As though things weren’t dismal enough, subway-track pushings have now become part of the “new normal” in Mayor de Blasio’s New York. What used to be terrifying but rare is now ordinary, with three such incidents in the space of one week.
In the latest, 33-year-old Michael Medlock — a seriously mentally ill homeless man with a 25-year history of aggressive and dysfunctional behavior — shoved a fellow straphanger off the platform for no apparent reason. Fortunately, his victim sustained only minor injuries.
Medlock’s grandmother reported that the city’s multibillion-dollar social-services-criminal-justice complex is well aware of her grandson’s mental problems and his propensity for acting out violently. Her Brooklyn apartment’s building management has barred him from staying there, owing to his disorderly conduct. He is also facing burglary charges in Queens — for which he was released without bail.
Medlock was evidently hospitalized just two weeks ago but was released by officials at Kings County Hospital. His desperate grandmother says she pled with social workers to have him committed but was told that the hospital “is not a hotel.”
Rarely do we see a case that demonstrates so concretely the combined failure of city agencies: Bureaucracies that spend tens of billions of dollars annually to manage homelessness, mental illness and crime utterly failed to deal with an individual who manifestly was crying out for help.
And the failure isn’t just a question of bad administration. Medlock represents a failure of policy, and that failure can be laid directly at Hizzoner’s feet.
New York has a legal mechanism, the most robust in the nation, to compel seriously mentally ill people to comply with treatment orders. Named after a woman, Kendra Webdale, who in 1999 was pushed in front of a subway train and killed by a man with diagnosed but untreated schizophrenia, Kendra’s Law gives legal teeth to doctors’ orders. Under the law, people like Medlock, whose untreated illness poses a threat to themselves or others, can be placed under court supervision — and hospitalized, if they don’t comply with treatment.
Kendra’s Law has been shown to be amazingly successful at reducing relapses, preventing violence and helping sick people get their lives together. But the de Blasio administration has been reluctant to apply it, even as the number of dangerous mentally ill people, frequently homeless, has exploded on our streets.
Instead, de Blasio blathers about his wife’s pet wellness project, ThriveNYC, which was never intended to deal with serious mental illness. When a woman was pushed onto the tracks in October, the mayor fecklessly touted Thrive and repeated its toll-free number like an infomercial salesman.
“Thrive is here to cover the whole range of mental-health challenges. And it begins with giving all New Yorkers, including their loved ones, the ability to reach out via 888-NYC-WELL and connect anyone to mental-health services,” said the mayor. “I want to encourage that. I want to encourage anyone, if there’s someone in your life with a problem, pick up that phone and call 888-NYC-WELL.”
These services are often as useless as infomercial trinkets. Medlock’s grandmother says she called 311 “a lot” and received no help at all. Someone ought to have explained to her that, under Kendra’s Law, a family member can petition the court to start the process of getting their loved one into mandated treatment.
The goal of Kendra’s Law is to “prevent dangerous behavior, not require it,” in the words of the late and legendary activist DJ Jaffe, whose efforts got the law passed in the first place. But ThriveNYC is designed to pick the low-hanging fruit of mental health — people with mild depression or anxiety — and ignore the persistently difficult cases of truly ill people who lack the faculties to seek help.
The situation isn’t helped by the fact that New York state has sharply reduced the number of psychiatric hospital beds available. Or by the catch-and-release policies of its increasingly useless criminal-justice system.
New York’s leaders and advocates think of themselves as compassionate. But at what point do their libertarian attitudes about the seriously mentally ill become indistinguishable from indifference?
This piece originally appeared at New York Post
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Seth Barron is associate editor of City Journal.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post