NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch called on Albany to do more to help those suffering from mental illness, who, she said, are the ones causing the random, violent attacks that plague the city — because “it can’t be the police department always being called to do everything.”
“We need capacity in our hospitals to care for people suffering from severe mental illness,” Tisch said on Fox 5’s Good Day NY Friday. “Our cops bring people to the hospital thousands of times a year who are in mental health distress. They get released two hours later with a sandwich.
“We need to care for these people,” she added. “New York State needs a different approach in caring for and treating people with mental health issues, and it can’t be the police department always being called to do everything.”
Tisch’s comment comes as she announced arrests in two random attacks, including an incident during rush hour on Tuesday in which a 25-year-old woman was stabbed in the back as she was going down the stairs at the 23rd Street subway stop in Chelsea.
It also comes as the plight of the city’s mentally ill has become an issue in the race for mayor.
On Tuesday, Democratic front-runner Zohran Mamdani told police officers at a National Night Out Against Crime event that cops should be spared the responsibility of responding to most mental health calls.
“We must stop asking them to respond to nearly every single failure of the social safety net,” Mamdani said at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza. “We must stop making it impossible for them to do their jobs by asking them to do every other job we can think of.”
On Wednesday, police arrested Carlos Rivera, 21, for the 6:30 p.m. subway attack, charging him with attempted murder and assault.
Cops also arrested a man who sucker-punched a 94-year-old man inside an Upper East Side Apple electronics store at around 5:45 p.m. Tuesday.
“The good news is last night, while you were sleeping, we made an arrest in that case and got the person responsible,” Tisch said, calling the attack “upsetting.”
If elected, Mamdani, a socialist who defeated Andrew Cuomo in June’s Democratic mayoral primary, has proposed to launch a Department of Community Safety, an agency that would be tasked with responding to calls about individuals experiencing mental health crises.
The new department would expand violence interrupter programs in the city and mental health teams that respond to 911 calls, according to his 17-page public safety plan.
Once this new Department of Community Safety is up and running, cops can take their focus away from dealing with people in a mental health crisis and zero in on crime fighting, he said.
During her interview on “Good Day NY” Tisch made it clear that she was not supporting Mamdani’s plan and drove home that hospitals need to have “more capacity” to handle people in a mental illness crisis.
An email to Gov. Hochul’s office regarding Tisch’s demands was not immediately returned.
For years, the NYPD had been criticized about how officers use force, and sometimes deadly force, as they respond to cases with individuals suffering a mental health crisis.
In 2021, the de Blasio administration created a pilot program, which would later be known as the B-Heard teams, in which FDNY Emergency Medical Technicians, paramedics and NYC Health + Hospitals’ mental health professionals respond to 911 mental health calls where there are no concerns about violence or weapons.
The special program responded to nearly 15,000 calls in the 2023 fiscal year, up from about 7,000 the year before, although mental health advocates said that too many cases are still being rerouted to the NYPD, especially when the 911 caller says the person in crisis may hurt themselves or others.
Originally Published: August 8, 2025 at 10:29 AM EDT