 Good morning, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us for this very important announcement today about how we are going to be bringing compassionate care to our brothers and sisters who are suffering from severe mental illness and who are unsheltered. Before we get started, I'd like to thank all of the partners who are here today. We have the New York City Police Department, the Department of Social Services, Deputy Mayor Phil Banks and Public Safety, the New York City Law Department, Mayor's Office of Community Mental Health, Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, New York City Health and Hospitals, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the MTA, Scott Atwater and Juan Rivera from Bronx Works, and our faith-based leaders who are joining us here today. In addition, we have our elected officials, Assemblyman Jennifer Raj Kumar, Assemblymember Simka Felda, Assemblymember Eddie Gibbs, and Assemblymember Ron Kim. I would like to hand it over to Mayor Adams. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to open the questions, but let me say this first, I think Assemblyman Kim said something to me just a little while ago that really personifies where we are right now as an administration. We're not going to punt. We're not going to punt. We're not going to turn the ball over to someone else. We're not going to pretend as though what is happening on our streets, and we're just not going to run away from this issue. And we've dealt with many issues during this administration. Nothing has brought more passion than this topic right within the administration. The administration debated, looked at every line of the law. All of their feelings and emotion into this. I have not witnessed one topic for my 11 months of being a mayor of this city that did not bring out so much passion among the men and women who are in this field who have really dedicated their lives to this issue. And those of us who really believe that we have abandoned people on the streets, and all of us know it. You all know it. We're watching people standing there on the street talking to themselves, don't have shoes on, shadow boxing, unkept, and we are walking by them. We're pretending as though we don't see them. And that first month as the mayor was just so telling to me, sending those tents and those encampments, seeing human waste, stale food, dirty clothing, people who are dealing with mental health crises. And then we have to audacity to say that they should live that way. I'm just not going to do that. And I know some people may look at what we're doing, saying that we are trying to do something to take away the right of people. No, we're not. The right is that people should be able to live in dignity. There's nothing dignified about living a month without having a shower. There's nothing dignified by using a corner of a tent as a restroom, or having a month of food sitting there, or talking to yourself, being disillusioned, or waiting until you carry out a dangerous act before we respond. That is just so irresponsible that we know that this person is about to probably go off the edge and harm someone, but we're going to wait until it happens. And in this administration, we're going to be more responsive. We're going to be clear. We're going to be compassionate, but we're not punting this issue. We're going to face this issue head-on the way we face so many other issues. We're open to any questions. We have our legal team here. We have those who help us put together this approach, and we will respond to your inquiries. This is not a new law. We are going to properly define and carry out the existing law, and then partner with our partners in Albany to see what we need to correct. Talk to the state about opening up more psychiatric beds, and the cities don't have about 400 plus that were closed? And we need to get them open. You know, during COVID, a lot of our psychiatric beds had to deal with the COVID crisis. The governor has allocated 50 new beds. We are going to find a bed for everyone that needs and come into what we are doing. We will meet that challenge head-on. Same thing we said with the asylum seekers, that no one is going to sleep on the streets. We're going to meet the challenge that we are facing head-on, and we need to get everyone of those beds open, and the governor has been a partner in doing this. She gets this. We see it every day, and we're going to focus on that. Andrew, you're clarifying, you're directed. I know that outside of your remarks, you said some of this depends on legislative action. In terms of the directed now, are you ordering city agencies or outreach teams to begin today removing people from the streets of New York? And if so, how many people are you anticipating? Well, first, we don't know the anticipation of how many people are at a place where they are endangering themselves by not being able to take care of their basic needs. We don't know the count. We know there are far too many. And it was something that we discovered during this when my chief counsel stated when he went out in the subway system to do an overnighter, and we were comparing the notes. We were seeing the same thing. Many of our teams were really unsure of how to engage. The other day I spoke to a young man who didn't have any shoes on. I sat down next to him, started speaking with him. There were some issues. And if we don't do that engagement, and we don't have clarity that if a person's not taking care of their basic needs, that it endangers them, if we don't feel comfortable enough because the law is unclear, we need to make it clear. But we're sending a real message with the training today, with our teams, based on our observations from 11 months of doing this, each period of coming back, we did something different. We looked at the end of the lines. We looked at how to put people in the subway