Some things to consider...

After yesterday's detention hearing for the guy who assaulted me -- our neighbor calls him Ben but that's not the name he's being held under -- I thought much more about what happened, who those of us involved are, and what may be the larger meanings of it all, or if there are any.

One thing that instantly popped out was the absence of police brutality. The officer who arrested "Ben" or whatever his name is arrived within five minutes of my call. I saw him in the front courtyard of the house across the street apparently idly chatting with "Ben" who appeared to be sitting calmly on a bench shortly after his arrest. 

At the hearing yesterday, the officer stated that he knew "Ben" from a previous arrest. He didn't say what for, but I assume it was the joyride "Ben" took in the police chief's car in April. 

He described the most recent arrest this way: he saw my wife in the street and asked her where the suspect was. She pointed to the house across the street from ours. He got his automatic rifle and went to the front door and... knocked. "Ben" opened the door. The officer said he saw two knives, one in each pocket of "Ben's" jeans and that "Ben's" left hand was concealed behind the door. He ordered him out of the house and onto the ground. "Ben" did not immediately obey, but was somehow persuaded -- without violence -- out of the house and onto one knee in the front courtyard. The officer handcuffed him and relieved him of three weapons, the two knives in his pants pockets and the hatchet/tomahawk he'd assaulted me with.

And then they waited for backup. "Ben" sat on the bench; the officer stood beside him. The officer said that, yes, he knew "Ben" from a previous arrest.

During the hearing, an extensive arrest record was mentioned as well as sentencing to prison and probation for previous offenses. "Ben" is no stranger to The System.

He is, however, arguably severely mentally ill. While he rattled off a litany of diagnoses, it comes down to paranoid schizophrenia and addiction with violent tendencies. They are only partially controlled by medications and counseling. And in this case were not controlled.

I had this grand notion of how I would want him to be treated post-conviction. Held in prison for up to a year, then in a locked mental health care facility for up to three years while he undergoes training and therapy to manage his condition. then in 24/7 supervised release where essentially his is under observation of a minder all the time for as long as necessary. 

Seems, at least in outline, that's the treatment he was under, and yet he was able to slither away from custody rather easily and engage in mayhem.

He'd been remanded to a locked Department of Corrections drug and mental illness treatment and recovery facility (for I don't know how long) and after two days he was out and about. He said he was denied his anti-psychotic meds at this facility and he began to act out so much that he convinced the staff to transfer him to a hospital where he may or may not have received any treatment (apparently no treatment and did not receive his medications) and where he was able to call our neighbor to come and get him. This is not quite the story she tells, but anyway... he said that someone else came and picked him up and took him to our neighbor's house where he had stayed without meds for he didn't know how long (a few days) before he was arrested for assaulting me. 

He was on probation, he was under court order to complete treatment at the locked recovery facility and to report to his probation officer regularly. He did neither, and he was able to basically walk away from the hospital where he was taken when his psychotic behavior manifested at the treatment facility.

The treatment I suggested was actually partially under way, and it was ineffective; given what I heard, it was grossly counterproductive.

So.

Where do we go from here? That'll take a while to come to grips with.

"As Is Standard In Police Involved Shootings..."

Sacramento Police Department issued a false narrative -- a series of lies in other words -- in defense of two of their officers shooting and killing a homeless mentally ill man named Joseph Mann on a main street in North Sacramento last July.

Citizen video contradicted the police narrative almost right out of the gate, but the clincher was the recent release of surveillance video that clearly showed two officers running up to Mann -- and executing him on the spot, from about 20-30 feet away, in a fusillade of bullets, while he was standing still, not "lunging" at them at all, but seeming to question why they were running up to him.

The Sacramento police lied, and they have maintained their lies until today, insisting that their narrative is correct and one should not believe one's lying eyes. Nevertheless, the police chief has announced his retirement (effective in December), and I'm told the two officers who ran up to and killed Mr. Mann are (supposedly) going to be fired.

I would recommend that these officers be fired and prosecuted for murder 2 or manslaughter, but that's unlikely to take place due to the many layers of legal protection police have in performance of their duty.

Apparently part of the duty of modern police is the summary execution of disobedient Negroes, homeless or mentally ill men in crisis, and/or any "armed" Negro whatever. Whether actually armed or not. Doesn't matter.

It is then part of their duty to lie about what they have done, and it is part of the duty of their commanders to back up the lies to the bitter end if need be.

The lies in this case are stark and obvious, while they are not quite so clear in other instances of police killing.

This is the tissue of lies SPD spun on July 11, 2016, the day of the incident, as published in the Los Angeles Times:

A man was fatally shot by two Sacramento police officers Monday morning after he acted “really crazy” and charged the office[r]s with a knife, police said.

The man, who was in his 50s or 60s, was spotted about 9:25 a.m. waving a knife in the 1100 block of Lochbrae Road when police were called to investigate, according to Sacramento police Sgt. Bryce Heinlein. 

Callers complained to a police dispatcher that the man was not making sense and was behaving irrationally. 

When the first officer arrived on the scene, the man charged at him, prompting the officer to lock himself in his police cruiser. The officer called for backup and tried to leave the area, but the man walked around the police cruiser and blocked it with his body.

When two backup officers arrived, the man with a knife took off running. The officers began chasing him on foot, and one of them suffered a non-life-threatening injury to his lower body during the pursuit, according to police. 

Heinlein said the man refused to comply with the officers’ commands and acted “really crazy.”

When the officers approached the man, he turned around and charged at them, Heinlein said. At that moment, both officers fired their weapons, striking the man. 

The man was taken to an area hospital, where he died later Monday morning. The injured officer remained in the hospital for treatment. 

The officers have been placed on paid administrative leave. The Sacramento Police Department, Sacramento County district attorney’s office and Office of Policing Accountability are investigating the shooting. Police recovered a knife at the scene, officials said.

Heinlein said the incident happened rapidly.

“This is a very quick evolving situation that occurred,” he said.

The officers were not wearing body cameras, but their police cruisers were equipped with dash cams, which filmed the incident. Officials were reviewing the video footage on Monday, Heinlein said.

So far, only 30 officers who work bike patrol in downtown Sacramento have been fitted with body cameras as part of a pilot program, he said.

Although body cameras haven’t been made available to all officers, the police department hopes to expand the program.

I've highlighted the lies. As shown in the videos which were later released from a civilian, from dash cams, and from a surveillance camera, Mr. Mann never "charged at" police during the entire incident and pursuit. He instead tries to get away from them, or failing that, tries to make them go away. He is clearly having a mental health episode, perhaps aggravated by illicit substances, and he does act "crazy" at various times during the pursuit.

The officer in the first patrol car is not "blocked" by Mr. Mann from leaving the area although Mr. Mann does cross in front of his vehicle (in a crosswalk no less!!). The officer does not try to leave the area. Instead, he follows Mr. Mann at a discreet distance, shouting at him through the loudspeaker to "drop the knife." Whether Mr. Mann has a knife or is brandishing one during this slow speed pursuit is difficult to tell from the video, but assuming he did have a knife in his hand, he is not threatening anyone with it. He is clearly attempting to get away from the officer pursuing him.

