Victor Herrera urges clinicians in crisis response and closing Rikers

Good morning, Chair, members of the Council.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today about the urgent intersection of mental health, public safety, and conditions at Rikers Island.

My name is Victor Herrera, a formerly directly impacted Rikers survivor.

I appreciate the Council's attention to the policies that connect people experiencing behavioral health crisis with appropriate care, protect the safety,

and dignity of those in custody and reduce the use of incarceration where treatment and community-based support would better serve both individuals and the public.

It is more the reason that I stand for community-based support aligned with those with the closed Rikers and Treatment Court Expansion Act, both of which would fast-track reduction of the jail population and finally putting Rikers Island in our past and moving forward with truth in public health and treatment.

Behavioral health emergencies require response that protects immediate safety while addressing the clinical conditions driving the crisis.

Integrating licensed mental health clinicians into public safety systems gives responders access to clinical assessments, trauma-informed de-escalation, and direct pathways to care.

Improve access to care intervention at critical phases of such encounters of people experiencing mental health crisis.

Clinicians can arrange referrals.

safety planning, follow-up, and connection to community-based services rather than relying solely on transport, citation, or arrest.

Linking individuals to ongoing treatment and social support can address underlying needs that otherwise generate repeated emergency calls.

These links and referrals should expand the greater need for intense mobile treatment if a triage of public health remedies is allocated locally at each of the city's central booking stations.

Unlike correctional health services post-treatment on Rikers Island, testimony for you today, I would have to ask this committee to look at the crisis compared to responses by CHS health clinicians and how such approaches have not met the need for people experiencing mental health crisis.

Words such as DOC, overriding security, management, and disciplinary and involuntary hospitalization has been a serious underlying factor of people losing their lives to mental health and treatment solely because CHS will offer before you to justify

NYCDOC continued detention of people with mental health concerns.

I have shared my own testimony and full proposals toward a more robust approach to treating people with mental health and chemical dependency concerns during response to arrest and prior to detention.

Thank you.

Thank you.