REMARKS
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams addresses mental health crisis response and B-HEARD program
0:18:00
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4 min
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams provides an overview of New York City's mental health crisis response, focusing on the B-HEARD program and its challenges. He emphasizes the need for better-equipped responders than police officers and highlights issues with staffing, training, and resource allocation.
- Williams discusses the importance of expanding B-HEARD's coverage and improving 911 dispatch training for mental health calls.
- He addresses the need for fair compensation and incentives for EMS workers and mental health professionals joining B-HEARD teams.
- The Public Advocate emphasizes the urgency of prioritizing resources for alternative responses to mental health crises to prevent tragic outcomes.
Jumaane Williams
0:18:00
Thank you, ma'am.
0:18:01
Cheers.
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Peace and blessed to everyone.
0:18:03
Happy Monday.
0:18:04
Good morning again.
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My name is Jermione Williams, public advocate of the City of New York.
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Thank you to Cheers, Lee, Salam, Nocis, and Ooyala, and members of the communities of mental health.
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Disability and addiction, public safety hospitals, and fire, and emergency management for holding this hearing today.
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Each year each year response to approximately 200,000 calls related to people experiencing a mental health crisis.
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Now despite most often being the first responders, we know that our police are not the best equipped to safely and effectively handle these calls.
0:18:36
Additionally, officers have also themselves expressed that they do not want to be responding to these calls.
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When law enforcement responds to people in mental health crisis, though those who need help are often subject to use of force, arrest, incarceration, and at times, unfortunately, even death.
0:18:51
A lot of tragedies where people in mental health crisis are killed by law enforcement militaries across the country have implemented various alternative response models.
0:18:59
In 2021, New York City launched a behavioral health emergency assistance response division or be heard.
0:19:05
Be heard teams or FDNY EMTs or paramedics team with a mental health professional firm, high health and hospitals also h and h.
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These teams operate 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 31 precincts out of a total of 77 precincts.
0:19:18
It is all it has been heartening to hear that the number of 91 calls that be heard sponsors increasing, responding to 73% of all eligible mental health calls in FY 24.
0:19:29
But our goal should be for those teams to respond to every eligible call that comes in.
0:19:33
Also note that when you count on the quote unquote ineligible, that number dropped very significantly to 30%, and we have to look at the definitions of eligible and eligible.
0:19:43
Many of the challenges that be heard of faces lie in inadequate staffing.
0:19:46
There was a shortage of 911 operators who can appropriately triage the calls leading to default police response.
0:19:51
It can be difficult to discern over the phone what is happening at the scene and whether there is a risk of harm or to the caller or to the responders.
0:19:58
The city is hiring more 911 staff allow and allowing be her teams to join or take over the responses to some calls that were initially routed to the NYPD or EMS, but we do not have the data on how often the NYPD or EMS calls and be her to assist on a call.
0:20:14
Is also imperative to ensure that 911 dispatches are properly trained in how to effectively determine which calls can be sent to be heard.
0:20:21
Dispatch training must be improved to incorporate dispatching from mental health crisis to ways such as mental health solution tree that will branch off in separate dispatching categories for various responses.
0:20:31
Mental health training must be conducted regularly to ensure calls are being appropriately dispensed dispatched to the right teams.
0:20:37
Staffing of the be heard teams themselves is also an issue.
0:20:40
Currently, the teams only operate 16 hours per day, and calls that are determined to be eligible for be her response may go to police or traditional EMS anyway because the be her term is not team is not available.
0:20:52
It is understandable that be her responses may take much longer than typical police response as de escalation determining what an individual crisis needs takes time.
0:21:00
Just wanna point out that shouting at someone to put something down is not a de escalation tactic.
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These calls can also be more challenging than a non mental health cause to EMS.
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We should be incentivizing EMS workers and paramedics to join be her teams and compensating them fairly for the work they are doing.
0:21:16
The city should also be allocating funding directly to h and h to higher social workers, mental health professionals, also peers for be her teams.
0:21:24
While the city has not detailed what the city might be her program program looks like.
0:21:27
If the program scaled up staffing in the same proportion, it had in the 25 precincts, that would mean 280 people for all of the cities to 27 precincts compared to 35,000 NYPD offices.
0:21:39
If we want an effective alternative to police responses, to people in mental health crisis, we must be meaningfully prioritizing resources for that response.
0:21:48
Otherwise, we continue to endanger not only those who need help, but those who respond.
0:21:53
And we have heard the names of Wynn Rosario, Kawasaki trial traffic, and Deborah Danna, Eleanor bumpers.
0:22:00
I know miss Peggy Herrera is here.
0:22:02
Mohammed Baal called to get help, and their children are no longer with us.
0:22:07
And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the subway shooting because we do know that missing Nichols, more than likely it was failed, but our system long before that shooting occurred.
0:22:16
We are at a point in time where we all agree that we need to do more with mental health, and I hope we have the coverage to actually put the systems in place so that we don't have to add any more people to those names.
0:22:28
Thank you.
