New York in the month of December becomes the most decorated metropolis in the United States. This Wednesday (30), the annual opening ceremony of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, in downtown Manhattan, marks a tradition that began almost a century ago, far from the current sumptuous spectacle with concerts by pop stars.
The first tree was lit at the Rockefeller Center construction site in 1931, with the country plunged into the Great Depression, by Italian workers who decorated a modest pine tree with fruit, strips of paper and empty cans.
On the subway lines under the stage of this week’s show, a controversial police operation begins among New Yorkers for whom depression is present. Mayor Eric Adams announced that police officers will be able to forcibly take homeless people who appear, in his assessment, to have mental disorders to hospitals.
The decision is an obvious reaction to crimes committed by aggressors diagnosed with a condition of this type. One of these, qualified as random and which is rare but frightening, occurs when passengers are pushed on the subway tracks – this year alone, at least 25 cases have been recorded, with two deaths of people hit by trains.
The number of people apprehended in New York with a history of mental disorders has risen in the last five years, and now they represent a quarter of the city’s inmates. There are two social crises that feed each other — mental health, aggravated by the pandemic, and the vast population living on the streets in large American cities.
An estimated 3,400 people live on New York’s streets — a fraction of the population of more than 70,000 homeless in shelters — many of whom spend more time in stations and trains when the temperature cools, starting in October; this is when incidents reported by passengers increase.
The Supreme Court established jurisprudence on forced hospitalization for mental disorders in the 1970s, which it considered a massive curtailment of freedom.
But Mayor Adams made no mention of crimes when announcing the new involuntary curfew measures. In a far-fetched speech on Tuesday (29), he took rhetorical flights to describe the measures as part of a humanitarian initiative. He also did not explain how he will meet the ambitious goal of finding psychiatric beds in a city that halved them during the pandemic.
Currently, the law requires that a homeless person taken to a hospital be evaluated within 72 hours and, as the psychiatric bed is one of the smallest sources of revenue in the most expensive health system in the world, it is no coincidence that these patients are quickly returned to the open air.
It was noteworthy how Adams expanded the scenario that would constitute a risk of violence on the part of the homeless, using examples such as people talking to themselves in the streets. The critics’ perception is that the former police officer, elected on an overly crime-focused platform, acts as a cleanup, not a gesture of compassion.
People with mental illnesses live on the streets in part because there isn’t enough investment in public health — and because New York has the most expensive square footage on the continent. If they were threatened with forced confinement, maybe politicians would work for a solution.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
