“‘New York City 911,’ the emergency dispatcher answered. ‘Do you need police, fire or medical?’ ‘I need police — 312 Riverside Drive,’ the caller said in a hushed voice. ‘The lady in Room 340 on the third floor is cutting herself. She’s mentally ill. She’s buck naked and she’s mentally ill and she’s cutting herself with a razor.’ The dispatcher asked follow-up questions and assured the man: ‘Help is on the way’ … Again and again, police officers had raced to the tree-lined block of the Upper West Side, between West 103rd and 104th Streets. Firefighters and paramedics met them there. But the responses all ended the same way: The emergency vehicles turned and left, their sirens off. The police, over time, stopped responding to the calls at all. Because there is no 312 Riverside Drive.” Michael Wilson in the NYT with a touching and frustrating story of mental illness in the big city where the system just isn’t built to cope with it. It’s a story that’s both uniquely New York and strikingly familiar to anyone who’s ever experienced or encountered mental illness. The Mystery Behind the Crime Wave at 312 Riverside Drive. (Gift Article)