#Rashid Brimmage was lost in perfect storm of coronavirus chaos, city incompetence
“#Rashid Brimmage was lost in perfect storm of coronavirus chaos, city incompetence”
The mentally-ill 31-year-old has been in and out of prison and mental hospitals for the entirety of his adult life, never getting permanent help. His rap sheet of 103 arrests tells the tale of sexual assaults, drug use and public indecency, a revolving door of short jail stays and brief treatments, then back to homelessness and delusions. Meanwhile, his violent behavior escalated, culminating in his shoving a 92-year-old to the ground, nearly killing her, in Gramercy Park.
That Brimmage, who is bipolar and schizophrenic, was on the streets at all for that June 12 attack is because of the city’s latest failure — the notoriously ineffective $850 million ThriveNYC program basically let him roam untreated.
Brimmage was in a city-funded Intensive Mobile Treatment program that was to provide him medication for his illnesses, his lawyer, Henna Khan, told a judge at Brimmage’s June 17 arraignment.
But when the coronavirus pandemic hit, the treatment plan for the delusional homeless man fell apart.
“The place he usually hangs out had been cleared out and so they weren’t able to reach him at that time,” Khan said.
Prosecutor Courtney Razner put it more bluntly — the city team “lost track of him.” And by their own admission, they knew how bad Brimmage’s condition could get.
Brenda Ramirez, the head of his city treatment team, told Khan that when Brimmage’s health deteriorates he “hears voices and doesn’t recognize what he’s doing.”
Khan contended that Brimmage was hallucinating at the time of the June 12 incident, and thought he saw both his dead mother and a man who once hurt her and pushed his “mother” to the side.
In fact, the death of his mom 10 months ago was likely an emotional trigger for Brimmage’s increasingly violent behavior, and he was left to fester alone with his demons amid the perfect storm of COVID-19, overwhelmed hospitals, and ineffective bureaucrats.
“He was in the hands of the mental health system and they dropped the ball,” said DJ Jaffee, head of the Mental Illness Policy Organization.
Russell Morse, a social worker who is part of Brimmage’s legal team, told the court that part of his client’s “lashing out” was “inspired by his grief and trauma, kind of compounded by his mental illness.”
Brimmage’s violence was already ratcheting up. He was arrested twice in February, once for threatening to kill a manager at a South Bronx Dunkin Donuts and, 13 days later, for punching a woman in the same coffee shop in the arm, cops said. On March 9, a day after his court appearance in the second incident, he was arrested again for assault, this time in Manhattan for punching a stranger in the arm on 125th Street, according to the criminal complaint. Police reported finding synthetic marijuana K2 — known to cause hallucinations — in his pants pocket and two K2 joints in his jacket pocket.
Tragically, Brimmage recognized he was sick and went to Lincoln Medical Center in the South Bronx to be treated, Morse said. It is not known how many days he spent at the city-run hospital. Or why they let him go.
But “within hours of his release from psychiatric care” on June 12, he allegedly set upon his elderly victim eight miles south on Third Avenue — an attack captured in horrific video footage that showed the senior tumbling to the ground and hitting her head on a fire hydrant.
The victim, Geraldine (who did not wish to give her last name) is recovering at home and is now fearful of walking alone outside.
“I would assume, considering his mental state, he may not have received the care that he needed at that time,” Morse said.
It was the latest failure of the system to help Brimmage, who was diagnosed with mental illness at 18 and whose “intellectual disabilities” placed him in special-education classes for his entire schooling, according to his legal team.
Brimmage’s trouble with the law started at age 16 when he was arrested for criminal mischief, and escalated to public lewdness and assaulting a police officer. He also groped a woman, and the conviction got him labeled as a sex offender.
Brimmage has tallied 36 misdemeanor and three felony convictions, according to prosecutors. He spent a total of 843 days in city jails from November 2010 to May 2018, according to the city Corrections Department. His stints ranged from a few days to a 243-day run in the groping case, records show.
His 103rd arrest has landed him at Rikers Island, where is being held in lieu of $50,000 cash bail or $100,000 bond.
