Criminally Yours: The Mentally Ill And The Police

Instead of just pushing the mentally ill into corners and hoping to never see them again, Mayor Bill de Blasio's tackling the issue head on.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new $850-million initiative, ThriveNYC, to better help the mentally ill in New York City. According to the cover page of the city’s new website, one in five New Yorkers experience a mental health disorder in a given year.

In a city with a population of 8.5 million, that’s a lot of mentally ill.

The program was largely inspired by First Lady Chirlane I. McCray due to the trauma the De Blasio family experienced when their daughter, Chiara, was diagnosed with addiction, depression, and anxiety.   They couldn’t find the right treatment provider or treatment for a long time.

If the mayor’s family had a tough time getting answers and finding appropriate help for their daughter, imagine the difficulty of the homeless guy on the street with no family safety net and no money.

The mentally ill in New York City (and I’m sure around the country) intersect in a huge way with the criminal justice system.

According to a recent New York Times article, approximately 40 percent of the inmates at Rikers Island prison suffer from a severe mental illness, “more than all adult patients in New York State psychiatric hospitals combined.”

The ThriveNYC initiative is setting out to lower this number, not so much by changing the treatment of the mentally ill in jail, but by intervening before they get arrested and sent to Rikers.

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Here’s a common scenario that my criminal-defense colleagues and I have dealt with many times. A person, often with no criminal history, let’s say a Columbia student overwhelmed by the pressure of studying for exams, has an acute psychotic break. It’s the first time he’s ever experienced such a thing. He’s spent days not sleeping, is far from home, and living with roommates he barely sees.

He starts hearing voices, acting erratically, and eventually goes into the street suffering from the grandiose illusion that it’s up to him to save people by pushing them (literally) into the next millennium.

He hurts no one, but when police arrive at the scene, he’s difficult to arrest because he imagines police as an alien enemy.

It’s clear he’s mentally ill and needs special treatment. He can even be calmed down with the right intervention and arrested without incident. However, because up until now law enforcement has received no special training on how to deal with the mentally ill, police rush in as they would with any person they intend to arrest — guns drawn, en masse, aggressive. They are often then unfortunately injured, inadvertently, during the course of the arrest. Most times not seriously — a kicked shin, a back twist — but if a police officer even suffers a hurt pinky during the course of an arrest, the prosecutors can charge the offender with a violent felony assault which then involves mandatory jail of three years and up even if the person has no criminal record, is a student at Columbia, and clearly did not intend the injury.

This happens a lot with the present prosecutor of New York City, Cyrus Vance. Indict first, ask questions later.

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The ThriveNYC initiative helps address this very moment — when police first meet the mentally ill actor in the street.

Instead of deploying officers untrained in mental illness to make an arrest, the plan involves sending a team of professionals, one of whom would be a medical professional. It mandates that 5,500 officers will participate in a four-day training to help them “recognize the behaviors and symptoms of mental illness and substance misuse,” according to ThriveNYC website. They will also learn techniques for “engaging people in respectful, non-stigmatizing interactions that de-escalate crisis situations.”

Public Health Drop-Off Centers will be created to provide NYPD with a new treatment-based option for people they encounter.

What great ideas. If the initial encounter with police can be “de-escalated,” there might not be an ensuing arrest, which would then avoid the risk of injury to the police (and the arrestee), the probable ensuing indictment, and the incarceration time at Rikers — all in all, saving the city and taxpayers money. Everybody wins.

The other laudable goal of the initiative is to spread the word that mental illness is treatable and that it should not be considered an embarrassment. Some people just get it, like any other disease.

According to the American Psychological Association, the mentally ill commit violent crime in no greater percentage than the non-mentally ill. In fact, studies show that the mentally ill are more likely to be the victims of crime than its perpetrators.

So, bravo to New York City for trying a new approach. Instead of just pushing the mentally ill into corners and hoping to never see them again (as was done in the Giuliani era), De Blasio’s tackling the issue head on.

Now, let’s hope he has the patience, money, and backing to see the program through, and that the City has the commitment to carry it not only through the end of the De Blasio administration (which could come as early as 2017), but, if it helps, indefinitely.


Toni Messina has been practicing criminal defense law since 1990, although during law school she spent one summer as an intern in a large Boston law firm and realized quickly it wasn’t for her. Prior to attending law school, she worked as a journalist from Rome, Italy, reporting stories of international interest for CBS News and NPR. She keeps sane by balancing her law practice with a family of three children, playing in a BossaNova band, and dancing flamenco. She can be reached at tonimessinalw@gmail.com or tonimessinalaw.com.