Episode 26: Syrian War Crimes, Country Music, and a Central Park Salad

When police officers decided to take Rhamell Burke to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation after they allegedly found him wielding a stick and acting erratically outside the 17th Precinct stationhouse, they were making a call NYPD officers make hundreds of times a month, city data shows.

Police officers initiate nearly 600 such involuntary hospital trips per month, on average, according to a public dashboard maintained by the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health.

But the city doesn’t publicly disclose data on what happens next.

How city hospitals determine whether to admit someone for psychiatric care or discharge them from the ER is receiving fresh scrutiny, after police said Burke fatally pushed a 76-year-old man down the stairs of a Chelsea subway station just a few hours after he was discharged from Bellevue’s psychiatric emergency room.

Burke has been charged with murder in the death of retired teacher Ross Falzone, in a case that is shining new attention on the city’s hospital psych protocols.

On Friday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani called on the state Department of Health to investigate Bellevue’s handling of Burke and similar cases. State health officials quickly said they would go a step further and investigate the psychiatric evaluation and discharge practices at all city-run hospitals.

Christopher Miller, a spokesperson for NYC Health and Hospitals, said he expected the probe would find that Bellevue’s care was appropriate. “NYC Health and Hospitals/Bellevue is justly nationally recognized for its services for complex patients and all New Yorkers without exception,” Miller said.

The hospital system did not respond to a request for comment on Burke’s particular case.

In nearly half of the cases in which a clinician ordered someone to be involuntarily taken to a city-run hospital for a psychiatric evaluation in 2025, the person was admitted, according to city data.

But the city doesn’t publish data on outcomes for involuntary hospital trips initiated by the police, which make up the vast majority of these transports. The city is starting to collect more data on the outcomes of these trips to better inform its policies, but isn’t making that information public, City Hall said Monday.

Bellevue is the hospital where most people are taken when they’re brought to the hospital against their will, city data shows.

Under state law, a physician can hold someone in the hospital for up to 72 hours if they appear to pose a danger to themselves or others and for up to 60 days with the corroboration of a second physician, though such psychiatric holds can be challenged in court, said Jennifer Parish,  the director of criminal justice advocacy at the Urban Justice Center’s Mental Health Project.

State lawmakers amended the law last year to clarify that a patient can also be held involuntarily if they are unable to meet their basic needs because of their mental illness.

When deciding whether to hold someone in the hospital, physicians are likely to listen for whether a person is explicitly threatening to hurt themselves or someone else, said Philip Yanos, a professor of psychology at John Jay College.

“They ask these questions in a way that allows the person an opportunity to talk about what their ideas and plans are,” without being too transparent, Yanos said.

He said clinicians might also look for signs of disorganized thinking that could relate to a person’s ability to care for themselves.

“You might be so confused that you're not eating or you're likely to walk into traffic and get hit by a car or something like that,” Yanos said.

Yanos works with an assertive community treatment team that helps people with serious mental illnesses. He said when a client ends up at the hospital, his team often gets a call asking if their behavior is out of the ordinary or cause for concern.

It’s unclear whether Burke was connected with other mental health care services in the community.

But Yanos emphasized that psychiatric professionals are not oracles. “Professionals don't have the ability to predict future behavior with a lot of accuracy,” Yanos said.

Still, he said, collecting information from other treatment providers could help. Parish added that information from family,  medical records or police could also aid in emergency room physicians’ evaluations.

It’s unclear how much information the police shared with Bellevue staff when dropping Burke off.

Recent run-ins with the police

Court records and criminal complaints reviewed by Gothamist show Burke, who previously had a career as a dancer on Broadway, had at least six encounters with police in the three months before Falzone's death, with each incident more violent or erratic than the last.

It began on Feb. 2, when Port Authority officers tried to stop Burke for allegedly stealing a bag of potato chips from the Duane Reade inside the World Trade Center.

He pushed and flailed at three of them, leaving one with a swollen shoulder and calf, another with a cut hand and bruised knee, and a third with a swollen hand, according to a sworn complaint.

He was charged with second-degree assault, a felony, and released on non-monetary conditions after pleading not guilty.

Twelve days later, on Feb. 14, an MTA worker watched Burke kick down the door to a locked break room at the 23rd Street station on the 1 line, smash subway car windows with a shovel and roll a trash can onto the live southbound track, taking a train full of passengers out of service, according to a criminal complaint.

