NYC mayor: Mentally ill will get treatment even if they refuse it
NEW YORK — New York City’s mayor on Tuesday said he was directing police and city medics to be more aggressive about getting severely mentally ill people off the streets and subways and into treatment, even if it means involuntarily hospitalizing some people who refuse care.
“These New Yorkers and hundreds of others like them are in urgent need of treatment, yet often refuse it when offered,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference, noting the pervasive problem of mental illness has long been out in the open.
“No more walking by or looking away,” the mayor said, calling it “a moral obligation to act.”
The mayor’s directive marks the latest attempt to ease a crisis decades in the making. It would give outreach workers, city hospitals and first responders, including police, discretion to involuntarily hospitalize anyone they deem a danger to themselves or unable to care for themselves.
State law generally limits the ability of authorities to force someone into treatment unless they are a danger to themselves, but Adams said it was a “myth” that the law required a person to be behaving in an “outrageously dangerous” or suicidal way before a police officer or medical worker could take action.
The city is also developing a phone line that would allow police officers to consult with clinicians.
The mayor’s announcement was condemned by some civil rights groups and advocates for the homeless.
“The mayor is playing fast and loose with the legal rights of New Yorkers and is not dedicating the resources necessary to address the mental health crises that affect our communities,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Others welcomed the mayor’s overtures even if they remain skeptical about how police would ultimately handle the mentally ill.
“We agree with the spirit of Mayor Adams address, which ... very much centers around confronting this human problem with compassion and sensitivity,” said Jeffrey Berman, the an attorney for the mental health unit of the Legal Aid Society.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday wrestled with a partisan-tinged dispute over a Biden administration policy that would prioritize deportation of people in the country illegally who pose the greatest public safety risk.
It was not clear after arguments that stretched past two hours and turned highly contentious at times whether the justices would allow the policy to take effect, or side with Republican-led states that have so far succeeded in blocking it.
At the center of the case is a September 2021 directive from the Department of Homeland Security that paused deportations unless individuals had committed acts of terrorism, espionage or “egregious threats to public safety.”
The guidance, issued after Joe Biden became president, updated a Trump-era policy that removed people in the country illegally regardless of criminal history or community ties.
On Tuesday, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer told the justices that federal law does “not create an unyielding mandate to apprehend and remove” every one of the more than
Immigration policy:
11 million immigrants living in the country illegally.
But Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone told the court that the administration violated federal law requiring the detention of people who are in the U.S. illegally and who have been convicted of serious crimes.
Michigan school shooting:
The Michigan Supreme Court on Tuesday postponed the January trial for the parents of the teenager who killed four students at his high school, a victory for defense lawyers who argue that involuntary manslaughter charges don’t fit.
The court ordered the state appeals court to hear an appeal from James and Jennifer Crumbley.
The order emerged a day before the one-year anniversary of the shooting at Oxford High School, roughly 30 miles north of Detroit. Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time, killed four students and injured six more plus a teacher.
He recently pleaded
guilty to murder and terrorism and said James Crumbley bought the gun with the boy’s money days earlier.
The 16-year-old’s parents are accused of ignoring his mental health needs and making the gun accessible at home. Defense lawyers argue that the Crumbleys can’t be held criminally responsible for Ethan Crumbley’s independent acts.
China launched a rocket Tuesday carrying three astronauts to complete construction of the country’s permanent orbiting space station, during which they will expand the facility to its maximum capacity of six crew aboard.
The crew of the Shenzhou-15 will overlap for several days with the existing three-member crew of the Tiangong station, who will then return to Earth after their six-month mission.
Their spaceship blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert at
China space launch:
11:08 p.m. Tuesday.
The six-month mission, commanded by Fei Junlong and crewed by Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu, will be the last in the station’s construction phase, according to the China Manned Space Agency.
Houston officials lifted an order Tuesday that had called for more than 2 million people in the nation’s fourth-largest city to boil their tap water before drinking or using it.
The boil order had been in effect since Sunday, when a power outage at a purification plant caused pressure to drop.
The order led to the closure of businesses and schools, including the Houston Independent School District, which canceled classes Monday and Tuesday. The city rescinded the order just before 7 a.m. Tuesday.
Houston water crisis:
Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian man during an
Mideast tensions:
operation Tuesday in the occupied West Bank, raising to five the number of Palestinians killed in less than 24 hours of fighting.
The army said it shot the Palestinian man in the town of al-Mughayir as he tried to hurl a firebomb toward them. It said a crowd of Palestinians was throwing stones at soldiers who were delivering orders to demolish illegally built buildings. The town is located in an area of the West Bank that is under full Israeli control, where Palestinians say it is nearly impossible to receive building permits.
Local officials identified the slain man as Raed Naasan, 21, and said that he had been set to soon join the Palestinian police force.
Earlier Tuesday, a Palestinian man rammed his car into a female Israeli soldier in what the army said was an intentional attack, seriously injuring her, before he was shot dead.
The man, identified as Rani Abu Ali, 45, from the West Bank town of Beitunia.