The recent death of an elderly man following a subway attack highlights the systemic failure to address serious mental illness in New York City, sparking criticism of Mayor Mamdani’s policy priorities.
On Thursday, NYPD officers safely transported a 32-year-old “emotionally disturbed person” to Bellevue Hospital where he was “treated” and streeted within hours, only to then violently push an elderly man down subway station steps to his later death.. Mayor Mamdani’s response?. His “condolences” and a call to investigate how this tragedy could have been prevented.. If he truly doesn’t know, he might be the only New Yorker.. Ask nearly anyone in the city and they’ll
tell you: the seriously mentally ill are not being adequately treated and are not seeking treatment voluntarily.. Thursday’s suspect was an “emotionally disturbed person,” reportedly homeless, with multiple prior arrests, who the many taxpayer-funded mental health non-profits have been unsuccessful treating or engaging.. This is the typical MO: like Carlton McPherson, who pushed a commuter in front of a subway train to their death in March 2024.. Or Ramon Rivera, who stabbed three people to
death in a spree across Manhattan the same year.. Or Martial Simon, who killed Michelle Go in 2022.. Police are, too often, then left having to step in and transport these individuals directly to treatment settings like hospitals, only to find they’ve been released and are again causing disorder within hours.. New Yorkers are so aware of this problem that in March 2025, nearly 90 percent of voters voiced their support for expanding involuntary commitment
laws passed in the state legislature later that year.. In the same poll, nearly the same share said addressing untreated serious mental illness should be a top or high priority for New York lawmakers.. It’s not a priority for Mamdani.. While he’s busy pushing his $30 million grocery store and revealing where Ken Griffin lives, New Yorkers continue to deal with mental illness-related public disorder.. In his March executive order establishing the Office of Community
Safety, serious mental illness is not mentioned at all.. During his campaign, he pushed for more voluntary services—the services that didn’t work for these cases in the first place.. Spending on voluntary, community-based services increased in the past decade, but data from the Independent Budget Office finds that the share of city jail admissions for mentally ill offenders still increased, from 46.6 percent to over 52 percent between 2014 and 2023.. Mamdani has taken steps
to close Rikers, which will put more violent mentally ill offenders on the street.. Correctional Health Services classify nearly 1,600 inmates as having serious mental illness, around the same number by which the inmate census will need to be reduced to accommodate the planned borough-based jails—which haven’t yet been built.. IBO data show that 66 percent of offenders with a mental health flag were admitted for felony offenses and 41 percent for violent felonies.. Where
will these inmates go?. Mamdani doesn’t seem to care.. Last month, he boasted opening a “first-of-its-kind outposted therapeutic housing unit” for Rikers inmates with 104 beds in Bellevue Hospital—enough beds for less than 7% of the seriously mentally ill inmates.. Even those beds might not go to the mentally ill.. When asked—twice—whether beds in the unit will be for people with medical issues or mental health issues, he said “serious medical needs.” At the unit’s
opening, Mamdani described Rikers as a “de facto mental health facility” implying that Rikers itself caused the mental illness because detainees “leave damaged by their time on the island, traumatized, destabilized and at greater risk of recidivism”—not because they were left untreated before they got there.. Mamdani’s willful ignorance of the seriously mentally ill may mean bliss for him, but it will mean continued violence and disorder for everyone else.. Carolyn D.. Gorman is a
Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Mamdani, mental illness, NYC subway, Rikers, public safety