New York Governor Hochul calls for expanded involuntary commitment laws for violent crimes in the subway

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, is seeking to expand the state’s involuntary commitment laws to allow hospitals to force more people with mental health problems into treatment.

This follows a series of violent crimes on the New York subway.

Hochul said Friday she wants to introduce a bill during the upcoming legislative session to change mental health care laws to address the recent wave of violent crimes in the metro.

“Many of these horrific incidents have involved people with serious, untreated mental illnesses, the result of the failure to care for people who are living on the streets and disconnected from our mental health care system,” the governor said.

Hochul’s Christmas boast of a safer subway came amid a series of alarming violent attacks

“We have a duty to protect the public from random acts of violence, and the only right and compassionate thing to do is to get our fellow New Yorkers the help they need,” she continued. .

Mental health experts say most people with mental illness are not violent and are much more likely to be victims of violent crime than to commit violent crime.

The governor did not provide details on what his legislation would change.

“Currently, hospitals can accommodate people whose mental illness puts them or others at risk of serious harm, and this legislation will expand that definition to ensure that more people receive the care they need,” a she declared.

Hochul also said she would introduce another bill to improve the process by which courts can order people into assisted outpatient treatment for mental illness and make it easier to voluntarily enroll in that treatment.

The governor said she was “deeply grateful” to the police who, every day, “fight to ensure the safety of our metros”. But she said “we cannot fully address this problem without changing state law.”

“Public safety is my top priority and I will do everything in my power to keep New Yorkers safe,” she said.

State law currently allows police to require people to be taken to a hospital for evaluation if they appear to be suffering from a mental illness and their behavior poses a risk of physical harm to themselves or others. others. Psychiatrists must then determine whether patients should be hospitalized against their will.

New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said requiring more people to be placed in involuntary commitment “does not make us safer, it prevents us from addressing the roots of our problems and it threatens the rights and freedoms of New Yorkers.”

Hochul’s statement follows a series of violent crimes on the New York City subway, including an incident on New Year’s Eve when a man pushed another man onto the subway tracks before a train arrived , and on Christmas Eve, when a man stabbed two people with a knife. Manhattan’s Grand Central subway station and Dec. 22, when a suspect set a sleeping woman on fire and burned her alive.

New York man charged with attempted murder after allegedly pushing commuter on subway path

The medical histories of the suspects in those three incidents were not immediately clear, but New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, said the man accused of the Grand Central stabbing had a history of illness mental health and that the father of the suspect who pushed a man onto the train tracks told the New York Times that he had worried about his son’s mental health in the weeks before the incident.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Adams has spent recent years urging the state Legislature to expand mental health care laws and previously supported a policy that would allow hospitals to involuntarily incarcerate a person unable to meet their own basic mental health needs. food, clothing, shelter or medical care. .

“Denying a person life-saving psychiatric care because their mental illness prevents them from recognizing that they desperately need it is an unacceptable abdication of our moral responsibility,” the mayor said in a statement after Hochul’s announcement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.