City First Lady Chirlane McCray’s embattled $1 billion mental health program, ThriveNYC, is set to open controversial diversion centers after years of delays — and amid neighborhood concerns about location and security, the nonprofit news organization The City reported.
The two operations — first proposed in 2014 — will finally open in 2020 in two working-class areas, Manhattan’s East Harlem and The Bronx’s Williamsbridge neighborhood, and are budgeted to cost more than $9 million a year.
The Post has previously reported on the program’s delays.
Once open, the diversion initiative will have NYPD cops working those two neighborhoods take people they find exhibiting systems of a mental health crisis to these centers for treatment instead of to the precinct for processing.
However, the patients will have the right to get up and walk out if they don’t want treatment, leaving locals raising questions about safety and security.
“The police officers have to put the individuals in handcuffs for safety,” Kioka Jackson, the president of the 25th Precinct Community Council in East Harlem told The City. “They are escorted into this building. But once they get into the building, and they sign their name or whatever, they can leave, like, behind the police officer.”
“If people can leave on their own — and they were just put in because they were having an issue — then what does that mean for them going right back into the population?”
The program is one of a series of initiatives launched by City Hall and the city’s police department to better handle New Yorkers struggling with mental illness after a string of high-profile cop shootings left 15 people dead.
City Hall frequently touted McCray’s ThriveNYC mental health effort as the number of 911 calls for New Yorkers in mental distress ballooned — but then found itself under the microscope after it repeatedly failed to track the effectiveness of its big-dollar programs.
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