City Council Testimony on CIT
We continue to advocate for more training for NYPD officers to improve relations between police and the mental health community. On September 6, I testified before the New York City Council and called on the mayor to revive his 2014 Task Force on Criminal Justice and Behavioral Health. Here is my testimony:
Thank you to the members of the Council for hearing this testimony today. My name is Carla Rabinowitz. I am the Advocacy Coordinator at Community Access and the Project Coordinator of CCITNYC, a coalition of 75 organizations and stakeholders whose mission is to improve relations between the NYPD and the mental health community by advocating for a fully responsive Crisis Intervention Team approach and diverting mental health recipients away from the criminal justice system.
Community Access is a 44 year old non-profit that helps people with mental health concerns through quality supportive housing and employment training.
CCITNYC and Community Access request that you revive the Mayor’s Task Force on Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice. This Task Force met twice in 2014 and has since been defunct.
We ask that you recommend the Mayor assign this Task Force to the oversight of a Deputy Mayor.
We need all stakeholders and all city and state agencies at the table to suggest alternatives to police responding to these EDP calls. Expanding co-response teams throughout the city, more mobile crisis teams, and pairing mental health peers with police to calm down these encounters are a few ideas to explore.
Some of the contributions of the Task Force have already been taken up by the city, including the implementation of CIT training for some members of the NYPD.
The NYPD training is going well, though there is still a significant need for adequate training.
We ask that at least 15,000 officers be trained, especially since Rikers is closing and there will be more of these encounters. Countless people have been saved by CIT officers. CIT officers saved a child threatening his mom with a knife, and stopped many potential suicides.
But CIT training alone is not going to prevent these recurring deaths. Since the NYPD started CIT training, at least 6 mental health recipients have died in police encounters.
Mario Ocasio, Age 51: June 2015
Rashan Lloyd, Age 25: June 2016
Deborah Danner, Age 66: October 2016
Ariel Galarza, Age 49: November 2016
Dwayne Jeune, Age 32: July 2017
Andy Sookdeo, Age 29: August 2017
We need to intercept and divert issues before mental health recipients get into crisis, and for that we need funding of community services.
We need alternatives to hospitals, which recipients fear, like Respite care, where people in crisis can learn to recover and get connected to long term support.
We need to support the police by building diversion centers to provide a rapid handoff of New Yorkers in acute crisis from police custody to get immediate care and long term connections to community resources.
We need community forums with police and mental health recipients to reduce the fear in the mental health community when the police arrive.
And most importantly, we need the Mayor to revive his 2014 Task Force on Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice. And place this Task Force under a Deputy Mayor, with the resources to get things done.
We need all stakeholders and all city and state agencies at the table to suggest alternatives to police responding to these EDP calls. Expanding co-response teams throughout the city, more mobile crisis teams, and pairing mental health peers with police to calm down these encounters are a few ideas to explore.
Therefore we ask that you recommend the Mayor revive his 2014 Task Force on Criminal Justice and Behavioral Health.
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Carla Rabinowitz
Advocacy Coordinator
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212-780-1400, ext. 7726
