by Elizabeth Pineault

NY State’s Secret Reporting System

Are you in it? You might be if you felt sad when your child died; or when you could not sleep; or when you learn that a loved one is diagnosed with a serious medical condition; or when a loved one betrays you; or you are taking certain psychotropic medicines; and you told a Physician (including Psychiatrists), Psychologist, Registered Nurse (including Nurse Practitioners), or Licensed Clinical Social Worker about it.

The secret NY State Reporting System is called ISARS. It was introduced under the NYS SAFE Act. It is the electronic reporting system that mental health professionals use to report you to various NYS agencies, including the NYS Police, and to the federal government via the FBI. They can do so if they think that you ” are likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others.” They also can report you if they simply want to or do not like you. They can make up a story about you that is untrue. Nobody checks the story.

Governor Cuomo’s SAFE Act specifically provides that if a mental health professional uses “reasonable professional judgment” and “good faith” when making a determination, this decision cannot be the basis for any civil or criminal liability on the part of that professional. In other words, the mental health professional can report just about anything about you and there is not much you can do about it. As past and recent cases have shown, it appears that nobody verifies the accuracy of any facts in the report, if there are any. So, the damage that can be done to you by unethical mental health professionals is serious.

If you did not get a notice, do not think that you have not been reported. It has been reported that over 75,000 New York residents have been reported through Governor Cuomo’s Secret Reporting System (ISARS). The only persons who were reported and who do get a notice about it are licensed gun owners.

How can you find out if you have been reported? You can contact the NYS Police and file a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) —Article 6 request for all records pertaining to you in their possession or under the control of the NYS Police, since January http://southbuffalonews.com, 20http://southbuffalonews.com3.

I wonder if this person should have been reported when he said:

“Many days I didn’t have the energy to try to unravel the tangled ball of emotions.” (p. 233).

“I was obsessive about seeing them.” (p. 233)

It was Governor Cuomo writing about how he felt after his divorce, in his October 20http://southbuffalonews.com4 autobiography.

Was he a “danger to himself or others”?

Governor Cuomo calls it the New York State SAFE Act. My question is: “SAFE for whom?”



