Saritha Komatireddy is the Republican nominee for New York state attorney general, running against Democratic incumbent Letitia James. Komatireddy’s resume includes deep experience in criminal justice as a former assistant U.S. attorney who led investigations and prosecutions involving terrorism, cybercrime, money laundering, foreign public corruption, violent gangs, and narcotics. She also clerked under Brett Kavanaugh at the U.S. Court of Appeals before he was a Supreme Court justice.
Komatireddy also served as chief of staff of the Drug Enforcement Administration in the Biden administration. When asked who won the 2020 election, she was clear that it was Biden.
“The Constitution and the laws of the United States have a process for determining who is president. We followed those laws,” she told Capital Tonight.
If she wins the race for attorney general, Komatireddy has said she would focus on several issues including crime, fraud and mental illness.
“We have a number of severely mentally ill individuals out on the streets,” she said, referencing a recent tragedy in New York City in which a woman with a history of mental illness stabbed another woman to death.
“It’s a preventable crime. That’s the worst part about it,” Komatireddy said.
Her remedy is a new Office of Civil Commitment staffed by both law enforcement and doctors.
“I will build residential treatment centers throughout the state. Over the last 10 years, the Democrats in Albany, the elected officials in Albany, have been shutting down in-patient psychiatric beds, in-patient treatment centers, and that’s creating part of the problem.”
Some members of the mental health community expressed concern about Komatireddy’s statements, wondering to Capital Tonight whether the office would respond to referrals from hospitals, police and local mental health authorities, or if its personnel would proactively go into streets, shelters and transit systems looking for people to evaluate.
In response, the candidate said, “This is exactly the conversation we should be having. An Attorney General should be focusing on the homeless and the severely mentally ill on the streets and having conversations with nurses, law enforcement officers, sheriffs, doctors, hospitals, about what the best way forward is. I’m certainly happy to have those conversations.”
In response to Komatireddy’s comments, Luke Sikinyi, vice president for public policy for the Alliance of Rights and Recovery, sent the following emailed statement to Capital Tonight:
“We will not be able to address our mental health crisis by turning over the mental health system’s responsibility to the courts, judges, police and attorneys. We will not find our answers in rebuilding very costly hospitals and residential institutions through which people cycle several times as year.”
“The answers can be found in Governor Hochul’s unprecedented investment in street-based outreach and housing that provide real, trusted and lasting solutions, with hospital discharge plans that include a peer to provide ongoing support, a place to live and a place to go,” said Harvey Rosenthal, CEO of the Alliance. “The data is clear: those are the approaches that are working all of the state and nation. We should build collaborative relationships wherever we can but let’s fix and fund the services that work rather spend even more money on approaches that don’t,” he said.
A spokesperson for the James campaign sent this emailed response to Capital Tonight: “This is a half-baked idea from a candidate who clearly doesn’t understand what the Attorney General’s role entails. New Yorkers deserve an Attorney General that knows the job, not someone focused on soundbites that disregard how state government actually works.”
