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Shulman seeks biannual reporting on mental-health emergency responses, citing gaps in Be Heard data
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Summary
Council Member Shulman introduced legislation requiring semiannual reports on mental-health emergency calls, who responds, response times, demographics and outcomes; she said Be Heard has answered nearly 35,000 calls but that data gaps (including 35% of eligible calls routed to traditional response) hinder evaluation.
Council Member Shulman introduced a bill (Intro 7 22-a) that would require the mayor’s office of community mental health to submit reports twice a year on mental-health emergency calls covering the previous six months. Shulman said the reporting requirement would spell out who responded, response times, any additional responders involved and the outcomes that followed.
Shulman framed the measure as necessary to evaluate programs such as Be Heard, a pilot that pairs EMTs with mental-health clinicians. She said Be Heard teams had responded to nearly 35,000 mental-health 911 calls through June 2025 and that 43% of patients were served in the community rather than transported to a hospital; she cited survey results saying 96% of respondents said Be Heard helped them and 94% said the response better matched their needs. At the same time, she said, 35% of calls deemed eligible for Be Heard still received a traditional response. “Good policy depends on good data,” Shulman said.
The bill would require coordination among NYPD, FDNY and the Office of Community Mental Health and would require FDNY to publish Be Heard response data on the city’s open-data portal, Shulman said. She described the measure as a step toward consistent, public reporting so the council and the public can evaluate the program’s performance and equity.
The transcript records the introduction and discussion but does not include a recorded council vote on the measure.
