A city program that dispatches social workers and medics to mental health calls instead of police is expanding after officials say the program has experienced success. Skeptics remain, as only 22.8% of mental health calls were routed to the program.
Eudes Pierre’s family in the office of their attorney, Sanford Rubenstein, who is seated at left.Eudes Pierre’s family in the office of their attorney, Sanford Rubenstein, who is seated at left.Eudes Pierre was brandishing a small pink knife on the street early one morning last December. When he headed into Brooklyn’s Utica Avenue subway station, officers converged on the scene. Fearing he had a gun in his pocket, they kept their distance.
The new $50.4 million pilot program -- called B-HEARD, or Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division -- began in Harlem last summer and is expanding to Washington Heights and the South Bronx. It involves dispatching one social worker and two FDNY EMTs/paramedics, instead of cops, to mental health calls. B-HEARD does not respond to calls involving the threat of violence, so if it operated in the area where Pierre was killed, a B-HEARD team would likely not have responded.
“Cops aren’t coming either, right? Because I haven’t done anything,” says the son, played by EMT Mario Crespo. City officials say B-HEARD is successful because it reduces the rate of unnecessary trips to the hospital, which is where police almost always take those in mental distress. Over its first several months, B-HEARD handled an average of 17 mental health calls a day, and less than half of those led to hospitalizations -- compared to 87% who were hospitalized via the traditional police response.
Still, some advocates for those with mental disabilities point to another statistic that makes them skeptical: From the start of the program in June through the end of March, in the precincts where B-HEARD is operational just 22.8% of mental health calls -- 1,525 in all -- were routed to B-HEARD instead of the police, according to the NYPD.
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