LETTER FROM NEW YORK
Martial Simon, 61, was known in the world of the homeless, those who queue for the soup kitchen of the Holy Apostles, in Manhattan. Often incoherent, almost always angry, says the New York Times. Especially against doctors and psychiatric hospitals, where this former parking attendant from Haiti had undergone about twenty hospitalizations without really being treated. And then, this Saturday, January 15, 2022, in the Times Square subway station in the heart of Manhattan, in a fit of rage, at 9:37 am, he pushed a woman onto the platforms as a subway arrived. Michelle Alyssa Go, 40, died instantly. You have lived on the Upper East Side and worked for the consulting firm Deloitte. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Martial Simon is expected to be interned until the end of his days.
The drama has particularly moved New Yorkers, as more and more people with psychiatric disorders are present on the streets of the city since the Covid-19 emergency. Sometimes menacing, they roam the subway and its environs. “In nearly twenty years as a medical responder, I have never witnessed a mental health crisis like the one New York is experiencing”complained emergency physician Anthony Almojera in a message to New York Times.
According to a January tally, nearly 3,400 people were sleeping on the streets or on the subway. In theory, and unlike West Coast cities, New York has an obligation to provide emergency housing for the homeless.
A city with degraded security
Since the beginning of the year, the Metro has been the site of nine homicides, compared to two a year before Covid-19, most often committed by deranged people. They account for only a small fraction of New York’s homicides, but they partly explain the population’s reluctance to use public transportation again, and give the city a disastrous image of security. “When you do an analysis of crimes on the subway, you find that they are the work of people with mental health problems”, estimated in October the Democratic mayor of New York, Eric Adams, a former Brooklyn police officer.
In early November, Mr. Adams decided to voluntarily or forcibly intern mentally ill people in his city, even when they pose no threat to public order or people. “The man who stands all day in the street in front of the building from which he was evicted twenty-five years ago, waiting to be let in; the boxer around the corner in Midtown, mumbling as he punches an unseen opponent; the unconscious man, unable to get off the train at the end of the line without the help of our crisis team; these people, like hundreds of others, are in urgent need of treatment and refuse it when it is offeredsaid Mr. Adams, Nov. 29, in a solemn address at City Hall. There is a common and persistent misconception that we cannot provide involuntary assistance unless the person is violent. In the future, we will do everything we can to help those with mental illness. »
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