At this point, it is necessary to note that the first dashcam video starts out in a very fancy neighborhood of Sacramento called Woodlake where Mr. Mann is walking on the sidewalk near some very expensive and fashionable real estate. It's as if he were strolling around Beverly Hills or Bel Air.

Apart from being black and possibly carrying a knife and acting "strange" Mr. Mann shows no threatening behavior during the initial contact with  police. He does not, however, obey.

There is no "foot chase" at all. Instead, officers arrive in some numbers following Mr. Mann's attempts to get away from the initial officer following him at a discreet distance and issuing orders over his loudspeaker. All the arriving officers stay in their vehicles. Mr. Mann picks up something from the median of Del Paso Blvd. and throws it at the first police car, but what it is is impossible to tell.

Other police cars attempt to surround and contain Mr. Mann as he darts from one side of the street to the other. Finally, he runs along a sidewalk on the south side of Del Paso Blvd (I'm familiar with the area because I lived there at one time), stopping to catch his breath at one point, then continuing on, as two officers on foot, guns drawn, confront him beside a brick building. They do not chase him, they run up to him. They  are at least 20 and possibly 30 feet away. Mr. Mann stands still, raises his arm as if to say "go away", and the officers open fire. Mr. Mann falls, they continue firing, striking him 14 times.

Other officers then arrive on foot. One appears to kick the body as Mr. Mann lay dying on the sidewalk.

If any officer was "injured" it's not visible in any of the video released, and later stories did not mention any injured officer.

The incident does not unfold rapidly. In fact, it takes several minutes, and unfolds quite slowly and deliberately -- that is until the point that the two officers run up and shoot Mr. Mann to death. That occurs within seconds.

The police narrative was filled with falsehoods. False narratives are Standard Protocol in police involved shootings all over the country, however, as we've over and over and over again.

Here is some video which contradict SPD's lies:

1) Video taken by a witness released August 5, 2016



This video contradicts the police narrative, but because it's shaky and distant, it is hard to be sure what is going on.

2) This is a surveillance video obtained and released by the Sacramento Bee on September 19, 2016

It clearly shows two officers running up to Mann and shooting him within a second or so of arrival



3) This is the first of three dashcam videos of the incident released on September 20, 2016 by the Sacramento Police Department



It demonstrates the lies in the initial police narrative

4) This is the second dashcam video released by SPD

5) And this is the third dashcam video released by SPD

Police all over the country lie with impunity about many things, but because of all the attention focused on police killings especially, it is a wonder that they continue to like about the killing of black and brown men in particular, when the truth is so relatively evident in so many videos.

SPD felt forced to release these videos, despite the fact that they contradicted the official story, in part because of the early release of the surveillance video which showed the execution of Joseph Mann with little or no filter.

Whether justice will eventually be served, who can say. But for now at least some of the public interest is being served.

There Is No Excuse For This At All

The Fairfax County VA sheriff released the following video of the actions of her deputies that preceded the death of Natasha McKinney last February. The officers involved have been found to be not criminally liable.




There is no excuse for this at all. I haven't watched every minute of the video, and I don't recommend it as even something to witness in its entirety. It's a document of a horrible and inexcusable "extraction" for transport.

First off, Ms. McKinney should not have been in jail. She should have been seen and treated by mental health professionals for a serious condition that had previously manifested leading to the assault charges against her for which she was arrested and jailed.

Her condition deteriorated in jail to the point where the deputies decided she'd better be transported to the jail in Alexandria since the charge of assault was in Alexandria. The facility would not come for her. Therefore the deputies decided to transport her themselves.

In order to do this, certain jail protocols had to be observed, the first being that the inmate had to be restrained with handcuffs and shackles. Ms. McKenna at first agreed to be handcuffed, then refused.

The video begins with an officer stating the determination to "extract" Ms. McKenna against her will for transport to the jail in Alexandria.

Six officers in hazmat suits are delegated to perform the extraction along with another older deputy sheriff not in a hazmat suit who appears to be in charge of the operation. Three or four deputies -- also not in hazmat suits -- mill around at the end of the hall observing the procedure.

After some struggle, the older deputy manages to figure out how to open Ms McKenna's cell door, and she steps out. She is nude. She says, "You promised not to kill me!" At that point, I nearly lost it. Here are these men in hazmat suits, looking like some kind of hideous aliens, ordering her around and struggling with her, forcing her to the floor, and attempting for over fifteen minutes to secure her in various restraints, all the while shouting "Stop resisting!" and threatening her with a taser.

It's insane.

Part of the insanity is that these men are following protocols and do not know what they are doing. They are trying to achieve something that protocol demands -- the full restraint of the prisoner prior to transport -- without having a clue to how to accomplish it when the prisoner is a rather small nude woman having a serious mental health breakdown who would rather not be restrained, at least not the way these officers want to do it.

She's on the floor, on her stomach. There are four deputies on top of her pressing her head into the floor, and apparently also pressing down on her limbs and back. It's hard to tell from the angle of the videography just what they are doing, but they are clearly having a very difficult time restraining her.

One deputy has a taser and is not on top of her. The older deputy keeps trying to reason with her. The others are shouting and threatening and trying to force her legs and arms into position to shackle and handcuff her.

We've seen it a thousand times, even when people are not resisting at all officers are very seldom able to move arms or legs of detainees into the correct position for shackling and handcuffing without a tremendous struggle. I've often wondered whether they have any idea how to do it in the first place, and whether they understand why what they want to do is nearly impossible when the detainee is face down on the ground with three or four officers on top. It just doesn't work.

And the detainee is often injured, sometimes seriously, as the officers repeatedly attempt and fail to handcuff and/or shackle their quarry.

The procedure itself is faulty. It fails so often in fact that I've become convinced it is a deliberate form of "pain compliance" -- ie: torture -- for the purpose of asserting dominance, not in fact to "secure" the individual.

Ms. McKenna doesn't actually appear to be struggling or resisting; she appears to be responding to the pain being inflicted upon her.

More that fifteen minutes later, she is sufficiently restrained to be put in a prostraint chair for transport to a van which is supposed to take her to Alexandria.

Though they keep saying she's resisting, she doesn't appear to be. "Resisting" in this context seems to mean any movement at all. She's clearly uncomfortable and uncooperative. They want her to sit up in the prostraint chair and she doesn't do it. Ergo, she's "resisting" right? They keep telling her to stop kicking her legs, but she doesn't appear to be, or if she is, the movement is slight and may be involuntary.

So, because she continues to "resist" she's tasered. From what I saw, it appeared she was tasered once while she was on the floor, and three times while she was in the chair. Restrained. In other words, there was no need to shock her -- except for the fact that she wasn't in the exact position they wanted her to be in, and this was unacceptable.

Control is all-important.

Of course when a person is shocked with a taser, they can't obey orders to sit in such and such a position. When they're having a psychotic break, as Ms. McKenna may have been, they are rarely going to obey any order at all.

Police are the least qualified people to deal with a person in crisis, and what they do -- as amply demonstrated in this video -- is seriously detrimental to their own well being and that of their subject.

