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.