“These arrests are just women saying stuff, but they all black women. I am a Hispanic man,” Brimmage — who is listed as black in the state sex-offender registry — told the judge at his June 17 arraignment. “They all saying something to accuse me, but … I always have to take a plea.”
Brimmage had “multiple psychiatric hospitalizations” at Bellevue, Harlem and Lincoln hospitals, Morse said. He did not specify if the hospital stays were court-ordered and would not comment on the case.
Advocate Jaffee said during the latest hospitalization at Lincoln, mental-health providers could have invoked Kendra’s law, which is meant to help those with the most serious mental illness who have had multiple run-ins with the law or homelessness. It was named for Kendra Webdale, a 32-year-old Manhattan woman who was pushed to her death in front of a subway train in 1999 by an untreated schizophrenic.
If a judge issues an order under the law, the mentally ill person would be mandated to get outpatient treatment, and the mental health system would be required to provide it. But ThriveNYC only devotes a sliver of its funding to the program, and mental health officials are not seeking the court orders often enough, Jaffee contends.
If unwilling to use legal tools, the hospital could have perhaps provided long-acting psychiatric medication, an injection that could have carried Brimmage through a few months if care was going to be interrupted because of the coronavirus pandemic, Jaffee said.
A spokesman for the city’s public hospital system would only say, “We certainly don’t discharge patients unless they are stable.”
Jaffee has been a critic of Mayor de Blasio’s administration and the ThriveNYC program headed by his wife, Chirlane McCray. He said the program’s focus is wrongly placed on those with minor mental health needs rather than the seriously ill who may end up hurting themselves and others.
“Police step in when one condition is met: the mental health system fails,” he said.
Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former cop and prosecutor, said many bad outcomes between police and civilians involve “mental health elements.”
“We have a very serious issue in the city, and the idealogues in places like the City Council who could actually do something are too busy marching against their own police force,” he said.
“The whole issue of mental health is giant and needs an extraordinary amount of care to get solutions. Rather than do that, the mayor has thrown massive amounts of money at it, and nobody is quite sure what the benefit is,” O’Donnell said, referring to Thrive.
Elected officials need to be “doing oversight and serious reckoning,” he said.
The city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene would not comment specifically on Brimmage’s case. The agency said ThriveNYC “heavily invests” in outpatient treatment.
“Despite the enormous challenges presented by the pandemic, service providers performed admirably to deliver services to clients both remotely and, if needed, in the field. We have maintained communication with providers about meeting the needs of clients and what we have heard is that an overwhelming majority of people have remained connected to care,” a DOH spokesman said.
It was unclear whether Brimmage stayed in city shelters or was sleeping on the street. The city seemingly didn’t know. Recent addresses provided for him by the NYPD included the Manhattan Psychiatric Center on Wards Island and a convenience store on Willis Avenue in the Bronx.
“He is one of those fiends you see outside walking back and forth. He is one of the drug addicts,” a disgusted store worker said. “He doesn’t come in here. We don’t allow that.”
J.C.Rice
J.C.Rice
J.C.Rice
There is a trash-strewn plaza outside the store where the homeless sometimes bed down. It is not far from a commercial strip near Lincoln hospital, where Brimmage was known for two things — unhinged behavior and foregoing shoes.
“This guy is trouble” said Gregorio Pantaleon, who works at a bodega and frequently saw Brimmage.
He said Brimmage smoked K2, constantly harassed customers and passersby for cash, and entered the store without shoes on.
A worker at the Dunkin Donuts where he allegedly threatened the manager, which is on East 149th Street around the corner from the hospital, said he was often “screaming at us.”
Rene “RayRay” Rodriguez, who’s been a denizen of the area for three decades, said Brimmage was well known for walking up and down East 149th Street.
“They used to call him ‘Barefoot,’ ” he said.
Rodriguez said Brimmage often removed his shoes hoping that someone would take pity on him and buy him sneakers. He would then sell the new footwear.
Rodriguez said, “Crazy — everyday.”
Additional reporting by Georgett Roberts
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