Former police captain Eric Adams won the 2021 New York City mayoral election, in year two of the pandemic, with a “war on crime” campaign that has often manifested as a war on unhoused and mentally disabled people. Unhoused people had been forced into parks and streets as a result of subway closures for overnight disinfection, leading to popular anxieties about increased homelessness (with actual numbers difficult to measure). As MTA ridership rebounded, fears regarding “transit crime,” including a few high-profile incidents of violence by mentally disabled people, led Adams to announce large-scale police patrols of the subway system shortly after he was sworn in on January 1, 2022. On November 29, Adams additionally announced an 11-point agenda (alt link 1, 2) that would allow unhoused and/or mentally disabled people to be involuntarily hospitalized, with NYPD and DOH “co-response teams” deployed in subways to remove “those appearing to have serious mental health issues.” Outcry from disability activists pointed to a lack of hospital space as well as economic and social supports and, more importantly, to the civil rights platform of the global deinstitutionalization movement since the 1960s.
— Mara Mills
Watch Mayor Adams’s announcement below: