Rhamell Burke, 32, during his arraignment for allegedly shoving 76-year-old Ross Falzone to his death down Manhattan subway steps in an unprovoked attack Thursday night, at Manhattan Criminal Court on Saturday, May 9, 2026 in New York City. Michael Nagle for NY Post Mayor Zohran Mamdani so far hasn’t announced any news from his “investigation” of the city’s “handling” of Rhamell Burke’s psych evaluation — which saw him released almost instantly, scant hours before he allegedly murdered Ross Falzone at a Chelsea subway station — and it’s a safe bet he never will, because this is the same old horrible story.
Obviously deranged lunatics walk loose routinely in these parts, and kill pretty regularly.
Just 18 months ago and a few blocks from the site of Falzone’s murder, Ramon Rivera, well known as a schizophrenic criminal to the systems that should have kept him confined, went on a murder spree, stabbing three people to death shortly after he was released from Rikers.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan) and 10 other lawmakers wrote a stern letter calling Rivera’s case “a damning indictment” of the city’s criminal justice and mental health systems, demanding to know what “information was communicated” between the various agencies leading up to the maniac’s release.
Neither Nadler then nor Mamdani now could’ve truly been surprised, because our politicians have ordered the courts and hospitals to get these menaces back on the streets ASAP, telling the justice system to jail almost no one, and the mental-health system to “stabilize” them, declare them “no threat” and get them out the door.
Police (and social workers) find it near-impossible to get them committed for inpatient treatment, or to jail them pending trial for their crimes.
So all Mamdani’s “send social workers, not cops” approach would do is put the social workers in danger, just as happened under the similar de Blasio-era “B-HEARD” program.
Rhamell Burke was arrested four times since February, including for two separate assaults on a Port Authority cop and a pair of women on the subway; the day of the murder, he got taken to Bellevue for threatening other cops and released after just an hour.
The system failed Ross Falzone because it’s designed to release the dangerously violent.
New York doesn’t need its mayor, or any other elected, “investigating” any of this: It needs them to build a system designed to 1) protect the public, and 2) where possible, force these tragic cases to accept the help they need.
