TREATMENT ADVOCACY CENTER
Visit our web site www.psychlaws.org
August 9, 2002
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1. FURTADO SHOOTING PROMPTS QUESTIONS
-- Boston Globe, August 2, 2002
2. JAILS STRUGGLE WITH A FLOOD OF
MENTALLY ILL OFFENDERS -- Buffalo News, July 22, 2002
3. KENDRA'S LAW COULD HELP MENTALLY
ILL INMATES -- Buffalo News, July 28, 2002
4. USE KENDRA'S LAW TO HELP MENTALLY
ILL -- Buffalo News, July 30, 2002
5. MAN WHO STABBED OFFICER
GETS UP TO 15 YEARS IN JAIL -- The Salt Lake Tribune, July 30, 2002
6. RELATIVES SAY THEY SAW
ACCUSED KILLER'S SLIDE -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 4, 2002
7. INSANITY VIRUS -- A
CRAZY IDEA? -- San Francisco Chronicle, August 5, 2002
8. NEW ON THE TAC WEBSITE
1. BOSTON GLOBE, August 2, 2002
[Editor's Note: Daniel Furtado's death marked the third time in
three months that an armed and mentally ill suspect was shot and killed by
Massachusetts law enforcement.
Law enforcement officers in many states are working - through training programs
like the Memphis, Tennessee, model described in this article - to reduce the
likelihood that confrontations with someone who is having a psychotic break do
not end in tragedy. Police training is so critical in states like Massachusetts
precisely because the law prevents people from getting help before they reach
the point of dangerousness.
But Sam Cochran and others in law enforcement often argue that even intensive
training will not make law enforcement officers into mental health
professionals. State laws that rely on dangerousness as the standard for
treatment unfairly force law enforcements officers, rather than mental health
professionals, to be front line response for psychiatric crises.]
FURTADO SHOOTING PROMPTS QUESTIONS
By Douglas Belkin
When Daniel Furtado came to his door brandishing a hatchet last month, Cambridge
police reacted the way officers have been trained to for decades. They sealed
off the house and tried to negotiate a peaceful solution with a man they knew to
be mentally ill. When that failed, they broke down the door and tried to
apprehend him. But Furtado ended up dead.
Two weeks after the shooting that shocked the city, advocates of a new model of
dealing with the mentally ill say that the 59-year-old retired janitor didn't
have to die.
Across the country, police departments are increasingly talking armed mentally
ill people into peaceful resolutions using methods that go against the grain of
traditional law enforcement tactics. In at least three dozen cities, officers
have been trained to avoid confrontations with these suspects, cutting injury
rates of both officers and suspects in half and prompting an ever-widening
circle of law enforcement departments to rethink how they train their officers.
''In another city, this man may not have been shot,'' said Mary Zdanowicz, an
advocate for the mentally ill.
Furtado's death was the third time in three months that an armed and mentally
ill suspect was shot and killed by Massachusetts law enforcement officials.
Advocates say more are likely. After two waves of deinstitutionalization, the
number of mentally ill people living in the general population keeps rising,
suggesting that their contact with police will also continue to rise.
In some cases, fatal force may be the only alternative, said Maurice Richardson,
a retired Dedham District Court judge who works for the mentally ill. ''When it
gets to the point where someone is holding a hatchet and running at you, it's
not patty-cake time anymore. The time to be warm and cuddly is over.''
But advocates of this new model that stresses de-escalation say that the
mentally ill should be handled differently. While intimidation and force are
effective tactics for controlling a situation with someone from the general
population, those strategies may backfire if someone is mentally ill.
''Cops are taught to assert their presence and take over a situation,'' said
Zdanowicz, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Va.
''But if they intimidate a person who is psychotic you will get the exact
opposite response; they will get more belligerent.''
That means that the mentally ill are more likely to get killed. Nationwide,
mentally ill suspects are four times as likely to die in a confrontation with
police as healthy people, Zdanowicz said.
At Furtado's house on July 15, at least four officers went in and confronted the
hatchet-wielding Furtado in his kitchen. The officers first fired three
high-velocity beanbags at him, according to police reports released yesterday.
Authorities say those didn't knock him down, pepper spray failed to stop him,
and Furtado came at them again with his hatchet. An officer with four years of
experience and no specialized training in dealing with suspects with psychiatric
disorders shot him three times. The Portuguese immigrant and grandfather of two
died on his concrete basement floor.
The new model that is being emulated across the country was created after a
similar shooting. In 1988, police in Memphis were called to a disturbance of a
man they also knew to be mentally ill. Police were told that he was high on
cocaine and was wielding a knife. A cadre of officers shot the man dead. The
outcry from the public was so loud and so long that the department decided to
put in place a program that would prevent that type of tragedy from happening
again. They looked around for a model and, finding none, created their own.
