CM Wong on Kendra's Law AOT petition transparency

My predecessor, Councilman Robert Holden, spent years asking for basic transparency on Kendra's law petitions.

And I intend to continue that work.

The question is simple.

How many assisted outpatient treatment petitions, AOT petitions, were filed in New York City in FY25?

How many were approved?

How many were denied?

And what are the numbers of Queens specifically broken down by borough?

You know, there is a Queens AOT team.

I want to know whether it's being used, by whom, how often, and with what results.

City agencies, NYPD, DHS, HNH can file petitions.

Which agencies are actually doing so and how often?

Please answer that.

Thank you, Councilmember.

First of all, absolutely agree.

And the service that we provide with AOT promotes engagement in mental health services for individuals who have had histories of multiple hospitalizations due to harm.

And have had treatment, not adherence.

And so AOT provides an extra level of care.

To your question directly, in FY25, we monitored about

2,800, so 2,834 individuals.

And to go a little bit deeper, I'm going to hand it over to Assistant Commissioner Jamie Nichols.

Yeah, thanks.

We've got a lot of experience in assisted outpatient treatment.

We've been doing it since 1999 and use it, I think, more than every state in the country in terms of the scope of our program here in New York City.

The lawyers and psychiatrists that do the petitions are really experienced, and very rarely is a petition ever denied.

I don't have the numbers now, but I can tell you it's a very infrequent occurrence.

Thank you.

This data should not be hard to produce, and I don't understand why it hasn't been consistently reported to the council.

Is this something you could do in the future?

Yeah, we can point you.

The State Office of Mental Health has a dynamic dashboard on their website with all of the petitions and court orders that have ever been filed since the program's inception, and we can point you to that information, and it's broken down by borough.

Okay, I'll provide my contact info later, and then you can reach that, send that to me.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah.

And we've been joined by Council Members Felder and P.

Sanchez on Zoom and wanted to go to pass it on to Council Member Ressler.