The family of a troubled woman accused of pushing two tourists onto subway tracks this week has accused the city of failing to help her, while Mayor Eric Adams’ city officials insisted on Tuesday they were “proud” of their mental health outreach efforts.
Clarence Butts, a Brooklyn resident, said the city hasn’t done enough for his stepdaughter, Ebony, a 42-year-old with a long history of mental illness who is now accused of randomly pushing two Mexican women off the platform at a Lower East Side subway station.
“If they had tried harder, this would never have happened,” Clarence told The Post on Tuesday from her Crown Heights home.
“It’s unfortunate what happened, but they’re not doing anything for the people who need help.”
Butts’ blunt assessment came shortly after the mayor and City Hall officials expressed optimism about dealing with mentally ill New Yorkers, including the swarms of drug-addicted weirdos that have taken over large swaths of the West Side.
The SCOUT team, one of a fleet of mental health outreach teams across New York City, has helped 170 New Yorkers on the subway, Deputy Mayor Ann Williams-Isom said in response to questions from The Post.
“I’m actually really proud of the team that’s working on this mental health effort,” she said during her weekly off-topic press conference at City Hall.
But whatever work the team is doing doesn’t seem to be enough to help New Yorkers with mental illnesses like Butts. Butts’ sister He told the New York Daily News He was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
“For about 20 years, I’ve tried to get help for my sister on numerous occasions,” Twenisha Butts, 47, of Maryland, told the local paper, adding that her sister has also suffered from cancer and undergone related surgeries.
“She’s on medication. I brought her to Maryland to try and take care of her. She’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, manic, but no one wants to help me,” she said.
“What I wanted was someone to help me look after her, a home health aide (because I work), someone to look after her because I have children. But I couldn’t have that.”
The city’s mental health crisis is spilling over onto the ground, with Manhattan City Councilman Eric Bottcher saying: Recent Letters He characterized the situation on the West Side as a “humanitarian crisis” and pleaded with Adams for aid.
Tourists and workers in “gateway” neighborhoods, he writes, are greeted not only with the glittering scenes of Times Square and Broadway but also with paintings of human misery.
When The Washington Post visited the beleaguered neighborhood in recent weeks, it found homeless people who were mentally ill and openly using drugs fighting, sleeping on concrete barriers, washing their feet with soda, urinating topless while wearing Burger King crowns, smoking cocaine pipes and injecting drugs into their arms.
Bottcher argued that many social services, including B-HEARD, a pilot program that helps mental health workers respond to 911 calls, have largely ignored Manhattan’s west side.
The Post spoke to employees and tourists who recounted stories of vagrants taking over the Holiday Inn’s public plaza, scattering drug needles, chasing away guests and spitting on families.
Adams on Tuesday largely refused to respond to The Washington Post’s questions about Gov. Bottcher’s concerns and how effectively his administration is helping New Yorkers with mental illness.
Instead, he told people that the city council recently passed The right to sleep outdoors They claim it hinders efforts to remove homeless people from public spaces.
Hizzoner vaguely hinted that coordinated efforts between the NYPD and mental health workers, such as the subway-focused SCOUT program, could soon be underway in Midtown and the West Side.
“We’re going to go out and address some of the quality of life issues,” he said.
