While New Yorkers will have to wait until at least the end of the week to know what's in the final state budget, the legislature has previously indicated it would support $22 million for Daniel's Law. Daniel's Law would provide trained crisis response teams of EMTs, peers, and mental health professionals to respond to a crisis rather than police. This week, BTPM's Disability Reporter Emyle Watkins shares in the Disabilities Beat a conversation with one of the advocates pushing for this law.
TRANSCRIPT:
Emyle Watkins: Hi, I'm Emyle Watkins, and this is the Disabilities Beat.
Yesterday, New York State lawmakers passed a short-term extender to finish the state budget, after missing the April 1st deadline. This means New Yorkers will have to wait, until at least the end of the week, to know what the final budget holds, including for mental health resources.
Among the resources the legislature has signaled support for is Daniel's Law, which would provide trained crisis response teams of EMTs, peers, and mental health professionals to respond to a crisis rather than police.
The law is named after Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old Rochester man who was killed when restrained by police during a mental health crisis in 2020.
Earlier this month, I joined mental health advocates as they went to Albany to share their stories in support of peer-led reforms. One conversation that really stuck with me was with Christina Sparrock, who serves on the state's task force for Daniel's Law. She shared why it's personal for her.
Christina Sparrock: I'm passionate about Daniel's Law. I'm a person who has lived experience of living with bipolar. And I had police come to my house one day and it was during COVID and someone was banging on my door and I didn't know who it was, and I lived in a doorman building. And so immediately since I didn't know who was at my door, I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife only to defend myself because I felt somehow my rights were being violated. And I just kept hearing them banging and banging and banging on my door, and I freaked out.
When the banging stopped, I called the doorman, they said the police were there to do a wellness check. If my door were unlocked that day, they would have came in and I could have gotten shot. And their body cam footage would have shown that I was the deranged woman, yielding a knife and racing at the women. In fact, I was a woman who was scared in her house with a knife regardless of my diagnosis. Because anybody else, if someone was banging on your door, they're going to come in. You would do anything you could to defend yourself. It's a frying pan, it's a chair or whatever you're going to pick up, you would defend yourself. So I would have been killed that day.
So I'm advocating for if there's a wellness check for peers, people with lived experience who are crisis trained peers who have compassionate care to respond to people who are in crisis because police, they are trained in the use of force and to respond to crime. When you call 911, 911 should have three responses, right? If you call for a fire, get FDNY. If you call for a medical issue, the ambulance, if you call for crime, you get the police. But if you call for crime or mental health, you still get the police. And that's why the police are trained to use force against people with mental health conditions, which is not fair. When your public health response, which is like Daniel's Law, you have crisis trained peers and an EMT worker to come out to your home when you're in crisis to give you the supports that you need, the emotional support and the medical support that you need. And then have them decide if you need to go to the hospital or you need any other type of treatment, the police should not be involved at all.
Emyle Watkins: I also asked what people across the state seemed to have in common as they discussed their concerns with the budget.
Christina Sparrock: Definitely the failures of systems. We do not have enough mental health resources in the community. I know, like I was in a Daniels task force, and people in New York City think the New York City is the center of the world, which probably is, right? But we don't, sometimes we neglect that other communities may not have the funding that maybe New York City has to get the adequate resources. They may not have the community-based services to provide the supports that they need. They may not have and they may be heavily reliant on the police only because that's all they have.
In New York City, if you only have, I think a possible 24 mobile crisis teams, which is not good, we have a city of about 9 million people. And if you're asking a crisis mobile team that has a peer and a social worker to come out to your house and they're supposed to be responding maybe in 28 minutes, they can't because they're responding to everybody else in the five boroughs. And that's how the police get involved because if you don't have an adequately funded program to support you, the police get involved. So it's more like what we need across the state is more funding and having our elected officials fund our programs, but especially the ones that have a good track record. You don't fund every program.
Emyle Watkins: The one-house budget proposal, which was released in mid-March, indicates that lawmakers support $22 million dollars going towards getting Daniel’s Law off the ground.
Emyle Watkins: You've been listening to the Disabilities Beat from Buffalo Toronto Public Media. You can listen to the Disabilities beat segment on demand, view a transcript in plain language description for every episode on our website at BTPM dot org. I'm Emyle Watkins. Thanks for listening.
