Liberate the homeless!

The right to die by hypothermia is constitutionally guaranteed and may not be abridged, questioned or sabotaged by intervention, regardless of motive.

It is an alienable assertion of personal dignity, whether or not the subject accepts and is aware of it. It is a privilege and duty to make the choice, regardless of competence of mind.  

Passive self-annihilation is an option in the exercise of freedom of conscience. Some people tend to neglect their duty to self-care and we can only help people who show they want to help themselves. They're paying the piper for not being accomplished at survival.

That attitude shows that emotional detachment can be cruel, even when it makes partial sense. What about those whose bad luck has made them their own worst enemy?

Lice-infested, multiple organ-ravaged schizophrenics' refusal to be separated from frigid arctic winds must be respected, even if it ensures their demise. When first-responders do not obey the order of these people who have given up on life (or on whom life has given up), and then proceed to exert officialdom by imposing shelter,  it constitutes abuse and an infringement by government authority.

That is, in effect, the position of some extremists who call themselves activists for the homeless. 

Most of them are genuinely compassionate and justifiably maddened by the apparent incapacity or unwillingness of  the government to solve the underlying crisis of housing and access to serious, long-term mental health care and  facilities for the needy. 

Mayor Adams' plan to sweep these severely afflicted, often lost and sometimes violent souls from the streets and subways is not, by itself, a legitimate solution.

It is a time-out, not a way out. These people's misfortune does not make them deadbeats.

Fast and furious problem-solving is the precondition for the peace of afflicted New Yorkers and the whole City.

It must be real. Task-forces lead nowhere. Their objective is to self-perpetuate and skate on air.

But Adam's initiative is an interim measure that is sound and righteous. That galls the New York Civil Liberties Union, which tends to obsess with the larger issues from the standpoint of lawful precedent, even if it flies in the face of common sense and sacrifices life itself.

"The mayor is playing fast and loose with the legal rights of New Yorkers.... Forcing people into treatment is a failed strategy....The federal and state constitutions impose strict limits on the government's ability to detain people experiencing mental illness," they carp.

The NYCLU is handcuff-phobic, almost regardless of circumstance. Better metal bracelets than wooden caskets. 

If a beach were closed to the public and signs posted to stay off the sand, and a child were observed entering the sea in an area of riptides, should a "good Samaritan" who saves the kid from being swept away be prosecuted? We must not be willfully blind to the big picture.

City Council Member Tiffany Cabán feels that "often the wrong responder and response is what creates a deadly situation, not the mental health crisis itself.” That is a valid observation, but not a rational argument. Violence is never initiated by first responders and they never react to it in kind. 

Social workers should be present to help with de-escalation. Their role must be strictly advisory and subordinate. The city's planned "tele-consulting" line would  link first-responders with off-site clinicians, but it is unworkable and an invitation to snafus and miscues.

An existing city memorandum authorizes removal of non-compliant individuals for mental health evaluation in cases of apparent "serious untreated physical injury or unawareness or delusional misapprehension of physical condition or health.”

Unfortunately, this has proven a pathetic and scandalous failure and farcical charade. That protocol is nothing more than a bureaucratic revolving door in which the system covers its massive ass. All they do is check the boxes on a document and follow a template that lets them legally off-the-hook. 

The patient is brought to a psychiatric emergency room, and after a few hours or at most a couple of days, is asked whether they feel they are a danger to others or themselves. They've usually been sedated and know the drill.  It's a leading, rhetorical question.

Voila — the patient is home free and so are the medicrats!

Unless the paralysis imposed by the courts and the medical establishment are exposed and overcome, nothing will change but the aesthetics. It will be a whitewash and revisitation to "square one.”

Public manifestation of severe mental illness has become wildly rampant because of the almost total elimination of psychiatric institutions decreed years ago by politicians who wanted to promote their careers by being perceived as humanistic and progressive. 

Re-opening them may be politically incorrect but would surely be morally unimpeachable.

Bizarre behavior or appearance are subjective criteria. How can it be distinguished from mere eccentricity? Superseding a law-abiding person's right to privacy may constitute, or invite government overreach, some analysts claim.  

But "if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck"? Unless it's a decoy.

Mayor Eric Adams burns through the haze with these illustrations: "the man standing all day on the street across from the building he was evicted from 25 years ago, waiting to be let in.  The shadow boxer on the street corner in Midtown, mumbling to himself as he jabs at an invisible adversary.”

Anyone not in accord with Adam's imagery must have an agenda altogether unrelated to the welfare of these people.

The policy director of the Coalition for the Homeless accused Adams of having "scapegoated homeless people.” Former  New York Civil Liberties director Norman Siegel blames the city for seeking "to facilitate an increase in the denial of New Yorkers' rights to individual liberty based on vague and overly broad terms.” The Legal Aid Society is suspicious of what they view as the predisposition of the police to using their arrest powers as a first resort. They insist on a "least restrictive setting.”

They're off the charts of being off the mark.

Yet another critic condemns the removal of the mentally ill as "involuntary confinement.” Even if that is technically the case, it is redemptive, not punitive. It is an august application of "the end justifies the means".

Benign coercion to forestall doom, even if the beneficiaries don't endorse it, is vindicable mercy.

Dissenters can't wait to cripple the city's plan by litigation, citing a 1975 Supreme Court ruling that restricted removals for mental illness, from which 21 percent of homeless people suffer, according to the Coalition for the Homeless. 

Some doubters are good-faith civil libertarians, but others, such as those who want to annul Kendra's Law, are demagogues.

The Police Benevolent Association is wary of Adams’ new initiative. They want "extremely clear guidance" and demand that "our leaders back us up.”  Given the elimination of "qualified immunity" for searches, seizures and use of force, can anyone blame them? 

And how will EMS personnel be protected from an inevitable increase of assaults against them?

Where must we look for a permanent solution to the tragedies of homelessness and mental illness? Another "czar"? It'll take more than an intimidating job title.  

New Yorkers should submit their ideas. After all, they are most creative in other areas, such as how to ingeniously tamper with their license plates to elude cameras installed to generate revenue under the make-believe of preventing road accidents.

There is hope. And it is better to have hoped in vain than not to have hoped at all. But not much.  

The toughest combat generals, held stringently accountable, need to be called into the field to fight the war against homelessness and mental illness. Each and every New Yorker must be liberated from their inner penitentiary of despair.