On Sunday, at least five people were hospitalized after a seriously mentally ill suspect with a criminal record reportedly went on a “frenzied” slashing spree at Penn Station. The incident comes exactly one month after another mentally ill repeat offender was arrested for allegedly pushing an elderly man down the subway steps, killing him, mere hours after being released from a hospital psych evaluation.
This latest tragedy won’t be the last. Violence linked to untreated serious mental illness has become increasingly normalized in New York. That acceptance is letting city leaders escape accountability for their failure to address the situation.
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The Penn Station attack does not seem to have surprised New Yorkers. One told the New York Post: “This part of town [around Penn Station] is just so full of mentally ill people, people off their meds, people on drugs wandering around like they’re on another planet. And every once in a while, they have a knife in their pocket.”
Some New Yorkers are so desensitized to mental illness-related violence that they hardly see the point in trying to prevent it. “It’s New York City. Things like that happen,” a Penn Station worker told the Post about Sunday’s stabbing. “I’m just glad it wasn’t anything crazier than what it was.”
Crazier than five people being slashed? By a repeat offender suspect reportedly known to frequent the place of attack? Everything about that is crazy.
Elected officials further normalize violence by downplaying concern. In recent years, they’ve consistently described transit violence as “rare.” But as my Manhattan Institute colleague Nicole Gelinas has written, “Since 2020, New York has suffered 47 subway murders, along with at least five justified homicides, including the police killing of a machete-wielding head-hacker at Grand Central.” That’s up from zero subway murders in 2017. Attacks now routinely happen at and around Penn Station.
Their blasé posture enables city officials like Mayor Zohran Mamdani to justify their inattention. So does downplaying the need for involuntary intervention. Mamdani emphasized voluntary services on the campaign trail, as if every man deteriorating on the sidewalk with untreated schizophrenia is capable of making a rational decision about elective health care.
As the late DJ Jaffe put it, “Being psychotic is not a right to be protected; it is an illness to be treated.” When a person’s choices make him a danger to himself or others, the state must step in and exercise authority.
Instead of pursuing involuntary treatment, progressive officials insist the city needs to spend more on voluntary services. But New York City already spends a fortune on mental health and social services. The budget for mental health last year, conservatively, approached $1 billion; homeless services received another $3.5 billion.
These attacks aren’t caused by insufficient funding. They’re the result of a lack of leadership. Throwing money at a mental-health system that largely serves the “worried well” is just another way that politicians avoid accountability.
Even when a mayor is laser-focused on serious mental illness, preventing these kinds of attacks takes enormous effort and coordination. There are many chances to intervene and stop random violence—when cops respond to an “emotionally disturbed person” call, or when a mentally ill person enters the homeless system, criminal-justice system, correctional system, or health-care system. But there are just as many chances to abdicate responsibility. Only if each system gets the clear message from the top that serious mental illness is a priority will New Yorkers see improvements.
Reducing violent attacks by those with serious mental illness is not impossible. Former mayor Eric Adams was unusually consistent in his approach to the issue. His pressure on the state helped clarify when mental-health front-liners could intervene through expanded involuntary commitment standards and encouraged Governor Kathy Hochul to add more state psychiatric beds—the single biggest need for both city and state.
New Yorkers shouldn’t accept violence as inevitable. Reducing it will take more from politicians than stern faces and shaking heads—and New Yorkers should demand more.