Ms McKinney appeared to go into cardiac arrest and stopped breathing shortly after she was tased for the fourth time in a few minutes. Medical personnel were summoned but did nothing. In fact, it appeared that CPR was eventually administered by the older deputy who had been trying to restrain her in the first place.

Ms. McKinney was revived [in the ambulance after 20 minutes without breathing or a pulse] and was taken to a hospital where she died in a coma a week later.

The medical examiner attributed her death to "excited delirium." Whatever that is. They say she was covered with bruises and lacerations, and apparently one of her fingers was amputated while she was in the hospital -- due to injuries sustained during the attempt to restrain her.

She shouldn't have been in the jail at all regardless of any charges that may have been made against her for things that happened while she was having a mental health crisis. Those restraint procedures should never have been applied to her (not to anyone). She should not have been tased (there was no need), and she should not have been tased four times within a few minutes.

The whole thing was a cockup, but the officers involved were exonerated of criminal liability, so they don't know that. The sheriff vows "changes" to protocols and procedures for dealing with mentally ill inmates.

She said the jail is where mentally ill individuals are sent more often than not.

This is wrong and insane, but according to those who say they know, Virginia does not have a public mental health care system. Mentally ill individuals who are acting out go to jail. There is no other facility available to most of them.

This is the legacy of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, coming right out of a belief that there is no such thing as mental illness, just behavior problems which can be corrected through medication, surgery or punishment.

Of course death is also a corrective for behavior problems, isn't it?

There is no excuse.

Mental Health Care and the Problem of Violent Policing

Surely by now many people understand that if they call 911 when a loved one is having a mental health crisis, their loved one is liable to be killed. This is doctrine all across the land. In any case where police are dispatched and they sense a threat of any kind, to themselves or others, they are supposed to neutralize the threat with whatever level of force they deem necessary under the circumstances.

Indeed, even when someone is suicidal and only threatening their own lives, the police doctrine is to "neutralize" the suicidal individual -- with deadly force if needed -- so as to... protect?

Police are dispatched any time a caller to 911 says they fear for their lives, or a loved one is armed and making threats, or there are guns or other weapons in the house, or it looks to them like a scary person is armed, blah blah blah, in other words, most any time there might-could be a threat of some kind to someone or some inanimate object.

If a diagnosed mental illness such as schizophrenia is mentioned, the likelihood of police killing the subject goes way up. Way-way up.

It is what the police are trained and expected to do.

Consequently, I have long said, "Don't call 911 in such cases unless you want your loved one dead."

Often enough in such cases, SWAT teams and snipers are sent on the call, the primary purpose being to kill. Period.

These are rules of engagement the public seems to be oblivious to is unaware of, because practically every day another call to 911 for help in dealing with a mentally ill loved one leads to another death, and families are shocked. "I called for help," they say, "but they killed my loved one instead." Yep. That's right. That's the kind of "help" first responding police are trained and expected to render. Why is this still a surprise? It's been SOP since most of the mental hospitals were closed decades ago.

Because so many loved ones in mental health crisis are killed by police year in and year out -- by my reckoning close to 400 a year, about a third of the total killed by police each year -- there is a nascent movement to revive the mental health care system something like it was before the Reaganite push to dismantle the system in the name of "civil liberties." Yes, that worked out well, didn't it?

Liberty for whom, to do what?

There is no doubt that there was a problem in the mental health care system as it was prior to the Reaganite dismantlement. It was enormous, for one thing. At any given time more than 4 million people were incarcerated in public and private mental hospitals and asylums across the land. This is about double the outrageous current prison population. Too often, patients had no way out, and many were held for life against their will, and sometimes against the will of their loved ones.

Too often, too, the care patients received in state run institutions was abominable. Private institutions were not much better.

The Reaganite solution was just to shut the institutions down and suggest that relatives and communities take care of their mentally ill -- or let the police do it in their stead.

This policy led to an enormous increase in the homeless population to start with, an increase that has never abated. Prison populations skyrocketed as well. It's often pointed out that a third or more of those in prison are mentally ill and most of them receive no treatment -- apart from periodic beatings, solitary confinement, pepper-sprayings and such like.

There are inadequate community mental health care facilities in the best of circumstances, and in many areas, there are none at all. Families are rarely prepared to cope adequately with a mentally ill loved one, and even their best efforts may lead to tragedy. Especially when they call for Emergency Services to "help."

Service providers and consultants milk the system for money while providing as little care as possible. This is how the system, such as it is, is set up. Mental health care budgets are often the first cut when times are tough -- as they have been for years during this Permanent Recession. Too bad for the victims.

Reviving and restoring the previous system of state run asylums and mental hospitals is probably not the best idea under the current regime of public parsimony and brutality. I can see it easily leading to something like the eugenics programs that operated in this country and abroad, most horribly in Nazi Germany.

A better system is one that operates locally not centrally, and is tied in with the communities served. This was supposedly what the devolution of mental health care from the closure of state hospitals to communities was leading to, but it never did. Instead, the police and prison system expanded to take on the difficult cases, and the rest were pretty much left to fend for themselves as best they and their families could manage. That was the "civil liberties" solution.

It's not working.

Or perhaps it is working but not the way anyone of compassion envisioned.

No, it's cruel and deadly. It's violent and catastrophic. It's corrupt and dangerous.

When a third of the police killings in the country are of mentally ill and/or suicidal individuals, it should be plain as day that there is a structural and institutional problem that might be correctable. Unfortunately, pro-police propaganda has worked well to convince many people that the proper course of action toward those who do not obey police is to kill them, regardless of mental health or suicidal tendencies.

If it's only 400 a year, what's the big deal, right? More than that die in a week in traffic accidents. More than that are killed in a week by non-police firearms. This is a violent country. Always has been.

A compassionate mental health care system would not dispatch police, snipers and SWAT teams on every 5150 call. It just wouldn't happen. Instead, there would be crisis teams available to perform interventions, and care facilities would be available that would provide more than a 72 hour observation window and a few prescriptions for psychotropic drugs -- which can cause more problems if not monitored carefully.

There would be mental health care facilities in the community provided as a public service like any other, staffed by professionals and available on an as-needed basis.

Care would not be restricted to certain hours or days of the week, and appointments would not be so limited that weeks or months pass before someone could check in for care and treatment.

A proper mental health care system would include homeless and addiction services, without discrimination toward patients based on the nature of their homelessness and/or addictions.

All this can be done, probably for less money than the current violent policing and imprisonment "treatments" for mental illness, homelessness and addiction cost, but money isn't the real issue. More public money is going to prison systems these days than to higher education in many jurisdictions, and there is little notice, let alone complaints about it. Mental health care spending is a relatively minor component to many public budgets, and what little is being spent is constantly on the chopping block when public budgets need tightening.

In some places like California, taxes were raised specifically to fund more adequate mental health care provisions, and the additional tax revenue was immediately -- and perhaps permanently -- diverted to fund other state budgetary needs.

We need to be clear with one another and with our elected representatives that the current system of incarceration and killing the mentally ill is not acceptable.

But that's only the first step.

