Last week, the State Senate suggested, in its one-house budget resolution, designating $2 million toward a pilot program replacing police with trained medical workers as default mental health call responders.
The suggested amendment to the governor’s budget would provide a small-scale preview to the Daniel’s Law bill, which establishes a uniform, statewide approach to non-law enforcement responses to mental health calls, including here in New York City, if passed.
State Senate sponsor Samra Brouk told the Amsterdam News the proposed money would go to programs following the “tenets of Daniel’s Law.” The Rochester legislator, who chairs the mental health committee, adds there’s no stipulation for where the pilot would be placed in the state.
“The truth that we all unfortunately know is that anytime there are adverse outcomes across this country, [and] certainly in New York State, the people feeling the brunt of those adverse and negative outcomes are largely people of color, and specifically Black people,” said Brouk. “When we say things like ‘people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter,’ we know that the people feeling that statistic are most likely Black people with untreated mental illness. We [also] know from all the data that Black people are in worse off positions when they have these encounters.
“And so when we are able to solve for those things, we’re going to help anyone who finds themselves in one of these situations. At the end of the day, we’re trying to make New York a safer place whether you have a mental diagnosis or not.”
The announcement coincides roughly with four years since Rochester police killed the legislation’s namesake, Daniel Prude. On March 23, 2020, the Black Chicagoan experienced a mental health episode while visiting his brother Joe in upstate New York. Police responded to a 911 call and restrained an unclothed Prude with a mesh bag over his head known as a “spit hood” and pinned him to the frigid street. He later died by homicide, partly from asphyxiation, according to the medical examiner. The officers were not charged.
“No person deserves to be treated like their life doesn’t matter, especially in their moments of need. I’m thankful to Senator Samra Brouk and Assemblymember Harry Bronson for securing this funding for a Daniel’s Law pilot, and I hope that Governor Hochul supports this funding in the final budget,” said Joe Prude in a statement.
Daniel’s Law would prevent police from responding to similar calls, but the bill is not uncharted, unexplored territory, Brouk said. The architects of Daniel’s Law draw heavily from the Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets (CAHOOTS) program in Eugene, Ore., which deploys a pair of non-law enforcement personnel—a crisis worker and a medical professional—to handle mental health calls. Neither carries weapons. Instead, they employ their verbal skills and medical expertise.
The mobile crisis service is contracted through the White Bird Clinic by the City of Eugene (and sister city Springfield), but is officially integrated into the 911 dispatch system and regarded as the “third branch” of public safety, next to the police and fire department.
“We’ve found that oftentimes when folks are in crisis, they have multiple issues that present and so that’s why having the EMT paired with a crisis worker is really important,” said Adam Walsh, CAHOOTS development and external relations coordinator. “There’s often a mental and physical component to what folks have going on. We can take vitals; we check blood sugar; we can provide wound care, basic first aid, and then also [provide] crisis de-escalation: We do welfare checks, we do death notifications; these types of things.”
Beyond responding to 911 calls, CAHOOTS teams can also be reached through the 988 suicide and crisis hotline, as well as the city’s non-emergency police hotline, so there’s “no wrong door,” said Walsh. But the program does not respond when a crime occurs, nor does it handle situations when a weapon is present, barring those exclusively involving self-harm.
How can New York apply the best practices from CAHOOTS in the event of Daniel’s Law becoming state law? Eugene Springfield Deputy Fire Chief Chris Heppel said a successful program goes beyond shuffling personnel.
“Who is doing the work can drive a lot of the perception as to why the person or persons are there and what their true intent is,” said Heppel. “CAHOOTS is very clear as to what their intent is. It’s very collaborative. It’s about partnership with the patients: What do you want to do and how can we help you today? And then ‘Let’s move forward.’ I’ve seen some systems attempt to implement this and it was just ‘Well, we’re just going [to] send this instead of that.’
“But they still end up in the same place or [with the same] outcomes, whatever that case may be, so there’s a lot more to it than just simply assigning a resource.”
Luke Sikinyi, public policy director for the Alliance for Rights and Recovery, said while programs like CAHOOTS provide a critical blueprint, the Daniel’s Law pilot allows a localized understanding of how statewide programs would operate.
