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Last week, shortly before sundown on a frigid day, as I was driving down a major road where almost everyone ignores the posted speed limit, a woman was walking lackadaisically straight down the middle lane as though she were just another car. She wasn't trying to cross the street to the sidewalk and traffic was gaining on her from the rear.
She ignored all the honking horns and voices shouting at her. For sure she would have been run over within minutes. I got right behind her, put on my emergency flashers and called out to her. Eventually she turned around, looking glassy-eyed and trance-like at me, and asked, "Do you have cash?" Then she resumed her trudge of doom.
I called 911 and several strangers at a bus stop escorted her to ephemeral safety.
That episode ended well, but almost certainly nothing has been done since then to treat her fundamental condition. That's because the agony of severely mentally ill patients, often compounded by their homelessness, is not being seriously addressed by public policies and legislation that have the remotest chance of curing or even mitigating their clinical condition, short of chemically lobotomizing them.
Psychiatric hospitals have practically been eliminated statewide. In almost all circumstances, patients cannot be treated or even protected from themselves without their consent. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPAA) protects the patient's confidentiality rights sometimes at the expense of sharing what could be lifesaving information. And callous and imbecilic laws purportedly designed to protect the freedom of judgment-impaired, self-destructive patients from abuse and exploitation, have the opposite effect.
We have an inalienable right to refuse shelter and sleep in a cardboard box over a subway grate during blizzards. Hospitalized patients cannot be force fed without a court order if they believe the CIA has bugged their chicken nuggets. Nor can they be detained for any appreciable time in hospitals when brought there after an acute crisis.
There is a fascistic component to the government's humanitarian overreach. It's not true altruism, reverence for life and respect for individual choice. It's a tool to control. It perpetuates the conspiratorial complex of treatment providers, insurance companies and Big Pharma.
Every once in a while, poll-boost-seeking elected officials who were complicit by willfully neglecting to meaningfully address the interlocking problems of proliferating severe mental illness, homelessness and random of violence on streets and in subways "find religion" and preach a reformed doctrine. The latest such evangelical is Governor Kathy Hochul.
She is now endorsing the involuntary hospitalization of the mentally ill (can reform of bail reform be far behind?). The criteria have as yet not been spelled out but will likely be worded in such a way as to inhibit bold enforcement. They will be too vague, fluid, subjective and limited. No doubt conditions will be attached that will reduce the initiative to mere symbolism.
Coercion, properly used, can be an instrument of mercy.
But as part of its vision, the New York Civil Liberties Union sees beyond the desperation of individuals. I want no part of their kaleidoscope. They feel that involuntary hospitalizations amount to criminalizing illness and would not advance public safety. The NYCLU is right to emphasize what should be the top priority of fixing our broken health care system. And there is an unquantifiable risk of antagonistic engagements if the National Guard or other patrols are used as adjuncts in dealing with potentially resistant or volatile people.
Needing to put a policy tourniquet on the ruptured artery of public confidence in the wake of daily stabbings, train shoving and immolations, Mayor Eric Adams said, "There is no dignity in withering away on the streets without the ability to help yourself, and there is no moral superiority in just walking by those individuals and doing nothing."
That's poetic. Now make it happen!
And let's also tidy up the "hate crimes" controversy.
As things stand, if an Icelandic person brutalizes another Icelandic person, or a Congolese another Congolese, it's no hate crime, no matter how savage and crippling the assault. Under the law, it was presumptively driven by something other than hate, so the maximum available penalty will be offset somewhat.
But if the perpetrator and victim were of different races, it can be presumed for sentencing purposes to have been enabled by loathing for sentencing purposes, and accordingly the imprisonment can be extended longer than for a greater crime between shared affinity groups.
There is no looking into people's hearts. Punishment should fit the crime, regardless of intersectionality. The category of "hate crime" is a hate crime against language and common sense.
The politicization of hatred, not just in crime classifications but also in labor relations, can have the effect of sidetracking and demeaning justice. But it can come in handy as both a valid and fraudulent tool of redress.
A simple accusation of alleged victimization is enough to cause panic among senior management or at least make them antsy.
Adams has appointed a former "community engagement" advocate for "marginalized" groups who has professional and street cred as a "grievance coordinator" at Rikers as his new executive director of the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes. This post has been vacant since last spring, following the firing of Hassan Naveed, who is suing the Adams administration on grounds of wrongful termination allegedly due to his Muslim faith. Adams claims Naveed was removed because he failed to reduce the number of hate crimes, which was his obligation to taxpayers.
Naveed is now suing Adams additionally for defamation.
If Adams sacked Naveed because of his faith, why would he have been hired in the first place?
Is there a documented under-representation of Muslims in City government agencies? Is he grasping at straws or is he onto something?
Regardless, it is ridiculous to blame him for not reducing "hate crimes." That would be the case even if they were not categorized so haphazardly. A police commissioner could reasonably be axed for failure to deploy officers or surveillance assets effectively, or to act upon inter-agency intelligence reports or otherwise to adopt proven measures that analytically have been shown to reduce crime.
But to terminate the livelihood of a person because he couldn't elicit the love in the hearts of stoned sociopaths is as they say, "a bridge too far." In fact, it's a bridge unbuilt.
At the end of the day, many of New York's worst problems will never be solved, because fortunes are being made by their perpetuation.
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