system. We kept evolving until we got to this point here. And there's going to be another evolution. There's going to be another evolution. But what we are stating, we're not going to stay, we're going to go observation. And this team is in the subway system. We're on the streets. We are engaged. You can't solve the problem from an ivory tower. And so what we're saying to our responders that we want you to be engaged, make the right determination if a person is not taking care of their basic needs. And if you can't answer the question, call the clinical experts and use your FaceTime, use whatever devices you have to go or video and show. This is what I have in front of me. Does this meet the criteria to bring this person to get evaluated at a hospital? The clinicians will make it and the police officers have a basic right to do that also. Our first frontline workers also have that right to do so also. They've been reluctant because there has not been any real clarity. And we're giving them clarity with the new training that we put in place. How many people in the city will be working on separate crossgate agencies? And what sort of determinations are police, firefighters, AMS, and everyone else going to use to determine somebody can't meet their basic needs? You gave the example of someone shadow boxing without their shoes on. But could you explain in more detail what the determination is going to be? Do you use both? Want to take a minute? I think one of the tricky things about this is that you are really going to have to look at the cases case by case because we're really looking at people who not only can't meet their basic needs but are also that's causing them to be in danger. So right now we have hundreds of outreach workers at the Department of Health, folks in H and H, also in the police department and EMS who get to a situation and feel like they need a little bit more clarity. So today we want to give them some more clarity so that they can make that good assessment to be able to transport that person to the hospital. But to remember that's only the first step. The next step is that you need to go to the hospital. It's going to be a doctor who's going to make that evaluation and to see whether or not the person needs to be kept or not. I don't know if you've teamed up with law enforcement or H&M. Correct. And I'm just asking, how many people, do you know, how many city workers will be involved? I have to get you the exact number of city workers. But as the mayor said, we've all been doing a lot of this work for the past 11 months and we're just honing in on our strategy. Kind of like a good manager and continuing to do continuous improvement. What are we learning? What are the gaps? How do we do better to make sure that people are actually getting the care and treatment that they need? And this is important, which you just asked. Also, that police officer that's on patrol, that police officer, what we are doing to evolve from what we've learned, that police officer on patrol in the subway system on the street, they're going to be handing it off to the professionals, officers who are trained to use the sensitivity, the care. Because taking the officer off patrol to spend an hour and a half, an hour to engage this person with the necessary care and patience that's needed, that is not a good use of manpower. So that officer comes into a condition that needs to be corrected. They're going to hand it off to the team of officers, police officers who have a deeper training than the surface trainer that an everyday police officer would work. So it's about the coordination. This is what we learned from what's out there. I want an officer, we have a person that's lying on a platform, uncapped, clearly is not meeting their basic needs and is endangering themselves. That officer should not spend that entire day. There should be a professional team of officers that can coach this person to get the need that they deserve. Mr. Mayor, I'm wondering if this is a program that's limited just to the homeless that you see on the street or whatever. Because as you know, almost every day there's an incident where somebody is an EDP who does something that's astonishing. It could be anything from somebody pushing somebody on the subway tracks to a moving room stabs her to children with a knife. So how do you get to those problems, the people who do things that you might not be able to anticipate that don't look like they're homeless, but definitely need mental health care? Well, this city must become a trauma identifier. And it's more than, you know, we're not only talking about those outreach workers, every one of our 320,000 employees, if they see something, say something, do something, hand it off to the proper authority. And every day New York is the 8.8 million of us. If you're watching or knowing of a condition on your block, we have to all get engaged in this. And so you're right. There are things that are happening behind the doors, but we are aware that this person is going through some severe challenges. We need to be a community. And respond as a community to people who are in need. The previous plan was wait until they do something that endangers the life of themselves or others. We're saying no to that plan. Call 311, how did you see somebody on your block that's exhibiting mental health issues and isn't obviously homeless? How do you get help for that person? Do you call an EMS? Do you call 311? Do you call 911? What do you do? It depends on the level of what they're doing. If a person is swinging around a machete, you're gonna call 911. If a person is doing something that it appears as though they're not taking care of basic needs, you call 311. And so the level of what you have observed, we wanna respond to. And some of the communities that we moved around and we are witnessing the same people in the same community