Mayor "jackboot" Adams wants to lock up homeless people he assumes are crazy

Comment published on New York Times blog, in response to article by Andy Newman and Emma G. Fitzsimmons, “New York City to Remove Mentally Ill People from Streets against their Will,” November 30, 2022:

The mayor's telling language is stunning in what it implies:

“The common misunderstanding persists that we cannot provide involuntary assistance unless the person is violent...Going forward, we will make every effort to assist those who are suffering from mental illness.”

So anyone judged to be "suffering from mental illness" can be involuntarily hospitalized. It is the police who will make this determination, and doctors at hospitals will comply, because the psychiatric profession has defined into one of its more than 300 categories of "mental illness" more than 20% of the population.

Further, the decision that someone poses "a threat to themself or others" is also made arbitrarily. Any psychiatrist can say this, and they do not have to give a reason or any evidence for this conclusion. They just state it; they write it in the person's "medical record," and then it becomes "true" and incontestable.

The excuse given is, as always, that violent crimes are caused by mental illness when people with it are allowed to live in liberty. It is not true. Most people with any mental illness never commit any crimes, and most violent crimes are not attributable to the criminal's illness but only to an act.

And the police are not the persons who should be normally intervening. They often make things worse, including by killing people who don't reply the most immediately in the most compliant way, which is only a symptom of "mental illness" if failure to obey is.