Creating and sustaining an acceptable system will take a massive effort, but it can be done.

The question is, when will that first step be taken?

The Other Police Killing In St. Louis

Now wait. This is just wrong. This is so wrong, as wrong in its own way as the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson just down the road on August 9. As wrong as the police killing of James Boyd in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains on March 16. As wrong as... well, we could go on. And on. And on. There are hundreds of these police killings. How many hundreds, nobody knows because there are no national statistics on police killings. But the vast majority are deemed justified and the book is closed on them, whether or not there is outrage and protest as there's been in Ferguson this Blood Summer, but not -- not yet -- in St. Louis where Kajieme Powell was shot down without a qualm by two young St. Louis police officers in front of stunned onlookers and a cameraman.

Let's watch (I know it's awful, as awful in its own way as the Albuquerque police murder of James Boyd. But it should be seen in order to comprehend just how cold-blooded the officers in this case were -- as they were in the Boyd case, though they waited longer before killing Boyd, hours rather than seconds...)



The officers, two young men, one in his twenties, the other 31, both with limited experience on the force, and with back up on the way, drive up, get out of their car and confront Powell with guns drawn, issuing commands, demanding he drop the knife he's said to be holding (in an "overhand grip" according to police, but the video shows that's not true), and when Powell doesn't do as he is commanded within seconds, they fire 12 shots, most or all of which hit Powell, several shots fired after he's on the ground, and they roughly turn the near-dead body over and handcuff him as back up officers arrive, and the shocked and appalled onlookers are pushed back.

The St. Louis police chief calls this a good shoot.

The man, after all, asked the officers to shoot him. So they did. What's to worry? Why the fuss? The officers were simply doing the man a favor, and one less Negro will now be troubling the Good People of St. Louis. Job well done, amirite?

No. No, it's wrong on every level, and we have to recognize this and say it. It's WRONG.

The St. Louis police are busy patting themselves on the back for a "good shoot" and for their marvelous transparency  *they released the video, after all* in comparison to ham-handed TomFoolery and mystification by the Ferguson police in the matter of Michael Brown, where they didn't even take a report, the crumbs.

Because the StL police have been so up front about what happened, they say, there have been no disturbances in StL over this sad incident. That's because the people understand what happened and why, and they can see for themselves in this cellphone video that the StL police themselves released. So it's all good.

Right?

No. No it's not.

What we see in this video should shock our consciences to the core. It's a video of yet another summary execution in front of a number of witnesses. It's a video of police acting as judge and jury and executioner, again, as if it's perfectly normal for a police cruiser to arrive at a location, and within seconds shoot a man dead because... he doesn't do what he's told fast enough on the one hand -- though he is not threatening anyone -- and because he is in the way, black, and disposable on the other.

I first saw the video the day before yesterday shortly before I had to leave the house for a trip to Santa Fe, and I didn't see it again until yesterday. I'd heard about the shooting of course, and heard about the police chief's press conference and community meetings and so forth, and so I knew a bit about what the police and witnesses said had happened. I was alert to the fact that this incident seemed to be another summary execution on the streets and byways of the Good Ol' United States of America where this sort of thing is practically a daily occurrence.

I'm looking at it for a third time, and I'm more convinced than ever that police in America have become cowards hiding behind badges and guns and patrons who protect them, essentially no matter what they do (unless sex is involved), especially if what they do is to shoot down and beat down any potential threat to the highest of the mighty. Mentally disturbed individuals -- such as Mr. Powell appears to have been -- are particularly vulnerable to these cowards with guns and badges, most especially so if they're black and male.

There is apparently no greater threat to the realm and its masters than mentally disturbed black men.  So it would seem.

And 12 seconds after the police pull up on Kajieme Powell, they shoot him dead.

In the case of James Boyd, the 40 or so officers on scene waited 4 hours or more before killing him, but they decided that the matter would have to be resolved before dark, and as Boyd was surrendering, they shot him. Time was up.

Meanwhile, in St. Louis, the police didn't wait at all. Didn't even try to de-escalate. Nothing. A few barked commands, defiance but no threat from Powell, and bam. He's dead. Case closed.

Welcome to America in the 21st Century.

Unlike the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the police were up front about what a good shoot they thought this incident was, how Powell wanted to the shot and how the officers obliged him, and how in the end, it's just one of those things, you know? Go on about your business, there's nothing to be upset about.

But we should be upset, we should be outraged, we should be as horrified by this incident as we are with the shooting of Michael Brown and the hundreds of others killed every year by this country's police, killings that we should question regardless of whether the prosecutors or police do.

This war on the people has got to stop.

A National and International Disgrace -- Police Abuse and the Mentally Ill

Back in the late 1960s, the Ronald Reagan administration in California (he was governor for two terms before he was President -- and I only say that because it was so long ago now that many seem not to know or remember) began the process of dismantling the state public mental health care system that had existed in one form or another for a century.

Dismantling the public mental health care system nationally became part of an official consensus soon afterwards, and by the time Reagan entered the White House, the process was nearly complete.

Part of the rationale came from Nancy Reagan's adoptive father, a neurosurgeon who was convinced that mental illness -- as it was typically understood and treated -- was an illusion, a chimera. Mental health, in his view, was largely a matter of brain chemistry, and if chemistry went off track, it could be and should be treated with drugs, not warehousing in state mental institutions. In some cases of so-called mental illness, surgery might be necessary to repair or bypass damaged brain and nerve cells. There might be a genetic component to cases of Down's Syndrome (called "Mongolism" in those days) and Autism (sometimes seen as Idiot Savance) which couldn't be treated by any means.

His goal was to eliminate the mental health care system as it had long been operated. Like many others, he saw it as cruel, unnecessary, and the cause of more harm than help.

The ideal substitution would be for those encountering mental health issues to go to community clinics where their condition could be assessed by competent professionals and an appropriate course of medication or medication and surgery could be determined and prescribed. Those with genetic mental conditions that could not be treated would be assigned to board and care homes in their local communities rather than to giant State Institutions for the Feeble Minded.

It all seemed rational and reasonable. Many state institutions (as depicted in "The Snake Pit" for example) were terrible places, filled with suffering patients, indifferent or downright cruel staff, and from which it was too often nearly impossible to escape. The law enabled involuntary indefinite commitments, too often on the say-so of people who were unqualified to determine the mental condition of those who were committed. Getting out once committed could be a nightmare of bureaucracy and legal misconduct.

Treatment in these places was often non-existent or so inadequate as to be counterproductive.

Patient neglect was commonplace, medical malpractice was too common as well.

The community clinic approach to mental health care seemed far better given the liberationist tenor of the times and the rapid development of psychotropic drugs, some of which seemed to be better at treating common mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety and manic behavior than any course of psycho-therapy.

Placing those who could not be treated with medication in community board and care homes where a few to a dozen patients might live in comfort and be cared for compassionately seemed far better for the patients and their families than warehousing them by the hundreds or thousands at a central location.

The law cooperated by making the indefinite involuntary commitment no longer possible and by strictly controlling how and whether any involuntary commitment would henceforth take place.

