The idea was “to ensure that individuals at risk of serious harm receive timely care—regardless of their ability to recognize their own urgent needs.”
The legal criteria were: (1) the person “appears to be mentally ill,” and (2) the person is “conducting himself or herself in a manner which is likely to result in serious harm to the person or others.”
Begun initially as a solution for addressing street homelessness and “mental health” in New York City, the involuntary hospitalization program (in other words, you are taken to a hospital whether you like it or not and subjected to a psychiatric evaluation) has gone out of control. In 2024, nearly 7,800 citizens were taken to the hospital against their will for psychiatric evaluation.
Are you willing to test it out on yourself or a loved one?
The majority were not homeless. The majority were taken from their homes, with only one in five taken from a public place like a subway or park. The majority—over 7,000—were initiated by the NYPD (none of whom are qualified to evaluate an individual’s “mental health”). And the majority were Black.
In a city comprised of 23 percent African Americans, a disproportionate 54 percent of involuntary hospital trips last year were for Black New Yorkers.
Nobody’s saying that police are targeting African Americans deliberately in their “mental health evaluations.”
Nobody’s even saying that there’s something terribly wrong with people who are incompetent at making mental health evaluations doing precisely that on the spot and then hustling people away without their consent—people who have committed no crime except being there.
Nobody, that is, except civil rights advocates and New Yorkers who have filed complaints with the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), an independent city agency that investigates reports of police misconduct.
What’s so bad about getting a psychiatric evaluation, you ask? Why are people so skittish about it? Here’s a story best told by the one who experienced it, but he is now dead. He was going through some personal problems and intersected with law enforcement, the officer deciding there was something “not quite right mentally about him.” He was involuntarily picked up based on a neighbor’s later-refuted data, and a psychiatric evaluation was ordered. He was misdiagnosed (a physical ailment was deemed a mental problem), labeled, drugged, experienced severe side effects, became suicidal and violent, was relabeled, given more drugs with more side effects, committed crimes, was jailed and ultimately died horribly. His parents could do nothing as it was all court-ordered and, after all, a psychiatric evaluation based on a police officer’s diagnosis based on a neighbor’s lie is always infallible.
Does this happen to everyone who finds themselves trapped in the mental health meat grinder beginning with a “psychiatric evaluation”? The answer to that question is: Are you willing to test it out on yourself or a loved one?
From 2017 to 2022, the CCRB received some 2,700 complaints about police misconduct related to involuntary hospitalization.
Then, in 2022, the incoming administration brought about a new wrinkle in the procedure. Under the heading “conducting himself or herself in a manner which is likely to result in serious harm to the person or others,” a person could now be involuntarily taken away if he or she “displays an inability to meet basic living needs.”
“The problem I see with this is they’re sort of playing a little fast and loose with the standard.”
How on Earth does someone you don’t know and have only seen for a few seconds “display an inability to meet basic living needs”?
So you’re an NYPD officer. You’re having a bad day. Fight with the wife this morning, then sent on a wild-goose-chase domestic violence call, which turned out to be a nothing burger. You’re annoyed and exhausted, and it’s not even noon. You see a Black youth shaking his head back and forth while singing to himself (the earbuds are hidden under the hoodie). Instant adjudication: This kid is nuts. Furthermore, you judge by his jeans, which are ripped at the knees, that he is displaying an inability to meet his basic living needs. So you take him for a ride, over his protest, to the nearest hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
Wait. What?
He wasn’t hurting anyone. He was posing no threat.
But under the guidelines, that doesn’t matter if, in your far-from-expert opinion, the individual is displaying an inability to “meet basic living needs.”
In 2024, the CCRB received 5,663 complaints, more than any other year since 2012. How many of these complaints involved involuntary hospitalization?
We. Don’t. Know.
Because in December 2023, the CCRB suspended investigations into allegations that an officer improperly forced someone to be hospitalized.
Meanwhile, those unwilling free rides in a police car skyrocketed in number.
The guidelines have not been met with universal applause. Far from it. Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, representing Brooklyn, is uncomfortable with the expanded definition. “For there to be an involuntary commitment order or request, you have to be a danger to yourself or others, right? That’s the standard,” she said. “The problem I see with this is they’re sort of playing a little fast and loose with the standard.”
Matt Kudish, a local family advocacy and support group director, is against any police involvement at all, as it could create more danger to the public, not less. “When people are in the throes of a crisis, they don’t need to see someone with a badge and a gun,” he said.
Possibly, it’s time to make a call to 911 for an involuntary hospitalization. Someone is posing a danger to self and others. The address: City Hall.