doing things that's disruptive. And many of us have normalized that until that person carries out an action that harms himself or harms someone else. And we wanna stop that. Kelly. Yes, can you go into detail a little bit about these specialized teams? How they engage in these individuals? What, how they engage in these termination? If they approach somebody after the first person talks to the guest, they'll say, do you believe you have any talk with each other that maybe you should use mental health or can remain with them? I'll see you on the team members once. I can start. Kelly, I know I keep on saying that this is a kind of a case by case basis, but I don't wanna give you one example because I think as you go into, whether it's on the subway or the sidewalk, what people see is they'll engage someone that looks like they are struggling. You go up, you have a conversation with them just like all of these folks do in that engagement work. That takes time. You ask them questions. You ask them where have they been? You've asked them, do they have a place to go? Determination could be made. We could see physically that there's something wrong with them. We could see that they're not based in reality. They can then call somebody to get an assessment if they're like, I'm not really sure, except for I've been coming to this place for the past five weeks and this person has been on this same corner and it's getting really cold or there's something going on or they're talking to themselves. They then call and then they can say, and after a lot of times we see that when you really engage people and say, come on buddy, I need you to come to the hospital with me, that if you're patient with people and if you engage them, you can get them to go to the hospital. So we want the specialized teams to come to that site and then do that work and wait for the EMS to come so that we can transport them to the hospital and then we want the information to be given to the doctor that's doing that work at the hospital so that they'll be able to do a good evaluation and get that person the care that they need. Mr. Mayor, so right now in the case of Demon Fleming, the mother that tragically killed her two children she was living in a family shelter and there had been a previous incident that had been investigated where she had allegedly abused her one of her signs. Right now the city's shelter system, there's a very small fraction of mental health services available. What is the city doing to increase either physicians, clinicians, et cetera, social workers in the shelter system and also if this had previously been investigated by ACS, did the system fail and what is the city doing to correct that now? Well, we can't go into a case that's handled by ACS, by law, we're not allowed to do that. But the goal is to bring the team together. We've had a disjointed team. We will have a outreach worker or a police officer that observes someone that fits their criteria and they will bring them to the hospital. We'll give them medication for one day, put them back into the streets until we do this recycling, until something happens that they do something that's extremely harmful to themselves or others. We are moving from that. We want to hand off to continuous care. We wanna do a really valuable evaluation at the hospital, not only what happens after you give them that medication, but how are they doing follow-up services? We have to close that gap. In cases such as the unfortunate incident where we lost two children, ACS is doing a deep dive into that to find out what happened there. I don't know of a job that's more challenging than what ACS goes through. Some reports come out that they're trying to take children away from families. Another report comes out that they're not doing enough. That's not a tough call. And they're trying to have the right balance and I commend that entire team for what they're doing. I think those are professionals that are dealing with the challenges of keeping families together, but protecting children. And I think they do a good job every day, carrying that out. Hi, Mayor Adams. I wanted to ask you a two-part question. The first is, and it's related to Morgan's original question, but it's about the support of housing beds for the severely mentally ill. What will and what can the city do to increase that amount of support of housing in addition to the psychiatric beds? And the second is, there are some issues that might affect staffing and mental health providers, psychiatrists, and that also creates a bottleneck. So again, what can and what will the city do to recruit workers or to encourage people to continue to actually become this? You know, as we roll this out, we're going to see the additional needs and we're going to staff up to those needs. We're gonna continue to advocate and that's why we're happy to have our partners here from Albany. We need beds. There's no getting around that. We need beds, but we're also gonna use the technology that's available for us. I think it's a powerful tool to FaceTime, a clinical professional, and say, this is what I'm dealing with in front of me. Give me some assistance here. And we're gonna utilize all of those tools to accomplish this task, this rethinking about engagement with people who are dealing with mental health. But we need beds. We're gonna continue to staff up with psychiatric professionals. We're gonna lean into telemedicine, which is often ignored to give assistance. Every tool that's available, we are going to utilize. Mike? Mr. Mayor, so I just want to get some clarity on your answer to this colleague's question. You know, in these scenarios where you have a cop responding and then calling in this kind of more specialized team, when that more specialized team comes in, is there like a condition from the Department of Health with that team? Or is the kind of