State mental hospitals were largely shut down or turned into prisons for the "criminally insane." Patients were released to their own or their family's recognizance. Community clinics were slow to be established or non-existent. Board and care facilities were initially few and quite expensive. Drug treatments for mental illness were sometimes botched by physicians unfamiliar with the side effects of medications, by patients who refused medication, and by pharmaceutical manufacturers who produced quantities of unhelpful medications. Surgery was expensive and rare.

In fact, the expense and bother of this new system proved to be a barrier to the widespread availability of mental health care services once the state systems had been dismantled.

For many patients, there was simply no place to go. Even where there were clinics, being seen and treated at them could be daunting for people in fragile mental condition.

Literally what happened was that the police took over the "care" of a large portion of the mentally ill, and jails and prisons became the new "Snake Pits" for many people who might otherwise have benefited from treatment had it been available.

In many jurisdictions today, 30% or more of those in jail or prison suffer from mental illness, and their conditions are rarely treated. It has become commonplace to read about mentally ill individuals who are shot to death by police when they act out, or to see the horrifying results of the beatings they endure under from police under the guise of public safety.

What replaced the state mental health care system was better for some patients, much, much worse for others. Deadly for too many.

What's replaced the state mental health care system is a national and international disgrace and embarrassment, but for reasons of economy on the one hand, and official indifference to suffering on the other, nothing substantive is done about it. The situation in which a significant number of mentally ill individuals is shot to death by police every year, and a much larger number is jailed or imprisoned is taken for granted. This is the status quo, and there is little official interest in changing it.

Yet this status quo is barbaric compared to public mental health care provisions practically anywhere else in the developed world. It's outrageous and unacceptable, and yet it doesn't change.

The theme running through the current system is one of official abuse and neglect of the mentally ill, and the continual deaths of mentally ill individuals by police gun fire. I call them summary executions.

The shooting death in March of James Boyd of Albuquerque was one of the most egregious examples, but by no means was it the only one. The Boyd killing, however, caused such an outcry that instead of looking the other way or simply dismissing his death as "unfortunate but justified", officials in Albuquerque and elsewhere had to pay attention.

The people rose up and demanded better from their police and their civic administrations.

So far, they have yet to receive anything better. The killing goes on unabated, there is no improvement in mental health care provisions, and police and civic officials defy every call for reform. The status quo seems so entrenched that it often appears that nothing can be done to change it.

It's almost fifty years since shutting down state mental health care services became the standard operational practice. The results are plain enough: much death and destruction of those unlucky enough to be afflicted with mental illness, much death and destruction among families and communities, much imprisonment of the mentally ill, little or no care for the mentally ill, and a barbaric disregard for the well-being of individuals, communities and society.

That's where we are.

What then must we do?

That will be a topic for another post.

Why Do They Call The Police?

 NewsOn6.com - Tulsa, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports - KOTV.com |

Seems like every day there's another story of someone getting executed by police who've been called to handle a mental health crisis/emergency that family, friends and caregivers apparently can't.

Why. Do they call. The. Police?

This is what I don't get. Hundreds of people are killed by the police every year in extremis as it were. These killings -- executions -- take place with heartbreaking regularity, and most of them get plenty of coverage on the news. By now, everyone should know, without question, that once Emergency Services is called for help dealing with someone having a mental health crisis, the police will be dispatched, and in far, far too many cases, the person in crisis will be terminated.

And yet seemingly every day the calls get made, the police are dispatched, and some poor sod -- who is probably not a threat to anyone -- winds up dead.

Rule 1: When they get these calls, Emergency Services dispatches the police, not mental health caregivers or even EMTs.

Rule 2: The prime directive of the police is force protection. Everything and everyone is evaluated first and foremost in terms of threat to the officers. Any perceived threat must be neutralized by any and all means at the officer's disposal.

Thus:

Rule 3: Someone having a mental health issue is almost by definition a threat to themselves, those around them and/or responding officers -- or Emergency Services would not have been called.

And:

Rule 4: That threat must be -- and will be -- neutralized before any other service is rendered. The only means of neutralization the police know any more is through violence, including on the spot execution.

The officers are not there to "help." They are there to neutralize a perceived threat by any means necessary. In their world, those means are violent, bloody and deadly.

And they will get away with it in almost every case.

Practically every homicide committed by police is ruled "justified." Any and all threats the cops perceive are justification for use of deadly force in practically every conceivable circumstance.

So my question is: why do people keep calling the police (or Emergency Services, knowing the police will be the first responders) when all they want is some help in calming a friend or relative in crisis?

Why do they keep calling when they know -- or should know -- that the police don't do calming interventions, they do deadly ones? Do they actually want the deadly interventions that take place hundreds of times every year?

Perhaps it's an automatic and unconscious thing, as we've all been conditioned to "Call 911!" whenever we need assistance for a life threatening emergency. And perhaps we believe that if we explain the situation carefully enough, the right sort of assistance will be sent.

What do we want? Help with something beyond our control.


Who shows up? Police. And what do they do? They kill.

For the most part, there is no mental health care assistance available to the public when they call 911, only police. And the police are not concerned with offering "assistance" to the public in a mental health crisis emergency; they are interested in protecting themselves from any threat of harm from the subject of the call. They are trained and expected to use deadly force whenever they perceive a serious threat, or literally in many cases, any threat at all.

Someone in the throes of a psychotic break is about as serious a threat as police encounter, for there is no way for them to anticipate the actions/reactions of the subject. So they shoot.

What's needed is health care intervention as opposed to force protection. But that means relearning how to do it -- a skill that has been largely lost over the past few decades -- and dedicating resources to ensure that those who can do it are made available as widely as possible.

Police are the wrong responders in these situations -- that is, if those calling for help actually want help rather than deadly force. EMTs won't go to these incidents until their safety is assured, and that can't be done until the threat is neutralized, and that too often means the death of the one in crisis.

The Mental Illness Equation and Induced Helplessness

cRaZy

One of the consistent narratives regarding the numerous mass shooting incidents in the United States is that of the "incomprehensible" and "senseless" actions of someone who suffers from some treated or untreated mental illness. In the case of the Sandy Hook School Shooter, Asperger's Syndrome has been brought up.

(Caveat: almost nothing at all reported about this incident or the alleged shooter has turned out to be accurate or true; the level of misinformation is higher in this incident than in some of the previous ones, but misinforming the public about what has happened, who is/was involved, and what factors may have played a role is the common narrative approach. Thus every one of these incidents take on a legendary aspect which is very difficult to break afterwards.)

The idea that "mental illness" is behind these incidents is easily digested by a gullible public, few of whom actually know anything about mental illness and what is -- and isn't -- actually being done for and about the mentally ill in this country.

Some people are subject to what used to be called psychotic breaks, and they can go on uncontrolled rampages. This has been true throughout human history, and by this time, it's not really a mystery that it can and does happen.

Sometimes these psychotic breaks and rampages can be induced by various drugs and medications. The meth monster and the speed freak are well known and mythologized variants of the psychotic break rampager-berzerker, but there are apparently quite a few other illicit drugs and licit medications that can bring on episodes of psychosis and rampage.

