POLITICS: It’s time to get real help for the seriously mentally ill

Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres got it 100% right this month when he slammed progressives for their “perversion of compassion” in allowing vagrants to haunt our transit hubs and streets.

Particularly those who are mentally ill and in need of help.

They make life miserable — and dangerous — for everyone. Including themselves.

Progressives think they’re being kind, considerate, compassionate to these troubled people.

Civil libertarians think they’re protecting their freedoms.

Many of them truly believe they’re doing the moral thing by letting these people fester.

They’re horribly wrong,

It’s not compassionate to let to someone sleep on the floor of Penn Station or to permit violent ones to attack innocent people.

It’s not compassionate to let druggies shoot up and pass out on the streets.

It’s not compassionate to leave a woman, who appeared to have a walker and is thought to have been homeless, defenseless on an F-train while another psycho fatally lights her on fire, as a suspected illegal, drug-addled, homeless Guatemalan immigrant did Sunday morning.

That attack shocked the entire nation.

Need more? How about the shouting maniac who stabbed a straphanger watching Netflix in an unprovoked attack on board a Brooklyn train?

Just how many of these such incidents will it take for state lawmakers to ditch their perverse “compassion,” get some real help for these people (whether they want it or not) and keep violent ones away from innocent New Yorkers?

Do they really want to leave it to the Daniel Pennys to deal with more Jordan Neelys?

Last week, The Post saw first-hand the uphill battle faced by the city’s late-night outreach teams trying to remove troubled vagrants wandering the 34th Street Herald Square Station’s underground wasteland: Of 96 individuals encountered — many of them struggling with serious mental-health issues — only 16 agreed to go to a shelter or be hospitalized.

Why were 80 allowed to refuse assistance when they obviously needed it?

The answer in a nutshell: Albany lets them refuse.

“We have the tools to stop the problem,” Rep. Torres told The Post’s Kirsten Fleming. “What is lacking is the political will.”

Bingo!

Blame for the city’s inability to take into custody ill-clothed, unhoused, ranting vagrants — who are clearly dangers to themselves and/or others — falls squarely on ideologues and bought-off lawmakers in Albany who oppose taking action or fear political backlash from far-left radicals.

Nor has Gov. Hochul come to the resuce. Her office now says she’s working on a plan that will help make it possible for doctors to keep people in psychiatric care longer, so they don’t end up back on the street.

And the state Office of Mental Health published new regulations requiring comprehensive outpatient discharge plans so individuals committed for mental-health reasons don’t just cycle through the system.

But how long before that goes into effect?

And will it be enough to fully address this widespread, horrific problem?

Let’s be blunt: Albany must radically shift its mindset and give the city greater authority to remove individuals who are unable to meet basic needs for food, clothing and medical care or who otherwise represent threats.

Once taken off the streets and placed into appropriate care facilities, clinicians can more better assess their needs.

The criteria for involuntary commitment must be broadened, because sufferers of serious mental illness lack awareness of their mental disease or the ability to do what’s in their own best interest.

A sign of hope: a promising new bill — the Supportive Intervention Act, drafted by City Hall aide Brian Stettin, who authored Kendra’s Law — that calls for commonsense changes to state mental-health laws that prevent the city from helping those who cannot understand they need help.

The SIA would redefine “danger to self” to include psychiatric as well as physical risk of harm.

It would also grant diagnostic authority to licensed mental-health counselors, expanding the number of qualified clinicians to conduct assessments as members of the city’s outreach teams.

Licensed social workers and other clinicians are opposed out of self-interest, and state Sen. Samra Brouk, chair of the Mental Health Committee, is blocking it.

They need to stand down.

To get more at-risk persons into appropriate care, NYPD cops, mental-health outreach workers and judges must be trained in applying the new standard.

Gov. Hochul can greatly assist the city and Mayor Adams by putting SIA into her FY 2026 state budget plan.

Brouk and other misguided progressives bleat about criminalizing the mentally ill, but they fail to acknowledge it’s far more criminal to let them go untreated.

They claim that the mentally ill are 11 times as likely to be victims of violence and five times more likely to be murdered.

But that’s all the more reason to get them out of harm’s way.

Elected officials, from Hochul on down, have a primary duty to protect severely mentally ill New Yorkers from themselves and others — and to protect New Yorkers from them.

Maybe instead of offering thoughts and prayers for victims like the unfortunate woman immolated on the F train, they’ll act swiftly to pass the Supportive Intervention Act.

True compassion demands real action to prevent the next tragedy.

Our political leaders clearly have the tools to care for those who need help and to keep New Yorkers safe. It’s time for them develop the will.