clinical advice coming from that hotline? And one more thing on the hotline is, does the hotline give the city some sort of legal spine in this, as far as if there's a challenge to kind of how the thing goes down? Okay, the team's gonna respond to that, but this stuff is so fluid. And there is not just a step-by-step. Well-trained people can make the right technical and common sense calls. And so if a police officer is on the train in an express stop and he looks out the car as the train moves forward and he sees someone laying on the platform, he's gonna call. So no more days of, you know what, I'm gonna act like I didn't see that. If he's doing routine patrol, when he starts his day, he's going to inspect his entire station. Or if he starts his post, his sector, he's gonna drive around his sector. We're now going actively and not just sitting back. That's the most important aspect of this. And so that responding officer, if it's dealing with someone that's violently acting, they're not gonna wait for someone to respond, they're gonna take action. You know, but through all the time we have to talk and give people the compassion that they deserve, we're going to give them. With safety being at the top end of the spectrum. So each case is going to come with a different scenario. So we can't give you a one-size-fits-all. We gotta train our officers, let them understand the law, understand what powers and authority they have, and utilize the tools we're giving them to execute the plan. Usually in those scenarios, it's gonna be police just running, not like this clinician, physically, they are. No, no, Brian, yeah. Sure. Hi, I'm Brian Stettin. I'm a Senior Advisor on Severe Mental Illness here at City Hall. Just to clarify, the supportive intervention teams will include a clinician from the Department of Health. The hotline is going to be set up more to provide assistance to an officer who doesn't have that team with them on the scene. So it's for an officer who's executing their own authority to make those judgment calls to get some professional advice and assistance to get some help. One more. One more call. I'm sorry. Mr. Mayor, you said basically a paraphrase. You know, no more like looking the other way when you see somebody on the platform for one of the experts, what have you. I mean, how do you enforce that? You know, I mean, so much of what police do is kind of up to discretion, like how do you have somebody kind of looking over their shoulder to say, oh, you know, you're dotting all the I's and crossing all the T's in the city? In combination, number one, it's amazing when I go out on the stations and I talk to the officers, I'm blown away at the lack of clarity. You know, we are clearing up the uncertainty that is attached to what we're asking our workers to do. And that lack of clarity on what they could do and what they can't do and giving them those additional tools that Brian just stated, being able to get on the phone and call a clinician, being able to use FaceTime to say, this is the condition I am dealing with. It gives one the comfortability they need to carry out their function. And that's the goal that we want to carry out. And historically, as I moved throughout the station, I would go to a station, I was the other day at 14th Street and there was an outstretch on the platform. And there were four officers at that large station. I said, did you guys see this outstretch? You know, so the lack of going in and seeing, we need to recalibrate our thinking. It is not acceptable for people to sleep on the platforms. You have to take some action to correct that condition. That's what we're saying, correct the conditions because when you allow that normality of, I think it was 48th Street, we were there the other day, there was this huge encampment as soon as you walked out of the subway station. And that is not what we accepted in the city. Able to have someone treated or hospitalized without their consent, once they're brought to the hospital, don't they need to sign something? That's why I brought my lawyer with me. This is, the short answer here is this is governed by the state mental hygiene law. And there are provisions under that law that allow for the involuntary commitment of individuals to the extent that they're a threat to themselves or to others. If they're a threat to themselves and causing danger to themselves, as the mayor said repeatedly in the speech, that provides a basis after a diagnosis by a clinician, by a doctor, to determine whether they meet the criteria that are set forth in the law. That allows for them to be involuntarily committed. They do not need to, by definition, they do not need to consent to that involuntary commitment. But again, certain conditions have to be met. And that's been laid out in New York State Office of Mental Health Guidance. And that's what we're talking about here today. Is it that a threat to themselves is broad enough to encompass someone not wearing shoes, talking to themselves? So as the deputy mayor said, it's a case by case determination. There are many factors, many indicia that go into each evaluation. It's not just about one fact in a given case. You have to assess the entire set of facts and circumstances. But one of the bases is if they are a threat to themselves by virtue of their inability to care for their basic needs, food, shelter, healthcare, those types of things, that can become a basis for an involuntary commitment. Just to see a scenario is the first thing that a lot of people pack out and then they come. Okay, hold on, hold on, this is important. And we want to be clear. We don't want us to walk away from this conference because someone is standing on the train talking to themselves, they're gonna be committed. Because then we're gonna commit us all. So that's not what we're saying. We're saying we're going to an accumulation of