Claims that somehow the shooters in these seemingly endless incidents fit into one or another of the mental illness categories that can lead to psychotic breaks and rampages or that they are taking one or another drug or medication that can do it (or that they stopped taking a drug or medication) are fairly commonplace. It may even be true. And there are arguably far too few effective mental health services available in this country.

The problem is that if we know that incidents of mass murder can -- and do -- result from such things, and we ostensibly don't want mass murder as a routine part of our daily lives, it's probably not wise to continue to make guns so easily available to people who might be victims of this sort of mental illness, no?

But somehow that logic step is never taken among our High and Mighty. It simply doesn't register as an appropriate thing to do...

Instead, what we constantly hear about is the need for ever greater levels of "security" in our daily lives, whether it be at school or shopping or going to the movies or church. In other words, rather than dealing with the problems of treated and untreated mental illness, we must position armed guards everywhere, and an ever-expanding surveillance apparatus everywhere, in order to identify and track potential mass shooters and ideally prevent them from acting in the future.

Alternatively, we are told that "arming everyone" would make the likelihood of a mass shooter taking out more than a few people less likely because an armed bystander would then take out the shooter. This is fantasy, but oh well.

Then there is the notion that the problem is not guns or access to firearms at all; the problem is mental illness and lack of treatment. Or the wrong kind of treatment. Or alternatively, the problem is "bad people" and the proper response to bad people (summary execution) is not employed with enough rigor.

Yes, well. In the case of the mentally ill acting out, summary execution is SOP; dozens if not hundreds are killed by police every year. "Bad people" on the other hand often as not aren't dealt with quite as lethally.

The idea that mentally ill or bad people shouldn't have access to firearms is widely accepted, but in practice restricting access is an abstraction. Put another way, it's a good idea with no means of implementation without restricting access to firearms by "normal" people. We don't want to do that because of the all-important Sacred Second and Freedom.

So there's nothing we can do about it.

Just as there is nothing we can do about the unemployment problem. Nothing we can do about the growing economic inequality, either. Nothing we can do about the looming Fiscal Cliff except to "cut entitlements to show we are serious." Nothing we can do about anything that would make life better.

Helplessness in the face of crisis. Indifference in the face of suffering. Violence in the face of misery.

Get the picture?

The current emphasis on "puzzle pieces," heightened security and  "mental illness" provides us with many clues to how this incident will be resolved in the minds of authority and subsequently in the minds of the public. Just like every other mass shooting incident, the shooting will be deemed "senseless," the shooter's motivations will be deemed "incomprehensible." He was a "loner," "mentally ill," "easily picked on," so on and so forth. We must protect ourselves from these people. We will do so by heightening security at schools and all other public places; we will heighten surveillance of everyone, but our specific focus will be on "loners" and the "mentally ill."

There will be little or no effort to restrict access to firearms. Nino won't allow it.

On Mental Health Issues -- Follow Up

I was going to end this series on Mental Health Issues with the "do the right thing" post labeled "Final", but I see that today's paper is full of "5150" stories and editorials on the crying need for adequate mental health care locally and beyond.

There are a lot of statistics involved and quite a lot of law that I had not considered more than tangentially. I know -- empirically -- that the over all mental health care issue is dire and getting worse for many, many patients. But as the situation worsens and the calls for improvement escalate, Americans aren't yet at the point of recognizing the need for complete overhaul and reform. It's getting closer, but we're not there yet.

I will try to have a more complete post covering the topics in today's paper later today.

---------------------

The 5150 story is just insane -- as a friend described it this afternoon as we discussed the mental health (lack of care) situation in this area. There has been a 40% drop in 5150 incident reports since 2008. The patient described in the first few paragraphs was cowering under a therapist's desk, refusing aid and threatening to kill herself when the therapist decided to call the police hoping they would take the patient to the hospital for a 5150 commitment -- the involuntary commitment of a suicidal or dangerous person.

The therapist said she was told by the police officer who responded that the patient had to be standing there with a knife to her throat to be "5150'd" -- and left.

Commitments have dropped from over 2,000 in 2008 to less than 1,400 in 2010, while the seriously mentally ill population has remained essentially stable at roughly 74,000, including 27,000 children. Calls to the police for help have stayed pretty much the same during that time period, too.

The reason for the decline in involuntary commitments is budget cuts that have closed almost all the public mental health care outpatient clinics and inpatient facilities in the county. Now, the only open facilities to handle mentally ill patients are the overcrowded ERs at general hospitals, and because it may take a long time to find an open bed, police are simply refusing to take patients for treatment. Of course, if they cause trouble enough, they'll be taken to jail or killed on the spot.

The myth is that even with the lack of facilities for care and treatment of the mentally ill, "the most serious cases" are still being committed, and private community organizations are "stepping in" to fill the gaps left by the closures of the public clinics. This is simply not so.

There are numerous cases detailed of severely mentally ill individuals in the county who could not get care because there is none available.

That's the reality in this county and this country.

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/23/3344656/sacramento-officers-take-fewer.html

-------------------------

Carla Jacobs and Dr. E. Fuller Torrey opine on the necessity of the county to deal with its dangerously mentally ill or face the consequences. In their opinion piece, they detail what happened when Ronald Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act in 1969, effectively ordering the deinstitutionalization of the severely mentally ill, and changing the standard for involuntary inpatient commitment from a court finding of "need for treatment" to "danger to oneself or others." Now no one can intervene legally unless a patient is predictably imminently "dangerous." Knowing just where that line might be is almost impossible.

According to Jacobs and Torrey, the problem is that 40-50% of the severely mentally ill have a syndrome that prevents them from recognizing their own condition, which means, ultimately, that they get no treatment. At all.

Nationwide the statistics are staggering: in 2007 DoJ reported that 56% of state prisoners and 64% of local jail inmates were suffering from mental illness. Why do we let this situation continue and worsen year after year?

"Freedom?" For whom?

Because of chronic overcrowding in California's state prisons, many low level prisoners will have to be transferred to local jails, and then released. Many of them will be mentally ill, and there will be no treatment access for them.

This is not a sane policy.

There are laws in California and Arizona which make access to mental health care much more available than it usually is, but these laws are not implemented in either California or Arizona. Consequently, despite the need, there still is no adequate access to treatment and what little access there is is being even further restricted.

Monstrous.

We need reform of the entire system. Now.

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/23/3342633/county-must-deal-with-its-dangerously.html

On Mental Health Issues -- Final

The ostensible goal of most modern mental health care providers is for the mentally ill to be able to function at the highest possible level the individual is capable of and to live as rewarding and productive a life, preferably integrated within the general society, as possible.

In pursuit of this goal, many providers rely on medications that control or partially control symptoms of many mental illnesses. As a consequence, the United States is often called the "medicated nation." Such a large percentage of the population, starting at a very young age, is on some highly psychoactive drug or another, to control one or more symptoms of mental illness that it's not too much of a stretch to wonder if the whole damn country is bonkers.

