to undergo assisted outpatient treatment for mental illness and make it easier for people to voluntarily enroll in such treatment.

The governor said she is “deeply grateful” to law enforcement officers who “fight to keep our subways safe” every day. But he said “we can’t fully address this problem without changes to state law.”

“Public safety is my top priority, and I will do everything in my power to keep New Yorkers safe,” he said.

State law currently allows police to take people to hospitals for evaluation if they appear to be suffering from a mental illness and their behavior presents a risk of physical harm to themselves or others. Psychiatrists must then determine whether patients should be involuntarily hospitalized.

New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said requiring more people to involuntarily commit “doesn’t make us safer, distracts us from addressing the roots of our problems, and threatens rights and liberties of New Yorkers.”

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 onto the subway tracks before a train entering, on Christmas night when a man cut two people with a knife. Manhattan’s Grand Central subway station and on Dec. 22 when a suspect lit a sleeping woman on fire and burned her to death.

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The medical histories of the suspects in those three incidents were not immediately clear, but New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, said the man accused in the Grand Central stabbing had a history of mental illness and the suspect’s father. who pushed a man onto the tracks told The New York Times that she had worried about her son’s mental health in the weeks leading up to the incident.

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Adams has spent the last few years inciting the state legislature to expand mental health care laws and has previously supported a policy that would allow hospitals to involuntarily admit a person who cannot meet their own basic needs for food, clothing, shelter or medical care.

“To deny a person life-saving psychiatric care because their mental illness prevents them from recognizing their desperate need 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.