factors that is going to make a trained professional determine that this person is in danger to themselves because they can't take care of their basic needs. And it's a case by case. It's a case by case. This is not going out just because someone don't have shoes on. It's not enough to say that all of a sudden they have to be brought inside. That is not what we're saying. We're saying the accumulation of factors based on the training that people are receiving to make that determination. Now we may get to a hospital and that person may be released but this is not what we're doing. We're not going to say we're simply going to release you. We're going to be connecting you. Who is your care provider? We're going to start connecting the dots. Instead of just turning you loose from the hospital, we're going to make sure this person needs to get follow-up care so we can start building that community that we're looking for. This initiative, it's due right now that you have adequate psychiatric beds to make this initiative a success. We have beds that are empty. So as long as we have beds that are empty, we need to fill those beds that are empty. And we need to always be calling for more. That's what we have, our state partners here. But we have empty beds. And so let's first deal with the empty beds we have so that we can continue to call for the ones that we need. Well, the governor gave us 50 more. Do we have the exact count on what's available? It's 50 now. We have 50 now. How are you? Two questions. When I'm hearing all of these points and your lawyer touched on the fact that a lot of this is already in place and stayed long in terms of the criteria to get someone to bring someone in voluntarily in. It sounds like we're hearing a lot of stuff that is already there and in place. So again, touching on the point going forward, what's changed? How is this, I understand you're saying we're gonna hold people accountable. We're telling the patrol officers, we have specialized officers that are gonna come in. So how do we make this work? Why would it be different now? And also circling back to again the issue from all accounts, the mom and the Bronx with the two kids, there were signs from both people living there saying that she was in crisis and this was not the first time. But they're saying there's zero support for these moms. This dad and queens who had his little boy, he's now charged and his dad. Where is the support for those folks who are also struggling with some type of mental illness? Let's appeal this back in pieces. First, as we indicated, based on our field observation, and that's what's unique about this administration. We don't just put policies in place. We go into the field and see how is that policy actually enacted? We started out in February of dealing with the encampments and what have you. We evolved to go into the end of the line subway stations and bring it into teams to help us. So this is a continuous evolution. The biggest problem we saw at this version is the lack of clarity. Officers and others are unsure of taking care of your basic needs. They were unsure of that. That's what the training is doing. Now we're going out with a better version on what we put in place already. Now when we go to the incident that happened with both the two babies, the incident, also in Brooklyn, and the incidents we find is that when we say where is the support? The support is there. But if you live in apartment 4D and you see a mother in 4C that's having a problem, share that support. Everyone is saying, what is government is doing? And I'm saying to New Yorker, what are we doing? We are well aware of what's happening in our community. We have all these supportive services. We have psychiatrists. We have support if you can't take care of your child. You can drop them off to locations where we would take care of them until you get steady. All of these are in place. But if we don't share this information to the people we come in contact with, then it's never going to be successful. We're going to do our part, but we need everyday New Yorkers, if you see someone in crisis, be a trauma identifier and assist that person of the resources that this city has available. So it's one thing if we didn't have those systems in place, but we do. We have systems in place to help people in need. When we see them, we help them, but we need New Yorkers to help us with this also. This assessment is going to look like from the officers or FDNY or EMS. When we talk about that assessment, obviously they mentioned the shadow box from the street, but besides those basic assessments, what point do they deem, for example, if somebody's not that obvious of objection, I think they had as you went out a little bit, what are the clinicians going to be looking for? We say that assessment. What is that assessment going to be? And a couple of weeks ago, you mentioned about new facilities that we're going to be going up in the city. I think you mentioned two of them you had. Can you give us an update as to what is the status of those facilities where I presume these people are going to be taken back? Brian. How about Mitch? Mitch, you've done a 958 before, having a one person. Hey, hello everyone. I'm Dr. Mitch Katz. I'm the president and CEO of Health and Hospitals, and I have done 958 removals from the subway. The key issues, and yes, sir. So a 958 is when you are removing somebody because you believe that they couldn't be, can be of harm to themselves or to others. And the can be is very important to understand as part of the law because you cannot do a thorough mental health assessment when you're in the subway system. You cannot be asking all kinds of personal questions about people's experience of violence or what their thoughts are. The trains are going by when I've done them these removals before. It's hard to hear. The whole point of the law was