19-year-old Win Rozario called 911 for the same reason anyone would. He was in urgent need of help.
The teen never got the assistance he needed. Instead, two police officers responded to the call. Within two minutes of arriving at his home, they tased him and then shot him dead.
Body-camera recordings reveal that Rozario’s younger brother met the officers downstairs and explained that Rozario was having an “episode.”
“He doesn’t even know what he’s doing, to be honest,” Rozario’s brother told the officers.
When Rozario saw the police, he grabbed a pair of scissors. Rozario’s mother ran to him, but when he approached the officers, they deployed a stun gun. Rozario’s mother removed the scissors from Rozario’s hand, but when the police used their stun gun a second time, Rozario grabbed for them again and moved toward the officers, who responded by firing their weapons five times.
Throughout the recording, both Rozario’s mother and brother can be heard begging the cops not to shoot.
In a statement, the family said the officers “created a crisis and escalated at every turn, recklessly gunning Win down in our home in less than two minutes – and almost killing two of us too.”
In addition to bearing tremendous grief, the family must live with the knowledge that Rozario might still be alive if someone with mental health expertise had responded to his call for help. Instead, one officer, before entering the home, asked if Rozario was a “bipolar schizo.” Moments later, Rozario was shot and killed.
The appalling lack of skill and empathy that led to Rozario’s killing caused an uproar. New Yorkers demanded better ways to respond to a person experiencing a mental health crisis.
Rozario’s death is not an isolated incident, nor are such tragedies limited to New York City. Daniel K. McAlpin was killed by police in a remarkably similar manner in his Wawarsing home in 2022. An officer who arrived on the scene first used a stun gun and then shot McAlpin five times. Less than four seconds passed between the first and final shot.
Throughout the state, people in crisis are regularly treated with a dehumanizing lack of compassion, incompetence, and violence by police officers who respond to mental health emergencies.
So, what happens when a 911 call comes in regarding a person having this kind of crisis, and what could a more humane and less deadly system look like?
New York City’s B-HEARD program: Well-Intended but Deeply Flawed
An overall lack of data collection is one major obstacle to reform, but we do have some numbers from New York City that, while limited and incomplete, can help us begin to comprehend the scope of the problem.
At this moment, if you call 911 regarding a mental health crisis in the five boroughs, who responds to the call depends entirely on where you’re calling from and what time of day it is.
Since 2021, the Behavioral Health Assistance Response Division (B-HEARD), which is administered by the city’s fire department and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, has been responding to calls of New Yorkers experiencing psychological distress by sending a team composed of two emergency medical technicians and a mental health professional, in cases not involving a weapon or violence. At first glance, B-HEARD might sound promising; its goal is to reduce police response to mental health crises and involuntary transfers to hospitals while also connecting patients to care in their communities. Unfortunately, when you look past these good intentions, B-HEARD is deeply flawed and ineffective.
B-HEARD teams are missing a critical member that researchers know makes a monumental difference in these challenging moments. They are trained peers with lived mental health and/or substance use experience who can support a person in crisis with unmatched understanding and empathy. Research shows when peers are involved, people in crisis are less likely to end up in the hospital and more likely to find the care they need in their own communities. They are also less likely to need crisis services in the future. Individuals who receive support from peers report experiencing less stigma and more hope.
Many people who could be helped by B-HEARD aren’t able to access its services. While the pilot program has now expanded to 31 police precincts, including the entirety of the Bronx, 60 percent of the city doesn’t have B-HEARD programming in their neighborhood. In addition, B-HEARD teams are only available between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 a.m. An audit of the program by the office of Comptroller Brad Lander this year determined that 14,000 eligible calls did not receive a response from a B-HEARD team because they occurred during off hours.
In addition, 35 percent of eligible calls that were received during hours of operation did not get a response from a B-HEARD team – but we don’t know why, because the Mayor’s Office of Community and Mental Health does not track this information.
This paucity of data collection undermines the program’s integrity. One goal is for B-HEARD teams to conduct mental health assessments on-site – instead of transporting all patients to a hospital for this service. Yet 2024 data shows that when B-HEARD teams made contact with a patient, they only succeeded in conducting a mental health assessment about half of the time. No one is tracking why so many assessments are not conducted. Another core goal of the program is to connect patients to care in their communities, but whether or not this is happening isn’t being tracked, either.
Critically, B-HEARD’s integration with the NYPD puts New Yorkers in danger. Because the program operates through police districts, NYPD officers become the default back-up – increasing the odds of escalation and violence.
As Rozario’s killing painfully illustrates, NYPD officers aren’t the right people to respond to mental health emergencies.
When police officers do respond to a mental health emergency, a common result is that the person is – often involuntarily – transported to a hospital for a mental health assessment. But only 40 percent of involuntary transports result in hospitalization, meaning the majority of these people were either subjected to inappropriate transport or had mental health needs but were discharged without any connection to ongoing care. This chain of events can result in a traumatic revolving door for vulnerable New Yorkers.
According to incomplete data from the Adams’ administration, there were 7,060 officer-initiated involuntary transports in New York City in 2024. Most were from private dwellings. That same year, B-HEARD provided on-site mental health assessments to 3,691 New Yorkers. 43 percent of those people (1,584) were served in the community and not transferred to the hospital.
The right mental health crisis response can make a huge difference, but the B-HEARD program isn’t meeting the bar. Mayor Adams recently announced a planned recalibration of the program, which includes swapping out EMTs for social workers on the response teams, but these changes do not appear to address B-HEARD’s fundamental flaws. As it stands, New York City must dismantle the B-HEARD program and set up a more effective, evidence-based system in its place. We know what the new system should look like because we wrote state legislation that shows another way.
Daniel’s Law: The Crisis Response New Yorkers Need
New York lawmakers have the opportunity to move towards meaningful change by passing Daniel’s Law. Daniel Prude was killed by Rochester police in March of 2020 when he was suffering a mental health crisis and his family called 911 for help. Officers arrived to find Prude naked and unarmed, yet they proceeded to place a hood over his head and hold him face down on the cold pavement until he stopped breathing.
The law, which bears Prude’s name thanks to his family’s activism, includes measures to prevent similar tragedies. Daniel’s Law builds on crisis intervention models that have successfully reduced police-based response to people experiencing mental health issues or drug use. It would create a council of mental health experts and peers to provide and approve local emergency response plans. In these plans, mental health experts and peers control the response to a health emergency, and the role of law enforcement is limited to situations where there’s a public safety risk so that police are no longer the default first responders.
Legislators have yet to pass the law, but some work towards the goals of the legislation has already begun. A Daniel’s Law Task Force, convened by New York State, has identified response programs in New York and elsewhere that could serve as models, as well as potential funding sources for expanding such services.
The State Senate’s mental health committee has secured six million dollars for statewide implementation of pilot programs that add mental health responders to the standard fire-police-ambulance emergency response options. And two million dollars in this year’s budget will fund a behavioral health technical assistance center to help municipalities create Daniel’s Law response systems.
This is the largest investment yet toward the kinds of mental health crisis response reforms that will reduce suffering and save lives. But many more resources are needed to ensure that every New Yorker in crisis is met with the skilled and compassionate care of mental health providers, EMTs, and – most importantly – peers.
Reimagining our crisis response system is crucial to protecting people’s safety and connecting them to care. Yet emergency response cannot be our sole focus. We must address root causes of crisis by establishing a continuum of care, where people are able to access the help they need, including medical and psychological care, peer support, and housing assistance. Providing these services prevents the kind of mental health crises that require an emergency response and affords people the dignity they deserve.