{"id":122097,"date":"2020-11-28T03:12:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-28T00:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-system-failed-them-then-they-threw-innocents-onto-the-subway-tracks\/"},"modified":"2020-11-28T03:12:57","modified_gmt":"2020-11-28T00:12:57","slug":"the-system-failed-them-then-they-threw-innocents-onto-the-subway-tracks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-system-failed-them-then-they-threw-innocents-onto-the-subway-tracks\/","title":{"rendered":"#The system failed them \u2014 then they threw innocents onto the subway tracks"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#The system failed them \u2014 then they threw innocents onto the subway tracks<\/strong>”
\n<\/p>\n

\n As though things weren\u2019t dismal enough, subway-track pushings have now become part of the \u201cnew normal\u201d in Mayor de Blasio\u2019s New York. What used to be terrifying but rare is now ordinary, with three such incidents in the space of one week.<\/p>\n

In the latest, 33-year-old Michael Medlock \u2014 a seriously mentally ill homeless man with a 25-year history of aggressive and dysfunctional behavior \u2014 shoved a fellow straphanger off the platform for no app<\/a>arent reason. Fortunately, his victim sustained only minor injuries.<\/p>\n

Medlock\u2019s grandmother reported that the city\u2019s multibillion-dollar \u00adsocial<\/a>-services-criminal-justice complex is well aware of her grandson\u2019s mental problems and his propensity for acting out violently. Her Brooklyn apartment\u2019s building management has barred him from staying there, \u00adowing to his disorderly conduct. He is also facing burglary charges in Queens \u2014 for which he was \u00adreleased without bail.<\/p>\n

Medlock was evidently hospitalized just two weeks ago but was \u00adreleased 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 \u201cis not a hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

And the failure isn\u2019t just a question of bad administration. Medlock represents a failure of policy, and that failure can be laid directly at Hizzoner\u2019s feet.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Law gives legal teeth to doctors\u2019 orders. Under the law, people like Medlock, whose untreated illness poses a threat to themselves or others, can be placed under court supervision \u2014 and hospitalized, if they don\u2019t comply with treatment.<\/p>\n

Kendra\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Instead, de Blasio blathers about his wife\u2019s pet wellness project, ThriveNYC, which was never \u00adintended 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrive 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,\u201d said the mayor. \u201cI want to encourage that. I want to encourage anyone, if there\u2019s someone in your life with a problem, pick up that phone and call 888-NYC-WELL.\u201d<\/p>\n

These services are often as useless as infomercial trinkets. Medlock\u2019s grandmother says she called 311 \u201ca lot\u201d and received no help at all. Someone ought to have explained to her that, under Kendra\u2019s Law, a family member can petition the court to start the process of getting their loved one into mandated treatment.<\/p>\n

The goal of Kendra\u2019s Law is to \u201cprevent dangerous behavior, not require it,\u201d 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 \u2014 people with mild depression or anxiety \u2014 and ignore the persistently difficult cases of truly ill people who lack the faculties to seek help.<\/p>\n

The situation isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n

Seth Barron is associate editor of City Journal and author of the forthcoming book \u201cThe Last Days of New York.\u201d Twitter: @SethBarronNYC <\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#The system failed them \u2014 then they threw innocents onto the subway tracks” As though things weren\u2019t dismal enough, subway-track pushings have now become part of the \u201cnew normal\u201d in Mayor de Blasio\u2019s New York. What used to be terrifying but rare is now ordinary, with three such incidents in the space of one week….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":122098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/10\/mta-offices-01.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[81965,70377,82079,70989,76924,71067],"class_list":["post-122097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-11-27-20","tag-assaults","tag-kendras-law","tag-mental-health","tag-subway-shoves","tag-thrivenyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}