to say that in this case train clinicians or in the case of 9.41, which is what the police officers can use, that good city workers who see things as the mayor says that are troubling have the ability to say you need to come for a full evaluation. Now when that full evaluation happens, the psychiatrists may conclude this is not someone with mental illness. This is somebody who is on drugs. Different issue, isn't part of the mental health law. You can't know that on a subway station. Somebody looks and acts psychotically. You can't know whether or not that's because they just took a hit of fentanyl or whether they have an existing mental illness. Once they go to the emergency room, psychiatric clinicians will observe that person and then make a determination. And if I can, so I just want to add something else that you had said, because I think it's so important. I can't understate how much the myth of the person has to be an eminent suicidal or homicidal has permeated the system, including our own clinicians. And I think that that's why what the mayor has done today is so important because he's clarifying for everyone, everyone from a police officer, a mental health clinician, a psychiatrist working in the hospital, that our best lawyers have looked at the existing guidance and clarified, as the deputy mayor says, their individual determinations, but they do not have to mean that someone is about to kill themselves, kill somebody else. That the terms of the law are much broader. Thank you, sir. Just for the follow-up, if I can just bear it. If I was on the subway and an officer said to me, I'm deeming you as somebody who is incapable, you need an assessment. And if I said no, I don't, what is, is there a legal compulsion by that officer to put me under arrest regardless of whether or not I go, regardless of whether or not I'm exhibiting any other symptoms like, let's say, the shadow box, for instance, similar to when an officer puts somebody under arrest and once that process begins, there is no ability to get at it. Okay, and I got you. At first I thought you were talking about specifically you. You know. You know, but, and we want to be clear, not wearing shoes, shadow boxing, talking to oneself. That is not the criteria. You know, we need behavior and you cannot take out your basic needs. We want to be very clear on that because we don't want that, you know, we bringing people to the hospital because they shadow boxing. That is not what we're saying. And each case, as the deputy mayor stated over and over again, is the individual case. We have found that if you spend the necessary time to speak with people and engage them in a real way, we have found they're more likely to take the services. That's what we've found. If we believe that a person is going to carry out, you know, some severe damage to themselves, to others, we're going to use minimum amount of engagement to give them the care that they need when not leaving people without the services that they deserve. And if it's determined that they don't, as the doctor stated, then that's the determination. You want to add something else? Just two points related to this, which I meant to add earlier. This mental hygiene law provides for due process for those who are involuntarily committed. It provides for prescribed periods of time for the commitment. There has to be a renewed showing during these prescribed periods of time. It also provides for the opportunity for individuals who are involuntarily committed to petition a court to undo that commitment. So again, this is existing law. There are rights that attach to those who are involuntarily committed. So it's not, Mark, I know this wasn't the suggestion of your question, but it's not just, okay, there's a decision made by a police officer, a clinician, on a subway platform, and then that's it. There are multiple levels of review here. I think that's just important to keep in mind. I'm sorry? For Dr. Katz, as someone who's done this kind of work and as far as your interpretation of this more broad understanding of this law goes, what are some situations in the past where you might have, where you might now take action under this more broad interpretation? When I've done removals before from the subway, it was because they fit the criteria that the deputy mayor has said. That is that I could tell as a clinician that they had an existing mental illness and that their behavior was preventing them from meeting their needs. And when they went to the hospital, they were then fully evaluated and cared for. I think the way what the mayor has done, which is so important, is that I think what many people have thought is, well, this person's not hurting themselves at the moment. When I think back to some of the people where I've done removals, they were not attacking anyone. They were not stabbing themselves. They were people deep in psychosis who were not seeking needed medical care, who were not dressed appropriately for the weather, who were in always not caring for themselves. But again, I think the myth has been, well, this person, and I would say that, and one of the ones I remember, I remember someone calling out, well, this person, they're not hurting anyone. Why are you taking them in? They're not arrested there, just because we use the word arrested. These are people being brought to a hospital. But I think the myth has been, well, they're not hurting anyone. They're just sitting, they're rocking on the subway platform. They're just lying out, why are you bothering this person? And that's what the mayor has, I think, really clarified for all of us. Does this generally apply to street homeless? Because by definition, they cannot meet basic needs. People who are living on our streets, our subway systems in the lobbies of ATM destinations on your stoop, it doesn't matter. This is about caring for people who are in