NYC Tried To Remove NYPD From 911 Mental Health Emergencies—But It’s Had Little Success

After launching in parts of Harlem this summer, New York City is planning to expand a pilot program that enables 911 to dispatch teams that are led by social workers to mental health calls instead of the NYPD. The B-HEARD program will cover all of Harlem by early November before expanding into the Bronx.

But new data released Friday suggests that even as the program’s reach grows, 911 operators still send the overwhelming majority of mental health calls — about three of every four — to police teams. It’s a protocol that New Yorkers with mental illness, their family members and mental health advocates have fought to change in recent years.

“[The police] are not trained to be person-centered,” said Christina Sparrock, a mental health advocate who lives with bipolar disorder and is on the advisory committee for B-HEARD. “There’s yelling and screaming that will further escalate the situation.”

During the first three months of its operation between early June and late August, 1,478 emergency mental health calls were made to 911 operators in the areas serviced by the program. Only 23% of those calls — 342 incidents — were routed to B-HEARD teams. The rest of the mental health crises were initially shared with traditional response teams involving the cops. In both cases, emergency medical technicians or paramedics were dispatched as well.

On top of that, B-HEARD was often under-resourced and didn’t have enough personnel to handle all of the emergencies shared by 911 operators. The program had to redirect 17% of calls back to the police.

Ultimately, NYPD-backed teams fielded 80% of all the mental health emergencies recorded in the three precincts in Harlem where B-HEARD launched. The latest figures are similar to the data that was released from the program’s first month, suggesting little progress has been made.

At least 18 people have been killed by the NYPD in the midst of a mental health crisis over the last six years, according to a tally from the advocacy group Correct Crisis Intervention Today-NYC (CCIT-NYC). This coalition of mental health organizations originally launched in 2014 with a focus on training police in how to de-escalate these situations. After that training failed to put an end to incidents in which police shot and killed those they were called to help, the group changed its mission in early 2020 and sought to take police out of the equation entirely.

According to the city’s report on the first three months of this year’s pilot, the mental health calls that were not routed to B-HEARD fell into three categories. They involved people who either had to be immediately taken to a hospital; were at risk of “imminent harm to themselves or others;” or dispatchers didn’t have enough information to determine whether there was a risk of imminent harm.

Still Unheard

Some critics of the program’s progress say that non-police teams need to be given the chance to try to de-escalate situations where someone might pose a risk to themselves or others.

“In many cases, by the time a loved one is calling the police there is some threat of violence,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said during a recent panel discussion on mental health and public safety. “Immediately when you call 911 they want to know if there’s a weapon involved. But if police are going to take the lead in every case where the person is acting dangerously or with a weapon, we're going to have limited success.”

The NYPD has sometimes justified shooting someone experiencing a mental health crisis because it said they were wielding a weapon. Deborah Danner, 66, was shot and killed in her home in the Bronx five years ago after picking up a bat. Saheed Vassell was fatally shot in 2018 after police mistook a pipe he was waving around in the street for a gun. Miguel Richards was shot while standing alone in a corner of his Bronx apartment in 2017 after police repeatedly ordered him to drop a knife.

Gonzalez shared that years ago, his uncle survived a police shooting during a schizophrenic episode at home. He recommended that particularly when someone is in an apartment, response teams could simply try to get everyone else out and isolate the person in crisis rather than using force.

Mayor Bill de Blasio first convened a task force to change the city’s approach to mental health crisis calls in 2018. Liz Glazer, former director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, said it took so long to launch B-HEARD because the program completely removes police as first responders to some crisis situations. City officials fear being responsible for a “bad incident” and being viewed as soft on crime, she said.

“Elected officials are concerned about what the blowback will be when the response to an incident that could turn deadly is changed,” Glazer said during the panel on mental health and public safety. She added that the goal is obviously to avoid any violence but wondered if the program would be able to survive a tragedy if one does occur with a B-HEARD team.

Progress Made

A spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health said the city is working to expand the number of calls B-HEARD teams respond to with a goal of dispatching half of mental health calls in a given service area to them.

“Efforts include assigning additional EMS call-takers, analyzing calls to ensure that developed protocols are being followed and training patrol officers and EMS field units about the services B-HEARD teams can provide,” the spokesperson said. “We are proceeding deliberately and carefully to ensure that the appropriate response is deployed for the health and safety of everyone involved, and we expect to see B-HEARD teams take an increasing share of mental health 911 calls as the pilot continues.”

But he added that there are no plans to deviate from the traditional police response in cases where a dispatcher determines there’s an “imminent risk of harm.”

Oren Barzilay, president of FDNY EMS Local 2507 said he was happy with that position. He said he hadn’t heard any complaints from his members who are participating in the pilot so far but added that they did sometimes face violence when responding to calls in general. “We are concerned about the safety of our members not just in this type of response but in any type of response,” he said.

Harlem’s pilot program has recorded some promising outcomes. People accepted assistance from B-HEARD in 91% of incidents — higher than the 86% with a traditional response. In only about half of those receiving help from B-HEARD were taken to a hospital, compared with 86% with a police response, indicating that people are presented with more options under B-HEARD than just going to the emergency room.

In contrast, 43% of the people assisted by B-HEARD were either helped onsite or transported to the East Harlem Support and Connection Center, where they could get counseling or links to other services. B-HEARD offered follow-up care in all of its cases.

Police and B-HEARD also coordinated during some emergency calls. B-HEARD teams requested onsite help from the NYPD 18 times — almost always for assistance transporting someone to the hospital. The NYPD, meanwhile, requested onsite assistance from B-HEARD 44 times.

Still, advocates are calling for improvements. The CCIT advocacy coalition has said B-HEARD should operate 24/7, instead of its current schedule of 16 hours a day, from 9 a.m. to 1 a.m. It also recommended people dealing with a mental health crisis and those concerned about them should be able to call a number outside of 911 to directly request a non-police response. Another idea centers around response teams recruiting peers with lived experiences with mental illness to respond.

“We speak the language,” said Sparrock. “We think, walk and talk like our community. We know how to de-escalate. We’ve been there. We know what recovery looks like and we know what crisis looks like.”

B-HEARD is prioritizing areas with high numbers of mental health calls to 911 as it expands. The three precincts where it launched in Harlem had 8,400 such calls in 2020 alone. The city is currently in the process of hiring additional social workers for the program and gearing up for the next training session.