This reliance on medications, in contrast to the previous reliance on an in-place system of custody and treatment, is partly the result of a belief that "mental illness isn't real." Instead, the manifest symptoms of mental illness in many if not most cases are the result of chemical/hormonal imbalances in the brain, and correcting those imbalances will correct the symptoms. From a purely physical perspective, there's a good deal of truth to the belief that many symptoms can be controlled or corrected with medication. The millions of Americans taking psychoactive medications and carrying on "normal" lives is testimony to that. The question then arises of how so many Americans became mentally ill enough to require constant medication.

When conformity was an important social value an entire mental health care infrastructure was built up in response. It was dismantled when conformity was no longer considered such an important social value. Now, instead, many more millions of ordinary Americans are medicated with chemical "re-balancers" than were ever served by the mental health care system that used to exist, and yet many of the mentally ill get little or no care or treatment at all but are left to fend for themselves on the streets or however they might, and if they act up, they're either jailed or summarily executed.

The goal of reintegrating mentally challenged and mentally ill individuals into the broader society was and is one of the more laudable goals of the dismantlers of the earlier system of custody, treatment and care. There was no reason, in many cases, to segregate mentally challenged and mentally ill individuals in out-of-the-way asylums. Segregation had long been the rule, however, so it didn't occur to the powers that be that there might be another way until it was forced on them.

There was and is no reason for a separate ("but not even close to equal") mental health care system distinct from the physical health care system. Mental health care should be available, just as physical health care should be available, to all, without the kinds of hurdles to access we have today.

So ultimately what the issue boils down to is accessible care, which is a problem for millions upon tens of millions of Americans, whatever their health care issue is, and it is a problem that would only be partially remedied by the Health Insurance Reform measures passed last year (and now under fierce assault from the Rightist Reactionaries).

Until we have a single-payer comprehensive health care system, together with the educational and other support systems necessary to keep it functioning -- the only kind of health care system that will provide universal care in a large and complex system like this one, the problem of access will continue, the problem of grossly disparate care for the mentally ill on the one hand, and over-medication on the other will get worse, and ultimately the concept of "care" itself will be inverted to mean its opposite.

We may not be able to control what our ruling class does about these matters, as they seem intent on governing contrary to the public interest at all times, but we can control what we do as individuals and in groups.

Never relent on advocating and doing what is right.

On Mental Health Issues -- Cont'd Again

[Performance by The Cramps at Napa State Hospital in 1978.]

What we need, of course, is to a return to valuing people, society and the common interest enough to restore access to mental health care services, as part of access to all health care service, to anyone who needs it without so much coercion or complexification that the patient is either forced into inappropriate care or is unable to get care because he or she can't figure out what to do.

But for that to happen, Americans have to once again believe it is in everyone's interests to care for the most vulnerable among us, without basing that "care" on concepts of punishment.

Right now, such mental health care as there is in America is largely chopped up into innumerable clinics, non-profit operations, emergency observation facilities, and so on, each an independent fief, operated first and foremost for the purpose of maintaining funding and personnel. Client services are secondary at best, and that's why this non-system -- as expensive as it is -- doesn't work. It operates for the convenience and profit primarily of administrators.

That has to change.

But it cannot change so long as our value system is continuously demanding the least service for the mentally ill while protecting the providers, and so long as our values are based on punishment and neglect, and not just for the mentally ill.

After the Revolution comes, indeed....

On Mental Health Issues -- Cont'd

I don't want to make it seem like the mental health care system in this country in the '50's and '60's was all violets and rosewater. It wasn't. Care of the mentally ill was essentially custodial, treatment was largely based on ignorance. In operation, it could occasionally be extremely cruel.

The point I make is that there was a system of mental health care in place that did not rely on theories of punishment and neglect. There is no such system now. By design and by policy decision.

For all the faults of the system when time was, progress was being made in correcting elements that didn't serve the interests of patients, on eliminating abuses, and on improving custodial conditions. Still, there were huge numbers of patients in the system at any given time, about twice the number now held in America's domestic jails and prisons, but at the time, the ratio between the number of mental health care patients and prisoners was astronomical, many millions vs a few hundred thousand.

An obvious question arises: why were so many people "in the system" back in the day? And why are so relatively few in it today?

The answer isn't quite so obvious, but I'll give it a shot.

One of the chief organizing social values in the United States -- at least from the '20's onward -- was conformity. Americans were obsessed with being like one another, knowing and adhering to custom, deviating as little as possible from the expectations of family, friends and neighbors, submitting to authority, and on and on. As the catastrophes of the 20th Century mounted, first the Depression, then WWII, the need to belong and to conform became almost overwhelming for most people. Eccentricity was not encouraged, often it wasn't tolerated at all. "Alternative lifestyles" were impossible for most people. During the '50's and up to the early '60's "conformity" was practically an absolute demand.

There were very limited "non-conformist" outlets (Beaniks, artist communities and so forth), but they, too, were internally very conformist.

Mentally ill individuals, by definition, didn't and most often couldn't "conform" to more and more rigid social standards. What to do?

That was the question. Because people believed at the time in common social responsibility and that the government, as the agent of the common will, had the authority to act on that responsibility, the result was an extensive public mental health care system. Many people used it -- voluntarily and involuntarily -- which was the point of having it in the first place. This would seem to be an obvious concept, but strangely it is not.

Many of those who utilized the system (voluntarily or involuntarily) did so because they either wanted to conform or their social context required that they do so.

We can opine as we will on the need for conformity in those days. I myself saw how destructive it could be, but it was possible to see the social value in conformity, too. It seemed that people could be designated "mentally ill" on the basis of little more than an eccentricity or two, and that could be very abusive. On the other hand, it didn't happen that often, not nearly as often as one might believe.

Nevertheless, the social pressure to conform was intense, and the level of stress on the people who had difficulty doing so, for whatever reason, was just as intense. For some of them, utilizing the mental health care system was a way to cope.

All that said, because treatment was based on so much ignorance -- ignorance that's still a real problem in the field -- results of treatment were not necessarily desirable or benign. Suffering people continued to suffer. On the other hand, there was treatment or at least care available, which simply isn't the case now, at least not on the scale and level of access there once was.

I'm not inclined to go all the way back to the system as it was, but it's long past time for the recognition that the current underfunded and balkanized non-system that is extremely difficult to access and maintain any sort of consistency of care within is not in the public interest.

On Mental Health Issues

I haven't really gotten into this topic much, preferring to rant rather than delve into it to the extent I could, but I've left hints here and there that there have been many -- severe -- mental health issues among members of my family. I've lived with the consequences all my life. It's not an easy topic to broach or to discuss.

But the recent upsurge in interest in mental health issues following the dreadful shooting in Tucson has opened the door a crack. I realize that most people have no idea what mental illness is -- let alone does -- and they see it as a relatively trivial matter that doesn't concern them. In fact, mental illness, and the price all of us pay for the lack of mental health care services in this country is an ongoing catastrophe.

The shootings are only part of the picture, a relatively small part -- though they are the ones that get the most attention. My impression is that far more mentally ill individuals wind up getting shot, either by Authority or by others, than they shoot, and most people are just as happy it is so.

Punishing and killing the mentally ill -- or simply "allowing" them to die -- is the way things have been in this country for many a long year.