need. That we are going to say we see you and we're going to give you the services you need and deserve. And even if it's determined after going into the hospital that they don't need that level, we're gonna make sure they hand it off to the care. We don't want people slipping through the cracks. So two questions, how long is the assessment duration it's gonna be and how we're gonna face the issues that occurred during the assessment period? And the second is, do we have further adjustment on the daily mental health issues that our police officers have been suffering every day because they're in the front line to dealing with the rising crimes related to the mental health issues? Well, and the doctor could talk about the assessment period, but police officers have many internal counseling services that are available to them. We saw that during 2021 and 2020 when we were dealing with a slew of suicides and they were already counseling service internally and they have extended some of them. The police commission has been really focused on that because you're right, the many officers are dealing with vicarious trauma because they deal with many of these experiences and we're gonna continue to give them the support they need. Doctor? On the assessment, it's a multi-stage process as the mayor's council has explained. So on a subway platform, either a mental health clinician or a police officer, depending upon what we're talking about, are going to need a sufficient assessment to feel that this person has a serious mental illness, but that's why they're acting the way that they are and that they are unable to take care of themselves. And sometimes that involves talking to them, asking them what their plans are, where are they planning on going, where do they receive their medical care, where did they live, when did they last eat. It is not a long assessment, but once they are removed and brought to a hospital, that's where they need to get the full assessment. And those assessments can often be, the initial assessment can be, an hour or two as a first assessment and then often people are allowed a period of time to stay in the emergency room and reassess, especially in cases where there may be drugs on board that are affecting the person's behavior. And then as the mayor said, what we want is really mental illness is a lifelong illness. And so you want to keep in touch with the person, you wanna make sure that even once they're leaving the hospital, as the mayor has said, they are connected with the services they need. What's any good in the hospital during this time and would that cause like the shortage or hence to the hospital's accommodation? Well, he's my boss and he's told me that we are going to take care of everybody who needs to be taken care of in the health and hospital system and we are absolutely committed to that. We have as the mayor has said, had challenges around workforce as many employers private and public know in New York City as an outgrowth of the COVID pandemic but we are able to open additional beds and we will seek from the state whatever flexibility we need around staffing in order to meet the need of the city. Just to put a finer point on Paul's question, is the state of being homeless on the streets of New York enough to qualify someone for an evaluation for this new criteria? The answer to that is no. It is, as has been stated, the parent presence of a mental illness and that the person is unable to meet their basic needs as evidenced by, as was said, a range of factors. So this is certainly not gonna be the reason for a sweep of all homeless folks. My case thing, it's gonna be a subjective evaluation. What kind of protections are there to avoid biases coming into play, whether it's against the homeless or against people of color in this situation? Yeah, well, I would certainly say that the training that is gonna be provided is going to be an enormous factor in making sure that doesn't happen. And also the due process the person receives at the end of the day, the person chooses to challenge their admission to the hospital, it's gotta be proven, right? By clear and convincing evidence that the person meets the criteria and we rely on the courts to make sure people's rights are protected. Thank you, thank you, thanks y'all. Thank you, Sylvia, Judge Atch. Got it. I'm not sure of whichever one is playing. I don't keep up with all the games, I just wanna make sure that we can do it right when they come here. Which one? No, no, no. The hosts of the anti-Semitism mayoral conference, they are picking that up and for the cutters trip, it's on my dime. When I do my dime, I could do my time and I won't hear anyone whine. We are finding now that telemedicine is being used with dealing with mental health illnesses and remember it is not to make the final determination if that person is going to be admitted or not, it is to give the basic enhancement on the training that officers and those clinicians in the street will already have. No one's been trying to get a question. What does this do for that? Nothing specifically to deal with that question because I noticed also and part of what we are looking at, I was at Help USA on Randall's Island a little while ago and I believe we should be start looking at how do we put a lot of this help right on site? Not only the mental health, but even the healthcare and we're really looking at the feasibility of placing right on site so people could get the assistance they need and that's the way of factoring now. Are you looking at the possibility that some shelters could open up site beds and have the services provided there? No, that's not in our plan right now and we want to encourage private hospitals because not only did H&H, do they have beds, but many of our private hospitals, we're going to be meeting with our private hospitals in state that we're going to need