New York City Going After The Root

I am not at all happy with the headline, or the tone of the article, but it appears from this February 18, 2013 New York Post article that the New York City police are using the existing involuntary outpatient commitment law (Kendra's Law) to hospitalize some dangerous and homeless mentally ill people:

The city is making a major push to sweep the streets of dangerous, mentally ill New Yorkers — and has even compiled a most-wanted list, The Post has learned.

The measure follows a pair of high-profile subway-shove fatalities from December allegedly involving mentally ill individuals.

The city has already drawn up a list of 25 targets, sources said.

“After the Queens subway attack [of immigrant Sunando Sen], the [city] decided to take a proactive approach to track down the most dangerous mental-health patients that currently have mental-hygiene warrants” out for them, a law-enforcement source said.

Those warrants mean that the patients are not wanted for a crime but instead are being sought because they are not getting their court-ordered treatment.  

In the past, persons who were subject to existing involuntary outpatient commitment who were a problem and could be easily located were picked up in hospitalized. This article indicates that those who could not easily be located, such as those who were now homeless, were not actively pursued. After these high-profile murders, NYPD is now actively looking for those that are not easy to find.

It makes you wonder what would happen if the rest of the country cared as much about this problem as NYPD now seems to care.