He was charged with burglary and reckless endangerment, pleaded not guilty and was released again.

On Feb. 25, officers found Burke sleeping across multiple seats on a subway train at the Jay Street-MetroTech station. Police said he fought with them and they recovered a knife and drugs. He was released on his own recognizance.

On April 2, Burke kicked a stranger in the back at the West Fourth Street A train platform after a verbal dispute, police said.

He was charged with misdemeanor assault and released. Sixteen days later, he was charged with disorderly conduct after another subway incident and again released.

A 1-year-old boy died and two other children were in critical condition Monday evening after a fire tore through a Bronx apartment building, injuring eight people in total, authorities said.

The blaze broke out shortly after 3:30 p.m. on the second floor of 2609 Bainbridge Ave., according to FDNY officials. Firefighters arrived to find heavy fire coming from a second-floor apartment and extending into the hallway and stairwell, officials said.

Twenty units and about 80 firefighters and EMS personnel responded to the all-hands fire.

Firefighters searching the apartment found three children unconscious and removed them from the building, FDNY Chief of Special Operations Malcolm Moore said at an evening press briefing.

The fire also spread up the stairwell and through the bulkhead, trapping residents on upper floors and prompting roof rescue operations, he said.

Officials said the 1-year-old and two 6-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, were pulled unconscious from a burning apartment. The twins were in critical condition on Monday evening, authorities said.

Two adults were also hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries and another person refused medical attention at the scene, according to FDNY officials.

Three firefighters were taken to area hospitals with minor injuries.

The building sustained heavy damage in the hallway and fire apartment, though officials said most of the building remained intact and large-scale displacement was not expected.

Moore said the apartment door appeared to have been left open as residents fled, allowing smoke and flames to spread into the hallway and stairwell.

He urged New Yorkers to close apartment doors when escaping fires, saying the step can slow the spread of smoke and flames and give residents more time to escape.

Fire marshals are investigating the cause and origin of the blaze.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Councilmember Vickie Paladino and the City Council have agreed to end their fight over the member’s social media posts, with the lawmaker agreeing to remove three posts decried as Islamophobic and the Council dropping disciplinary charges filed against her, according to terms of the settlement.

The Council's ethics committee will drop disciplinary charges against the Queens Republican for “disorderly behavior” and violating the Council’s anti-harassment and discrimination policy, according to the settlement, which still must go before a judge.

Paladino will also remove all mention of her councilmember role on her social media account on X and delete three tweets specifically cited in the disciplinary charges leveled by her colleagues on the Council.

Spokespeople for the Council and Paladino declined to comment, citing a stipulation of the settlement.

In a statement on social media, Sandra Ung, chair of the Council's ethics committee, said that she appreciated that Paladino took down her tweets, which Ung disapproved of.

“I believe the resolution strikes the right balance between protection of Council staff and the First Amendment liberties of Council Members,” Ung said in a post on X.

Ung's statement was outlined as a stipulation of the settlement, which also mentioned a statement forthcoming from Paladino.

Paladino's required statement, according to the settlement, will clarify that her social media posts "were not directed at any Council Member of staff," she is responsible for the content, and that she "never intended to make Council Members or staff feel unwelcomed or unsafe in their work environment."

She must post the statement within 48 hours after a judge approves the settlement, according to the agreement.

The settlement comes after fellow councilmembers decried several social media posts by Paladino as being Islamophobic.

In a February tweet, Paladino criticized Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s appointment of Faiza Ali, a Muslim American woman and former Council staffer born and raised in Brooklyn, as the city’s chief immigration officer.

“New York is under foreign occupation. There's really no other way to put it,” Paladino posted. “Does this administration have one single actual American in it?”

Menin condemned the remarks in a social media post of her own, stating, “This Islamophobic rhetoric is deeply offensive.” Menin added, “I condemn it in the strongest terms.”

Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, a Democrat who sits on the ethics committee, said in a post that “Racism and Islamophobia have no place in City Hall.”

More recently, Paladino criticized Mamdani for praying with sanitation workers before a winter blizzard.

“This is part of Islamic conquest,” Paladino wrote in a Feb. 23 tweet. “The message is very clear — we are being replaced.”