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New York’s Legislature this week a gave blatant middle-finger to Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams and beleaguered city residents by rejecting a move to get the obviously, seriously, dangerously mentally ill off New York’s streets and subways.
Specifically, the state Senate and Assembly budget proposals omitted the gov’s push for the budget law to make it easier to involuntarily commit unwell, often violent people who are a risk to themselves or others.
The Senate even wants to make the problem worse, by tightening the rules.
Vague language in current law leaves health-care providers too timid in judging whether someone is in bad enough shape to be checked into a facility without their consent.
The outcome: Cases like Waldo Mejia, a maniac who showed signs of being a danger for years, including setting the lobby of his ex-girlfriend’s building on fire in 2019, before finally stabbing a 14-year-old boy to death in January.
Or Jamar Banks, who was free to stab two people on the subway system despite having 54 previous arrests and being flagged by cops as potentially suicidal and emotionally disturbed multiple times.
Hochul wants to expand the involuntary-commitment standard and give providers’ more clarity, which is the bare minimum to start getting dangerously unwell people off the street and into treatment.
Speaker Carl Heastie’s excuse for omitting Hochul’s proposal is his old claim that there should be “no policy in the budget” — a cowardly cop-out, since the budget is intrinsically all about policy choices.
But that’s less toxic than the Senate’s call to raise the standard for involuntary commitment to those who are presenting an “imminent risk of serious physical harm” to themselves or others “as manifested by homicidal or other violent behavior.”
That is: Do nothing until you can prove someone’s on the very brink of hurting or killing him/herself or others or has already attacked someone.
Mental-health care is a public good, a reality progressives heartily agree with as long as the topic is upwardly mobile millennials going to therapy.
But when it comes to serious mental illness — the screaming-on-the-street, shoving-folks-in-front-of-trains kind — suddenly progs think getting people the treatment they need is cruel and inhumane.
Next time you’re maneuvering around a dangerous-seeming loon, above or below ground, remember: The Democrats who run the Legislature think we need more such folks running free — guaranteeing even more maimings, killings and avoidable tragedies to come.