ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to expand the state’s involuntary commitment laws to allow hospitals to compel more mentally ill people into treatment, following a series of violent crimes in the New York City subway system.
In a statement Friday, Hochul, a Democrat, said she would push to change mental health care laws during the coming legislative session in an attempt to address what she described as a surge of crimes on the subway.
“Many of these horrific incidents have involved people with serious untreated mental illness, the result of a failure to get treatment to people who are living on the streets and are disconnected from our mental health care system,” she said.
“We have a duty to protect the public from random acts of violence, and the only fair and compassionate thing to do is to get our fellow New Yorkers the help they need.”
Most people with mental illness are not violent and they are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators, according to mental health experts.
The governor did not detail exactly what her legislation would change or offer other specifics of her plan. Instead, she said “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 receive the care they need.”
Hochul also said she would introduce another proposal to improve the process in 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 services.
State law currently allows police to compel people to be taken to hospitals for evaluation if they appear to be mentally ill and their behavior poses a risk of physical harm to themselves or others. Psychiatrists must then determine whether such patients need to be hospitalized against their will in a delicate and complex process involving several factors.
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said forcing more people into involuntary commitment “doesn’t make us safer, it distracts us from addressing the roots of our problems, and it threatens New Yorkers’ rights and liberties.”
It is unclear how the governor's plan will fare in the state Legislature, which is controlled by Democrats and begins its annual legislative session later this month.
Carl Heastie, the Democratic speaker of the state Assembly, told reporters that there is a “global acknowledgement that we have to do more on mental health,” but that he would have to see exactly what the governor is proposing. A spokesperson for Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Democratic majority leader, said “clearly, public safety is a major focus of the majority. We want all New Yorkers to feel safe. We look forward to seeing the details of the governor’s plan so we can discuss it further."
Hochul's statement came after a series of violent encounters in New York City's subways, many of which have attracted national attention and heightened fears over the safety of the country's busiest subway system.
In recent weeks, a man was shoved onto subway tracks ahead of an incoming train on New Year’s Eve, a sleeping woman was burned to death and a man slashed two people with a knife in Manhattan’s Grand Central subway station on Christmas Eve.
Medical histories of suspects in those three cases were not immediately clear, though New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said the man accused of the attack in Grand Central had a history of mental illness and the father of the suspect in the shoving told the New York Times that he had become concerned about his son's mental health in the weeks before the incident.
Violent crime is rare on the subway, which carried more than 1 billion riders in 2024. Still, random stabbings and shoves, along with other incidents, have unnerved riders and attracted heavy attention online.
Major crimes on the subways were down through November compared with the same period last year, but killings rose from five to nine, according to police data. Still, some have pointed to an increase in assaults since prior to the pandemic — there were 326 recorded through November in 2019, compared to 521 in the same period in 2024.
Adams, a Democrat, has for years pressed the state Legislature to expand mental health care laws and has previously endorsed a policy that would allow hospitals to involuntarily commit a person if he or she is unable to meet their own basic needs for food, clothing, shelter or medical care.
“Denying a person life-saving psychiatric care because their mental illness prevents them from recognizing their desperate need for it is an unacceptable abdication of our moral responsibility,” the mayor said in a statement after Hochul's announcement.
FILE - Police officers patrol the F train platform at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