To review: My brother was autistic; my sister suffered from a serious bi-polar condition. My mother became more and more demented as she got older -- but there were signs of serious trouble from early on. My father was an alcoholic who suffered from severe -- untreated -- depression most of his life. And I myself have struggled with alcoholism and depression and various forms of PTSD most of my life.

Oh yes, I had a very traumatic childhood, one that I can recall with both joy and horror -- depending on circumstances recollected -- in almost too great of detail.

That said, when I was young, mental health care was available through public health agencies as well as private providers, and while there could be stigmas to utilizing mental health care services, it wasn't that big an issue for most people. If you needed to get your head shrunk -- or thought you did -- you did it. If you were acting out, the 'van men' came (the term is from an Edward Albee play, "The American Dream") and took you away for a while, sometimes a long time, in a public facility, and you would be provided with at least minimal care and treatment, not necessarily based on "The Snake Pit," either. Millions of Americans were housed or treated in the mental health care system -- when there was one -- in this country.

Involuntary commitment was relatively rare, though it did happen with somewhat more frequency than I believe was necessary. Voluntary commitment was far more common.

Treatment, unfortunately, was primitive when it wasn't downright barbaric. Professionals in the field did not know what caused mental illness and so they often did not know how to treat it effectively. Often it seemed that the basic premise of mental health care and treatment was "This too shall pass." In truth, that's how it sometimes works out. Provide the mentally ill with a safe and positive environment, listen to them, provide therapeutic activities and wah-lah!, something approaching a cure. Well. For a while anyway.

That was the easiest, and in my experience, the most common approach, but if a patient did not improve through utilization of simple methods, there were others. Electroshock. Cold and hot baths. Insulin shock. Other means of "forcing" the patient to get better. If nothing else worked, there was always the lobotomy. That worked real good. Oh yeah.

As I say, primitive if not barbaric. But most patients did not go through those treatments. Too many -- far too many -- did, but most were treated as simply as possible, and many who could not recover for whatever reason (ie: brain damage, dementia, Downs and other syndromes, autism, etc.) would be housed, as safely and comfortably as possible either in a public facility or with local providers for the rest of their lives.

Yes, there were abuses, terrible abuses, and in too many cases, those abuses were not addressed adequately -- or at all -- until very late in the game, indeed, not until the policy decisions were made to shut down the entire public mental health care system as it once was. Abusing the mentally ill was sport for the sadists who all too frequently had free rein in public and private facilities. Sadists on the street could be just as cruel if not more so. Too often, they got away with it.

But the effort to dismantle the entire system of mental health care was based on truly horrific concepts that should not have ever been allowed to prevail.

The basic premise: "Let them fend for themselves; let their families take care of them. If they make any trouble, punish them or kill them."

And this was marketed far and wide as "liberation!" "freedom!"

It was and is a grotesque perversion of the terms.

But you see, I'm getting into rant-mode again. And I don't want to stay in that place, so I'll have to stop for a little while.

---------------

Rant mode off for a bit.

My brother had the most severe long term mental illness in the family, and he was cared for at first by family members; when that became impossible, he was cared for by friends of the family; when they could no longer care for him, he was transferred to a state facility where he did not live much longer, not because of any neglect or abuse that I'm aware of but principally because he couldn't handle the change and lost his will to live.

My sister became a mental health care professional and worked in the field for forty years. She died as a consequence of being caught in the middle of a take down of an obstreperous inmate at Atascadero State Hospital -- really a prison for the criminally insane. Her injuries required surgery. She got a blood clot. She died the day after surgery.

She suffered from what was eventually diagnosed as "Manic-Depression", now known as "bi-polar disorder." She voluntarily committed herself to a private, locked facility several times, and she received repeated courses of electroshock therapy. I wouldn't say it helped. It just gave her another set of challenges and problems to deal with. She was put on lithium several years before she died, and it really did seem to help. She was somewhat distant due I think to the shock therapy, but she was highly functional to the end.

My mother went untreated for many years, though she knew there was something wrong in her head. She saw a series of therapists when it became harder and harder for her to get along in the world, and she was put on high doses of psychotropic drugs. They helped in a sense. She was much calmer and able to function, which she and everyone else appreciated, but she became more and more unfocused and to my eye at any rate she became more and more unhappy, until finally she decided to stop taking the medications. Mistake. It took several months to clear the medications from her system, and the person who emerged was all but unrecognizable. That's why I posted the "Nan" videos. My mother had become someone very much like "Nan." One can cope with people in that condition, but it isn't easy. She deteriorated, moved north, could not take care of herself, was looked after by one of her granddaughters and finally died of lung disease -- for she never stopped smoking right up to the end.

My father's depression started soon after his first wife's death. It wasn't really recognized. It was never treated. He tried to self-medicate with alcohol -- which had the effect of making him a drunk. As he got older, he completely withdrew from the outside world. The only people who even saw him toward the end were some religious nuts who had moved into his house. They... didn't help, and by the time he was taken to the hospital suffering from cancer, it was really too late to do anything to save him. He died within a week.

I've seen counselors and psychiatrists for some of my own issues, but strangely, they've tended to say I'm "fine" -- or at least doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances. I've never taken drugs, but for a time, I was drinking very heavily and came to understand, when I hit bottom as they say, that drinking was my attempt at self-medication. Getting better took a long time, but I haven't had a drink in almost 20 years, I keep working on recovery, and I certainly don't miss the sauce ;-). I have developed a lot of coping strategies when depression comes over me, most of them suggested by one or another counselor, and for what it's worth, in a halting way, my ad hoc efforts work. I still get occasional panic attacks, but far fewer than before I retired.

That's the nutshell version of my own private nuthouse.

While I recognize that my family's situation is unusual, it's not that unusual. At one time, help was available -- even if it wasn't the best -- and it was utilized by most of us at one time or another.

It is not the case that "help is available" any more. I read over and over that people who are trained in dealing with mentally ill people are trained to call the police if there is any suspicion that the individual might be a threat to the safety of himself or anyone else. Time after time, when the police respond, they kill the suspect. It is always justified homicide. Always.

Why do people call the police? They think they are supposed to on the one hand, and they literally have no other choice on the other. Mentally ill people acting out -- or even threatening to -- are "always" a matter for Authority and too often summary execution. There is no other option.

If they are not killed on the spot, they are taken away either for a 3 day observation, or if a law can be found that they have broken, they are taken to jail, where they are likely to be beaten and abused by the guards for sport. I could go on and on and on detailing what happens to the mentally ill caught up in the grip of our punishment obsession and the absence of appropriate mental health care services.

I can't help but think what would have happened to members of my own family if this regime of mal or non-treatment of the mentally ill had been in place when they were diagnosed and suffering.

It's appalling.

Which is why I tend to rant about it rather than calmly consider.

It all goes back to Reagan, his wife Nancy, and her (step) father. Well, that and the series of lawsuits filed by the ACLU to "liberate" mental patients.

I'm getting back into rant mode, so I'm going to stop for the time being, maybe look up some links to include here later, and consider more deeply what it is we really need in this country to provide for mentally ill people.