WE ALL FAILED: A stabbing spree in Manhattan that left three dead yesterday has New York’s Democrats playing defense. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams agreed that yesterday’s rampage — in which a mentally ill homeless man fatally stabbed three people at random, apparently walking with blood soaked kitchen knives across town as he made his disparate attacks — was a dramatic failure of government. “It is a clear, clear example of the criminal justice system, mental health system that continues to fail New Yorkers,” the Democratic mayor said Tuesday, hours after the stabbings. The mea culpa comes amid an onslaught from New York Republicans, the state’s political minority that is leaning into its ongoing argument that Democrats are soft on crime.
It’s the latest example of how the fraught debate around criminal justice reform continues to bubble up with each act of violence in the city — even as stats show murders and shootings have declined since the pandemic, while felony assaults are on the rise. The perpetrator of Tuesday’s attack wasn’t someone benefiting from Albany’s reformed and oft-maligned bail reform laws at the time of the attack. But he was a repeat offender who assaulted a correction officer in May while inside Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric center, according to the New York Post. He later went to jail for burglary and assault convictions, and was released in October, the Post reported. “I agree with the mayor that the system here in the city failed,” Hochul said today. “Someone who assaults a corrections officer gets out for good behavior? If that's good behavior, how are we defining bad behavior? This is when you look at it like, ‘What the hell is going on here?’” She pointed out her work to tighten bail laws after they were loosened under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
During a City Hall press conference today, Adams noted his past work on the issue, saying his administration increasing the involuntary removal of mentally ill New Yorkers from public locations and the subway system into hospitals has been worthwhile. “People dealing with severe mental health illness didn’t start showing on our streets Jan. 1, 2022,” Adams said, referring to his first day in office. “The system has been failing for a long time. … What I was willing to do and will continue to be willing to do is confront it.” The city moved 40 of the city’s most vulnerable people living on the street into supportive housing in the first year since the policy change, and has been averaging about 126 involuntary removals per week since the beginning of the year, a City Hall spokesperson said. But Adams acknowledged “there isn’t a one-size, a magic pill, to solving the mental health issue that we’re facing,” and listed a long list of fixes he’d like to see, such as an increase in long-term psychiatric beds, funding for mental health clubhouses and a better system of follow-up care when somebody leaves treatment.
He also called on state legislators to pass the Supportive Intervention Act, an Assembly bill that would clarify the standards for involuntary hospitalizing severely mentally ill people. Adams also touted the bill after the 2023 killing of subway performer Jordan Neely, but it never made it out of committee. Meanwhile Republicans are already on the attack mode as the local issue draws national condemnation. “People need to understand something important. Nothing — NOTHING — will convince progressives to reconsider their criminal justice reforms which repeatedly enable horrors like this,” Republican City Council Member Vickie Paladino wrote on X. Elon Musk’s political action coalition, America PAC, also weighed in. “The justice system is failing to protect the people,” the PAC also wrote on the platform, sharing a photo of The Post’s “MANHATTAN BLOODBATH” headline to the tune of 16.5 million views. Adams, a Democrat who leans right on matters of criminal justice, added: “We are still looking over his record, but there’s a real question on why he was on the street.” — Jason Beeferman and Jeff Coltin
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