NYC’s Mental-Health Crisis: The Price of Failed Policies
Any family who has tried to navigate the mentalhealth-care system on behalf of a loved one will tell of the nightmare it has become (“‘Call 911,’ They Said,” Editorial, Oct. 29).
New York’s mentalhealth budget is one of the highest in the country, yet under Gov. Cuomo, desperately needed psychiatric beds and inpatient care have been drastically reduced.
Mayor de Blasio has spent $850 million and counting on unaccountable and dysfunctional mental-health programs.
For decades, New York has continued the failed policy of shifting inpatient psychiatric care to the community, while watching the need for inpatient care increase significantly. When billions are spent on a failed policy, it eventually becomes a crisis. Joanne Norris Brooklyn
How are law-enforcement officers supposed to protect themselves when met with extreme force?
How are people saying the man who was shot was a meek individual when the police officer was hit with a metal chair and suffered a serious injury, requiring him to be put into a medically induced coma?
It’s about time to stop questioning the NYPD and make the penalties for assaulting an NYPD officer greater. Joseph Comperchio Brooklyn
The first responsibility of any mayor is to provide the safest city possible.
There was a time when mentally ill people with a history of violence were remitted and held in psychiatric facilities to prevent harm to themselves and others. They were not the subject for bail.
Years ago, New York started emptying these facilities, and those people were returned to local communities. Now, we have a cop who had to be put into a coma and a dead mentally ill person.
The mayor has called for an investigation, but the facts are simple. This mentally disturbed person was among many who are victims of benign neglect. Phil Serpico Queens
State Assemblywoman Latrice Walker commented on the assailant, who forced a cop to be put into a medically induced coma, but said not one word about the officer, who was doing his job.
Now we know this assailant was “promoting a business he was trying to kick off,” but does she have anything to say about Officer Lesly Lafontant? She’s everything that’s wrong with her city. Richard Levinson Montville, NJ