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-Great Cultural Revolution
Heed the pleas of the subway-shover's sister: Stop letting the severely mentally ill roam loose and untreated
2022-01-19
[NYPOST] Even if you don’t have a loved one plagued by mental illness who refuses to get help, you have to feel for Josette Simon, the sister of the man known as Simon Martial, 61, who has admitted to the horrific Times Square murder of Michelle Go."I remember begging one of the hospitals, ’Let him stay,’ because once he’s out, he didn’t want to take medication, and it was the medication that kept him going," Josette, 65, told The Post.

New York City’s mental-health system (perhaps the entire nation’s) is broken. Time and again, it releases to the streets people who are a danger to at least themselves, and tragically often to innocents like Go. Even pleas from family members like Josette Simon prove futile, as the system doesn’t even use the tools available, such as Kendra’s Law, to mandate treatment.

"There was nothing I could do," she weeps. "And they let him out in the street.

"People who saw him know — he’s crazy," she says. "My brother had been sick for so long." Diagnosed with schizophrenia decades ago, he was taken in by another sister after their mother’s death. "She had to call the police on him a couple of times, but after that, he went downhill. He’s been in and out of mental hospitals at least 20 years."

He did state prison time after robbery and attempted robbery convictions. "Get him some help," she pleads. "I’m not saying let him out, but get him some help."



Posted by:Fred

#7  If they break the law they need to be incarcerated. That's pretty simple, isn't it? If they're nut cases and just want to be left alone, OK. But if they pee on the street, it's a crime and it needs to be treated as such.

I know liberals like to paint Ronald Reagan as a big, bad meanie every chance they get. I don't care if it was Ronald Reagan or Ted Kennedy or George Wallace. Letting dangerous nut cases run loose on the streets was a mistake that needs to be corrected.

OK. The institutions were awful. I saw that movie One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. I get it. But we can't have them sleeping on the sidewalks. We're not Calcutta, are we?
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2022-01-19 11:15  

#6  Probably half or more of the Teefa berserkers ought to be in institutions of some kind.

Look at those Teefa mug shots from Portland that Andy Ngo publishes: they look like those portrait-photos of mental patients from the early days of photography.

At least two of the people who attacked Kyle Rittenhouse were certified lunatics, for ex -- "JoJo" was literally off his meds and even hurled his psychiatric outpatient's go bag at Kyle.
Posted by: Merrick Ferret   2022-01-19 07:58  

#5  Ted Kennedy was instrumental in the closing of mental hospitals. Reagan just didn't do anything to stop it.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2022-01-19 07:42  

#4  Then Reagan happened and the walls came down... The fences demolished and the barbed wire removed. Now, did the homeless on the streets that became fewer each winter die of exposure or leave for warmer climates...? I don't know and never heard an answer.

Posted by: magpie 2022-01-19 00:24

Magpie,

I consistently hear 'then Reagan happened' and suddenly the homeless/mentally ill were everywhere...but that's not the way I remember it.

In the 70s, there were repeated scandals across the country involving the mentally ill and how the states were essentially warehousing them with just enough food and shelter to keep them alive, and sometimes not even that. In my home state of Ohio, it was an utter horror story at several state hospitals.

It wasn't Reagan who held a gun to anybody's head to shut off the state hospital systems - embarrassed politicians looking for a way out seized on vague and - at best - iffy 'new era' programs that would no longer require the dungeons those hospitals had become. And since they didn't need the hospitals, the budgets could be slashed.

And put to use elsewhere. If the money that had been maintaining the hospitals and their staffs had been put to use elsewhere in the mental health systems, the situation would be seriously different - but it wasn't. It went to pet projects and boondoggles in every state where it was done.

The state mental health systems were for all intents and purposes nonfunctioning and being defunded and dismantled long before Ronald Reagan ever took the oath of office, and that responsibility lies at the state level, not the Federal or executive levels.

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski   2022-01-19 06:33  

#3  In Times Square a better day dawns
As a debonair figure of bronze
Descends with a crash
And commences to thrash
All the pols, pushers, pimps, pros, and pawns.
[padre gultily beams, shadow-boxes]
Posted by: Hupush Stalin5889   2022-01-19 05:46  

#2  NYC Mayor Eric Adams joins hundreds in Times Square for subway shove victim's vigil after admitting he IS scared of riding the trains despite previously claiming they were safe but public had 'perception' of fear
Posted by: Skidmark   2022-01-19 05:06  

#1  *Sigh* This is a conundrum: Where does Habeus Corpus end and Confining Dangerous People take hold?

My first full-time job was at a dairy plant less than a mile from the blandly titled 'Central State Hospital'. Driving on its perimeter made you think it was a WW2 Stalag confining POWs with twelve foot chainlink fences topped by triple stand barbed wire. Exterior factory doors and our delivery trucks had to be locked to keep the "crazies" from sneaking in.

Then Reagan happened and the walls came down... The fences demolished and the barbed wire removed. Now, did the homeless on the streets that became fewer each winter die of exposure or leave for warmer climates...? I don't know and never heard an answer.

But the question remains: If someone can declare you an 'Unperson' and Institutionalize you for life then what is to keep it a Fair and Just process?
Posted by: magpie   2022-01-19 00:24  

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