Mayor Zohran Mamdani has staked his public safety legacy on overhauling how the city responds to mental health emergencies, but in order to do it, he\u2019ll need to fix a de Blasio-era program that has for years failed to meet its promise.<\/p>\n
Nearly five years since its creation, the Behavioral Health Emergency Response Division \u2014 also known as B-HEARD \u2014 has been beset with problems. The program sends mental health professionals and EMTs to certain mental health emergencies, rather than the police.<\/p>\n
But even as more 911 calls have been rerouted to B-HEARD, its teams failed to respond to over one-third of eligible mental health calls, according to a city comptroller audit<\/a> last year. Instead, the city sent police.<\/p>\n Now, Mamdani has singled out B-HEARD as a program central to his Office of Community Safety<\/a>, which seeks to eliminate police officers\u2019 role in certain mental health emergencies. But experts familiar with B-HEARD said scaling it up won\u2019t be easy.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are going to continue to struggle with the same thing we struggled with, which is to expand B-HEARD,\u201d said Brian Stettin, who advised former Mayor Eric Adams on mental health issues.<\/p>\n Mamdani officials recently revoked an Adams order to have B-HEARD fully operated by the city\u2019s Health and Hospitals system rather than jointly run with the FDNY.<\/p>\n Stettin said the Adams order had allowed Health and Hospitals staffers and ambulances to respond to mental health emergencies. The FDNY faces union rules requiring two EMTs be dispatched to every call. That restriction complicated B-HEARD operations due to a long-standing EMT staff shortage, Stettin said.<\/p>\n Dr. Gary Belkin, who oversaw policy for de Blasio\u2019s mental health initiative Thrive from 2014-2018, said headline-grabbing crimes can derail efforts to boost mental health training for New Yorkers<\/a> and open care facilities. Critics, he noted, can point to violent incidents involving people with mental illness as evidence the new approach isn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s a recurring movie that\u2019s d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu all over again, when the crisis going bad becomes the focal point,\u201d Belkin said. \u201cI could see that potentially happening again.\u201d<\/p>\n Supporters of B-HEARD<\/a> suggest the solution is more about funding, something that may prove elusive amid the city\u2019s $5 billion-plus budget gap<\/a>. At a press conference earlier to announce his new Office of Community Safety, Mamdani said B-HEARD \u201chas long been kneecapped\u201d by a lack of funding and support.<\/p>\n The Office of Community Safety will open with only two staffers and a $260 million budget \u2014 far less than the $1.1 billion plan Mamdani proposed as a candidate.<\/p>\n In an interview with Gothamist, Mamdani’s Chief of Staff Elle Bisgaard-Church said the administration is in the early stages of initiating \u201chistoric changes\u201d to the city\u2019s emergency response. She insisted officials were committed to a comprehensive approach and are consulting with experts across the country.<\/p>\n \u201cFundamentally, the purpose of this community safety vision is to get upstream,\u201d she said. \u201cIt’s to target all of the root causes of what gets people to the point of crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n Elizabeth Glazer, who ran the Mayor\u2019s Office of Criminal Justice under de Blasio, said Mamdani will also have to address how the city helps people with mental illness before and after a crisis.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we continue to operate in crisis response, we will never address this problem,\u201d said Glazer, who now runs the urban policy magazine Vital City. \u201cYour aim is to give services to people.\u201d<\/p>\n Under de Blasio, the city introduced a plan to open support and connection centers, 24-hour-facilities where B-HEARD workers can bring those experiencing mental health emergencies. The centers offer five- to 10-day stays and are an alternative to hospitals.<\/p>\n But to date, the city has only one such center in East Harlem, which opened in 2020. Adams added another center in the Bronx<\/a> in 2022, but it closed due to low traffic, according to a Department of Health spokesperson.<\/p>\n Scott Stringer, a former city comptroller and political adversary, compared Mamdani\u2019s Office of Community Safety effort to Thrive, which was one of de Blasio\u2019s most controversial legacies. Thrive faced widespread criticism for a lack of transparency and unclear goals while spending more than $1 billion over six years.<\/p>\n