Daniel Prude would turn 45 this week. Instead, his birthday serves as an annual reminder for reforming the response to mental health-related crises. This Saturday, “Daniel’s Day” events throughout the state will renew efforts to replace police with unarmed medical professionals on most mental illness-based emergency calls.
Back in March 2020, Rochester police gagged and restrained an unclothed Prude in frigid weather due to an emergency call made due to a mental health episode. His head was covered with a “spit hood.” The Black Chicagoan, who was visiting his brother Joe and sister-in-law Valerie, died shortly after from asphyxiation.
Subsequent legislation was introduced a year by State Senator Samra Brouk and Assemblymember Harry Bronson aiming to readdress mental health crises as public health issues rather than public safety concerns. Such a move involves removing armed police officers from those emergency calls in favor of “consent-based care.” With Prude’s family’s permission, the bill was nicknamed “Daniel’s Law.”
Licensed professionals would be dispatched to deescalate mental health-related emergency calls and law enforcement would be limited to direct public safety risks. Such a law intends to minimize “non-consensual” enforcement like transporting someone experiencing a mental health crisis—which risks escalating the situation.
A Daniel’s Law Coalition sprung from advocating for such reforms by activists like Stanley Martin, who now serves on the Rochester city council.
“This grassroots fight led by people who were directly impacted is now being discussed in the New York State Legislature,” said Martin. “It’s not a small feat, so we want to give people hope. Let them know that a righteous struggle is worth having. It’s been three years and a protracted struggle but we want people to know, we’re still here. We’re still fighting and we want people to get involved in that.”
Brouk and Bronson reintroduced “Daniel’s Law” at the start of this year. A 10-person Daniel’s Law task force was established in this year’s state budget and is chaired by NYS Office of Mental Health Commissioner Ann Sullivan.
But despite the namesake, “Daniel’s Day” and “Daniel’s Law” expands past just Prude, whose highly public death shortly preceded the reckoning of the 2020 George Floyd Protests and the outlying unrest that came with related police violence. Black New Yorkers like Saheed Vassell and Eudes Pierre are others remembered as police violence victims during a mental health response. Most remembered are nonwhite.
“I’m very upset that I didn’t know how much this was happening before Eudes,” said Pierre’s cousin Sheina Banatte. “And now, after Eudes, with all this advocacy and activism, it’s still happening. We just need to stop looking to police to handle everything.”
The NYPD fatally shot Pierre in Dec. 2021 which the department deemed “suicide by cop.” But his family—including Banatte—pushed back on the narrative. Her organization, Justice for Eudes Pierre, joined the Daniel’s Law Coalition this past summer.
Ruth Lowenkron, director of disability justice at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest believes Daniel’s Law a crucial first step for a functioning statewide mental health apparatus.
“It’s only a piece of the puzzle and we need to be improving our mental health services, so that we can limit the number of crises so that we have a place to refer someone once the crisis is deescalated,” said Lowenkron. “That’s all a critical part of it. But we feel we have to focus on that moment of crisis…if people are literally dying because we’re not getting it right [responding] to that crisis, we have to act quickly.”
This is best seen locally through Rikers Island which many advocates consider the city’s largest mental health facility. Most recently, NYC Health + Hospitals reported around 1,200 city jail detainees were diagnosed with serious mental illness in May. To be clear, long standing research points to people with mental illness being more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crime.
While Daniel’s Law remains in the works up in Albany, New York City rolled out the B-HEARD pilot program in Harlem back in 2021, which deploys non-police professionals to respond to mental health calls. It’s since expanded to other boroughs, namely in precincts in Black and brown neighborhoods like East New York, Brownsville, and the South Bronx.
But Lowenkron remains critical of B-HEARD due to the lack of around-the-clock coverage and the limited areas where non-police responses are made. And the city reports just 53% of eligible calls in the second half of last year led to B-HEARD responses and that not all mental health-related calls were eligible. She says Daniel’s Law would lay out the criteria to what qualifies for a non-police response more directly.
Banatte on the other hand addressed the shortcomings but welcomed B-HEARD as an additional resource to mental health response.
Here in New York City, “Daniel’s Day” will be observed this Saturday, Sept. 23 in Crown Heights and hosted by Assemblywoman Monique Chandler-Waterman. The event takes place between 3-7 p.m. and can be found on Montgomery Street between Utica Avenue and East New York Avenue.
Author’s Note: Assemblywoman Monique Chandler-Waterman provided an additional statement following press time:
“In efforts to raise awareness of the ongoing needs around mental health, I have joined the campaign to pass Daniel’s Law, alongside my Rochester colleagues, Assemblymember Bronson and Senator Brouk, leading the charge…join me along, with the AD 58 Mental Health Taskforce on Saturday, September 23rd from 3pm-7pm at Utica Avenue and Montgomery Street in Brooklyn, New York to highlight community wellness and mental health awareness in memory of the late Daniel Prude and others impacted.”
Brouk also provided a quote following press time on the day after Saturday’s events:
“Yesterday, communities across New York gathered to honor the memory of Daniel Prude, who lost his life following an encounter with law enforcement during a mental health crisis in March of 2020.
“Daniel died because we did not have the resources and systems in place to provide him with the compassionate care he deserved. Our state has an obligation, both to his family and to New Yorkers everywhere, to transform our systems so that those in crisis can receive care from counselors and peers, who are trained and qualified to give them the care and resources they need.”
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics and public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep them writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
When one is in a “mental health crisis” or psychosis the traditional care of mental health people is not helpful at all. One needs a loving caring compassionate listener not a “paid worker”. There’s just too little real love in this world. Everyone is only out for themselves