A city initiative to respond to mental health emergencies with social workers and EMTs instead of police officers is failing to keep up with demand, a new audit found.
The city received more than 37,000 mental health-related 911 calls between 2022 and 2024 that were eligible for a response from its pilot mental health crisis response initiative known as the Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division, or B-Heard. Around one-third of those calls – more than 13,000 – did not receive a response from a B-Heard team even though they met the criteria, according to an audit released Friday by City Comptroller Brad Lander.
The city launched the B-Heard pilot program in 2021 to reduce police responses to mental health crises, part of a movement to stop treating mental illness as a public safety concern. But the program is limited in response because it operates in a fraction of police precincts for only 16 hours of the day and is not dispatched in situations where there is an immediate risk of violence or suicide.
In addition to the 13,000 eligible calls that did not receive a B-Heard response, more than 14,000 eligible calls went unanswered because they were made between the hours of 1 and 9 a.m., when the teams do not operate, the report found. The city received more than 96,000 mental health-related 911 calls in precinct areas covered by the program between 2022 and 2024, but more than 60% of those calls were not eligible because they were potentially dangerous, a mental health professional was already at the scene or an EMS call-taker could not triage the call, according to the audit.
It’s not clear why B-Heard teams did not respond to eligible calls because the city does not keep information on why teams don’t get dispatched, what type of response happens when a B-Heard team isn’t available and long-term mental health outcomes among callers, the audit found. That makes it difficult to assess whether the pilot program is working four years into its launch, Lander said in an interview.
“I am a big supporter of the idea of a behavioral health response, I think a lot of people are,” Lander said. “But you have to do it effectively.”
One of the major shortfalls of the B-Heard program is a lack of reach, Lander said, pointing to the 18 teams that cover the vast program area. He said the city needs to hire more B-Heard responders to fill staffing gaps, but added that officials first need to improve data collection to assess the program’s effectiveness.
Lander, who is running for mayor in the Democratic primary next month, has repeatedly criticized Mayor Eric Adams for failing to adequately address the city’s mental health crisis while centering his own campaign on a pledge to reduce homelessness among people with severe mental illnesses. The comptroller released a mental health plan in January that lambasted the administration’s lack of coordination between a patchwork of city mental health programs, including B-Heard, calling for a “housing first” approach that uses existing vouchers and public dollars to place unhoused individuals in housing that provides social services.
The audit recommended that the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health, which oversees the B-Heard program, work with partner agencies New York City Health + Hospitals and the Fire Department to track why teams do not respond to eligible calls and how often police officers have to step in. It also suggested that the city expand the reach of the program and address staffing shortages by incentivizing qualified paramedics with tuition assistance or loan repayment programs. Lander refused to say whether additional funding for the program was necessary at this time, citing the lack of available data.
The city rebuked the comptroller’s findings, touting the program’s success in helping people get mental health treatment in their community and reserving police resources for other emergencies. The mayor’s office said that data collection challenges largely stem from the way the city takes 911 calls and are outside of the scope of the B-Heard program.
City Hall spokesman William Fowler said that the comptroller proved that he “lacks a basic understanding of how our city services work,” adding that the “deeply flawed ‘audit’ blames challenges with the wider 911 emergency response system on a small, never-before-tried pilot program.”
Accusing Lander of arriving at a “preconceived conclusion,” Fowler said that the B-Heard program has successfully responded to more than 24,000 mental health 911 calls with a trained behavioral health professional in an emergency dispatch system that manages thousands of life-threatening calls each day.
The pilot program has faced staffing challenges, as the city struggles to find enough social workers and experienced EMTs to respond to mental health-related 911 calls. Those challenges have put the program’s expansion on pause; B-Heard operates in just 31 of the city’s 78 police precinct areas despite previous promises from the mayor to take the program citywide. The city’s budget for the B-Heard program, which totaled $35.3 million in the 2025 fiscal year and is baselined at the same level for next year, has stayed flat as officials hold out on its expansion.
“Funding alone isn’t going to solve this problem,” Fowler said, adding that the city has no plans to increase funding until it assesses how to recruit more social workers and qualified EMTs to participate in the program.
