NYPD officer will have to stop referring to mentally ill people as “EDPs" (“emotionally disturbed persons”) as part of a $37 million program to deal with serious mental-health emergencies, according to a new report on Monday.
The long-established term will be abandoned in favor of “mental health calls,” sources told The City website, which described the change in terminology as one of the “key elements” of a plan by Mayor Bill de Blasio to reform how cops deal with mentally ill people.
The plan calls for creating a “Behavioral Health Unit” in the NYPD and establishing “Co-Response Teams” of cops and mental-health workers who will respond to emergency calls in two “high-need” precincts in Manhattan and The Bronx.
NYPD sources blasted the reported directive to alter their language, the New York Post reports.
One officer said, “You have a cop who’s been calling people EDPs for 20 years. How’s he supposed to stop?” Others wondered how the edict would be enforced. And another responded with a sexually explicit expletive.
