Walk around downtown in any major American city and you will encounter mentally ill people. During the Reagan administration the policy was to close mental institutions and return mentally ill people to the community. If you live in a small town with one mentally ill person, that can work. Everyone knows that person and looks out for him or her. If you live in a large city with hundreds of people who can’t care for themselves, it’s a disaster.
New York has an additional problem. Martial Simon, a man with schizophrenia who had been in and out of facilities for decades, recently pushed a woman to her death in a subway station.
Mayor Adams’ policy calls for people with severe untreated mental illness to be removed and given treatment. A program to train the police on the procedures will be implemented.
Here is the hypothetical example Adams used for someone who could be removed: “the shadow boxer on the street corner in Midtown, mumbling to himself as he jabs at an invisible adversary.”
Advocates for the mentally ill reacted with a lawsuit. The group filing the suit said that Adams’s example “...does not describe someone who is unable to care for their basic needs, let along someone who meets the standard of serious danger.”
I’ve seen people like that boxer. They scare me. I don’t know who they plan to hit. I don’t think I should have to put up with that. And it is why “law and order” candidates are gaining ground in cities and suburbs. I’m with Mayor Adams on this one.
Info for this post is from Andy Newman and Emma G. Fitzsimmons, “New York Aims To Clear Streets Of Mentally Ill,” New York Times, (Nov. 30, 2022), p. A1, A20; and Andy Newman, “Advocates for Mentally Ill New Yorkers Ask Court to Halt Removal Plan,” New York Times (Dec. 9, 2022), p. A14.
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