Every day it seems like there are more random, unprovoked attacks by the mentally ill on city streets and subways, but that’s not case, NYPD brass said Saturday.
“There is not a correlation between mental illness and increased crime,” Chief Theresa Tobin told the Daily News.
“There might be small pockets of incidents that make the headlines, like someone pushing someone on the subway, where you find out that they have a mental health history after some research, but when you look at overall crimes, there is no correlation,” explained Tobin, head of the NYPD’s Interagency Operations, which oversees the NYPD’s Behavioral Health Division.
There is one very high-profile exception, though.
Half of those busted by police for committing hate crimes against Asians this year have a mental-health history with the NYPD, cops said.
Out of the 23 people arrested for assaulting and harassing Asian people in the city since January, 11 have admitted to having a diagnosed mental illness or have been hospitalized before, police said.
Those numbers are not the norm, Tobin said.
(Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Daily News)
People with mental illnesses accused of committing Anti-Asian hate crimes include Joseph Russo, 28, who was arrested for three attacks against Asians this year, including a March 22 incident where he pinned a 32-year-old woman to a storefront and yanked her hair.
He is also accused of shoving an elderly Asian man to the ground and slamming a 64-year-old Chinese woman’s head into the ground on March 5, cops said.
Russo suffers from a mental illness and was off his medication when he assaulted his three victims, relatives claim.
“He’s not racist. He’s out there. He’s on Pluto,” Russo’s older brother Jason Rosa told The News.
Police are not permitted to review a suspect’s medical records, so the “mental health history” with the department only come from statements made during their arrests or prior incidents in which they were hospitalized for being emotionally disturbed.
Although there have been repeated incidents of people attacking strangers for no reason in recent months, the NYPD does not catalogue crimes that way so it’s not clear how many unprovoked attacks there have been this year, a police spokeswoman said
The NYPD’s Behavioral Health Division oversees all programs that deal with behavioral health, substance abuse and mental health. Cops and a clinician in the unit man a “triage desk,” where they review arrests to see if defendants showing an escalating degree of violence should receive services from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
The unit hasn’t seen an uptick in triage calls or referrals, Tobin said.
There have also been 481 fewer NYPD radio runs for emotionally disturbed people this year when compared to the 50,525 logged this time last year, police said.
“People with mental illness are far more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than the perpetrator,” a city Department of Health spokeswoman said. “We should not conflate mental illness and crime.”
“For that very small group of people with mental illness who may pose a risk to others, there are services and programs,” the Health Department spokeswoman said.
