Hope you are staying warm with all this cold weather. Maybe the Puerto Rico Bad Bunny half time show warmed you up! Sadly at least 18 New Yorkers have died out in the cold in this cold blast. At least two people with mental health crises have died from police gun shots already in 2026. 22% of people being held in Rikers are diagnosed with mental illness and one third are homeless. Housing and mental health treatment are needed, not jails and policing.
The Beyond Policing Working Group has been fighting for Daniel’s Law which would create a public health response to mental health crisis, not a police response. Please check if your assembly member and state senator cosponsors on the Daniels Law bill (A4617 and S3670, respectively). There is an oversight hearing at city council on the code blue policy Tuesday, February 10th at 10:00am; the hearing is posted here.
Christina Sparrock, a Brooklyn-born Black woman open with her own bipolar diagnosis who founded NYC Mental Health Collective, created the Person Centered Intervention Training (PCIT) Mental Health Crisis Response program in Fort Greene Park. She was appointed to Brooklyn Borough President Reynoso's Mental Health Task Force and the Governor's Office of Mental Health Daniel’s Law Task Force and spoke with Mamdani transition team about why Peers (people with lived experience) and EMTs should be the responders to the 200,000 mental health crisis calls each year in NYC not police. Christina is coming to our next Beyond Policing Working Group meeting on Weds, Feb 18 at 6:30 on zoom. We hope you can join!
In solidarity,
SURJ NYC