re: Mayor Mamdani just visited a man who got shot while charging at a cop with a knife.

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So your solution in a potentially violent mental health case is to send more unarmed people, which complicates the job of the cop when things go wrong in a closed environment due to human congestion and confusion?

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Yes. I don’t think you know how mobile crisis teams work. They work very well in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. They respond to several calls daily. And yes, some of these patients are potentially aggressive. The mobile crisis team does their job and calms things down. Sometimes the patient is hospitalized with the help of Police . Problems that include a shooting are extremely rare. And when it does, it’s usually the Police that ramp things up. They are ill-equipped to handle these situations on their own.

More often than not when both arrive the mobile crisis team takes the lead. However, sometimes the police have been known to shoot a mobile crisis team worker. So the police can complicate things. However, I still advocate for both.

But let’s just not send a mental health mobile crisis team out when a mental health patient is in a crisis situation?

Social workers will now need to be armed in NYC.