help from the private hospitals as well to open psychiatric beds. Good afternoon, Mayor. How are you? How are you? Good, good. How came Jeffery's appears boys to take over for resources for New York City to talk to you about with that position prepared for being for getting stuff to launch? Yeah, well I think that it really helps to express probably the quote from one of our greatest philosophers of our time, Biggie Smalls, spread love the Brooklyn way. We got Schumer in the Senate of my good friend, Hakeem Jefferies in Congress. We spoke the other day and I'm just really excited about these two Brooklyn kids. Ron is running the largest city in America and the other is going to be leading his delegation in Washington. We both talked about this is a great moment for our city and we look forward, we have a real federal legislative agenda that we put together. We're going to be traveling to Washington and we will sit down speaking with him and the other delegation as well. We still have an asylum and migrant issue. We still, New York sends billions of dollars to Washington DC that oftentimes we don't get in return and so we're in a good place as the city I believe having Hakeem there and I just look forward to his run when he becomes the lead of his conference. Well, right now she's a little under the weather. I spoke to her this morning and she's a little under the weather. And you said on waiting list, I'm sorry, you said waiting list for? And help me understand when you say waiting list, like I'm not understanding. Yeah, I'm not aware that they're long waiting lists and I think we need to think differently about our evaluations. As I stated, I was always an advocate since 2017 on using telemedicine. We are so far behind and not using telemedicine, you could do it for not only physical, but you could do it for mental health reasons as well. It allows you to expedite appointments, allow people to do it right from their homes or their offices. We have not used telemedicine enough and we want to see to expand that. You don't have to only sit inside a doctor's office or a psychiatrist's office to be properly diagnosed and get the support you deserve. Evidence is all the reading that I'm seeing is stating that we can utilize telemedicine better and that's what we want to do in this administration. But I want to look at the backlog that we're having because people need to get in to get the assessments they deserve. Thank you. Thanks. I appreciate it. Do you have two questions or things? Anything I learned by being on the ground on our subway system to deal with mental health issues? I'm an on-the-ground person. I mean, I don't know why is that surprising. I go on the ground to observe. I've done that throughout this entire 30 years. You have to be on the ground to see what's going on. I do it in the subway system. I do it in my schools. I do it in my homeless shelters. I do it on NYCHA. This is nothing new. Why is it surprising that I go on the ground to inspect what is happening? I want to see. We're getting ready to have the railcups here. It's a huge undertaking and I want to, since I'm in the region already to deal with the anti-semitism, I'm taking a quick flight on my dime to go inspect what is happening there so that we can be prepared. I'm an on-the-ground guy. I'm reluctant to say yay, nay, because it seems like that's all people want to talk about is bail reform. Yes, yes, yes. When we had our summit at Gracie Mansion, discovery how both prosecutors and DAs understand the amount of paperwork that's needed from discovery is just unbelievable. The getting cases through the court system. Justice is meaning that a person that's a victim of a crime is coming to a conclusion if this person committed to crime and it also means that someone should not be sitting on Rikers Island for three years waiting to go to a court system. Justice is not leaving Rikers Island in the morning, waiting three hours to see a judge, for 30 seconds and then going back. The criminal justice system is broken and so I know bail reform is a buzz turn but I've been saying this over and over again. The process is broken and we need to look at the entire process that includes giving judges the discretion with those with imminent threat. So it's a combination. What the commissioner has been pointing out, when you do an analysis of the crimes that we are facing, gun crimes, robberies, burglaries, grand larceny, so many repeated offenders. Some of these guys got open cases. They're repeated offenders and we have to start keeping dangerous people in jail. Couple of things we wanna look at. I'm gonna continue to talk about the imminent threat, give judge the discretion and Albany doesn't have to agree with me but I have to raise the issues and understanding Albany sometimes it takes years to get what you have advocated for. Many of my bills, the bills that I've passed took more than one session. I'm going to continue to advocate for that. I'm going to advocate for funding for prosecutors and the defense attorney so they could do their job. We need to use technology for information sharing. There's no reason we're still using paper when we could have a centralized system which private firms are doing to share information. We need to look at those repeated offenders. They're just some dangerous people who have made up their minds that they're not going to stop committing crimes. Application to FEMA and also the state for money for the migrant crisis. Have you submitted the necessary documents to request money from the federal government? Yes, we have and we're waiting for the money to come in and we believe going back to the question that was asked, we believe having someone like a hockey team, Jeffries and Senator Schumer, is going to really help us get the resources we need on the city and on the federal and state level. Thank you. Thank you. How much?