“We do need to also give some data to how [about] works in our state,” said Sikinyi. “The goal of getting the pilots up is to, one, provide that service immediately to at least a small number of folks, and then also to provide more information to the task force in the state at large on how to best implement this program in an area in New York state. We’re a very different state from Oregon or California, and making sure that we have data that we can rely on that is coming directly from our state [is vital].”
Beth Haroules, director of disability justice litigation for the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), said quantifying the pilot’s data could be tough. She believes anecdotal evidence is crucial.
“Measuring individual success is always very difficult in a social services delivery model,” said Haroules. “But if a person is traumatized or put into involuntary treatment, they’re taken out of their community. Do they lose a job? If they lost their jobs, did they lose their housing? What happened—are there children in the family? Is there a partner? How do you measure that?”
Last year, a Daniel’s Law Task Force was formed to examine how the bill would roll out if passed. It included commissioners of several statewide agencies like the New York State offices of mental health and division of criminal justice services.
Ruth Lowenkron, director of disability justice for the New Yorker Lawyers for the Public Interest, believes the pilot can sway state lawmakers who are on the fence about Daniel’s Law.
“It’s a real exciting opportunity to ensure that Daniel’s Law will be passed and to ensure that legislators understand what a great concept Daniel’s Law is, because they will have an opportunity before they sign on the dotted line before they pass it—before they vote on it—to see how it would work in New York,” she said. “Because it’s based on programs that really work, in large part on CAHOOTS, we’re very confident it will succeed.
“…we are getting the sense from discussions at the task force that the elected officials and the legislators appreciate seeing what it would look like here in our neck of the woods.”
The State Assembly also included a proposal requiring the Daniel’s Law Task Force to “establish one or more pilot programs to support community-led and public health responses for persons experiencing a behavioral health crisis” in its recommendations.
But is $2 million enough? Last year, the State Senate suggested $10 million for the Daniel’s Law pilot. Gov. Kathy Hochul rejected the suggestion, instead forming the task force. Walsh and Heppel said $2 million does not go far for launching a program like CAHOOTS.
The NYPD currently has the Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division (B-HEARD) pilot, which operates largely in Black and brown neighborhoods like Harlem and the South Bronx by sending teams of two EMTs and a crisis worker to handle mental health calls. However, only around half of the eligible 13,350 calls received a crisis unit response instead of police between July and December 2022. The AmNews contacted the NYPD to find out whether B-HEARD would consider participating in the Daniel’s Law pilot, but received no response by press time.
Shay Herbert, a NYCLU organizer in Rochester, underscored the roles of those living with mental health conditions contributing to Daniel’s Law.
“Especially here in New York, there are a million programs that are rolled out and it’s supposed to be the answer,” she said. “They’re supposed to be the solution and nobody was put into those conversations. [The Daniel’s Law] coalition meets every Wednesday, and it’s open. People can join and hear because this is a community-led, community-focused bill that really strives to make sure that we are meeting each other where we’re at.”
While Daniel’s Law cycles through the state legislature, Brouk said rebuilding mental health infrastructure that was gutted in New York over the past few decades is tantamount. The bill necessitates not only more crisis workers, but culturally competent ones. Efforts like removing racially biased barriers for the state’s social worker licensing would diversify the workforce in preparation for Daniel’s Law being passed.
“We’re only a couple of years into rebuilding that infrastructure,” said Brouk. “There’s no successful Daniel’s Law or any of these pieces of legislation without [a] mental health workforce. We have a very dwindling mental health workforce…specifically with things like this, we know where we need to invest. We know where we need to build up the mental [health] infrastructure.”
A more robust mental health apparatus expands beyond emergency responses—even when a program like CAHOOTS is present.
“[A] misconception is that we’re solving a bigger problem,” said Heppel. “What I mean by that is CAHOOTS operates in our mental health world—they’re responding to growing mental health challenges in our community, but they’re not the answer to our mental health challenges. They are our answer to responding to mental health challenges. The problem doesn’t go away because CAHOOTS responded.”
A rally commemorating Daniel Prude will take place in New York City outside City Hall on Thursday, Mar. 21, at 9 a.m.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
Author’s Note: An editing error originally naming NYCLU the “New York City Liberties Union” instead of the “New York Civil Liberties Union” was corrected from the initial story.