Memphis Police Major Sam Cochran has been at the forefront of the movement to
educate police officers about how to handle the mentally ill ever since. He
believes the way law enforcement officials think about mental illness needs to
be changed. ''You have to unlearn what you've already think you know,'' he said.
Police recruits are just like anybody else, Cochran says. When they are 23, or
24 years old in the academy and getting their three or four hours of training in
working with the mentally ill, they already have strong ideas in place of who
these people are and how they behave. Plenty of real-life and fictional
archetypes exist: Norman Bates, Hannibal Lecter, Jeffrey Dahmer.
But the mentally ill are actually much more likely to be victims of crime than
to be perpetrators. To overcome the stereotypes, the Memphis model calls for 40
hours of training for officers, including sessions designed to help them
understand how the mentally ill experience the world.
In Montgomery County, Md., which has adapted the course, officers take part in
an exercise where they try to follow instructions while several people whisper
in their ears, to simulate the voices a schizophrenic might hear.
''It's disorientating and difficult,'' said Cochran. ''The idea is to get these
officers to empathize with what it feels like to have a mental illness.''
The results speak for themselves. In Memphis, officer injuries have been cut by
80 percent and injuries to the mentally ill have dropped by roughly half. The
number of arrests resulting from mental illness calls is one-tenth of the
national average, according to independent studies of the department.
Though Cochran won't comment on specific cases outside of Memphis, he said that
in a standoff, like the one involving Furtado, his officers have worked for as
many as 20 hours to set up communication. They would only have stormed the house
as a last resort.
And unlike in Cambridge, where family members were not allowed to speak to
Furtado, family members are sometimes used to establish a connection with a
disturbed person on the other side of a wall, Cochran said.
That's not what's taught at the Lowell Police Academy, where Cambridge police
are trained. There, emphasis is on control.
Sergeant Thomas Fleming, who runs the academy, said the four-hour mental illness
training focuses on ''how extremely dangerous these people can be. The guiding
principle we use is to never underestimate an emotionally disturbed person.''
In Cambridge, the last time the department offered in-service training for
officers on handling the mentally ill was in 1996, said Christina Beamud, legal
adviser to the city's police department. ''We also sent out a memo on the issue
in 1995.''
Cambridge Police Commissioner Ronnie Watson said the department works hard to
involve mental health specialists at situations with the mentally ill when it is
feasible.
Still, mental health advocates contend that Cambridge is not doing enough. Not
when growing contact between police and the mentally ill is inevitable. In 1955,
the state's mental hospitals housed 22,000 people. Today - after a second wave
of hospital closings in the 1990s - that number has dropped to 1,100, according
to the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health.
Most of those formerly institutionalized patients are prescribed drugs that
enable them to live in communities. But almost all the mentally ill people
police kill - and there are at least 50 a year nationwide - have one thing in
common, according to Zdanowicz: They've stopped taking their drugs.
Of the 5.5 million severely mentally ill people in the country, nearly 2 million
aren't taking medication. The result: 16 percent of the people incarcerated in
the United States are severely mentally ill, according to the Justice
Department. At any given time, the Los Angeles County Jail houses more people
with mental illness than any other institution in the country.
While Boston and other area police departments have beefed up officer training,
they still have a long way to go to reach the Memphis model, Richardson said.
''I think we're coming along. We're at least trying to get to the point w[h]ere
people are aware of what we need.''
Richardson acknowledged that the cost of the extra training probably means the
Memphis model won't be used here soon.
And the Furtado family is left wishing the police had acted differently.
''He was a good man, a good father, and a loving husband,'' Helena Martins said
of her father. ''He didn't deserve this. He had an illness and he needed to be
treated, but he wasn't an animal.''
2. BUFFALO NEWS, July 22, 2002
[Editor's Note: In places like Massachusetts where the law is
little to no help, we are always saddened but not surprised to read of tragedies
like the one with Mr. Furtado that result from lack of treatment. Many states
that are reassessing their laws look to New York as a beacon of hope. Kendra's
Law is an effective means of increasing treatment compliance and keeping people
out of jail. But, it must be used more consistently in New York in order to
achieve the goal of shutting the revolving door of criminalizing individuals
with severe mental illnesses.]
JAILS STRUGGLE WITH A FLOOD OF MENTALLY ILL OFFENDERS
By Lou Michel
The mentally disturbed men sleep in dozens of beds in a special wing not far
from a small emergency room. Nurses distribute medication every day in paper
cups. Psychiatrists listen to the patients in isolated rooms nearby.
But this is not a mental institution.
Security officers hover nearby, ready to keep the peace. Bars separate these men
from others in the same building. This is the Erie County Holding Center, one of
the biggest mental institutions in the region. One hundred beds are set aside
for mentally ill inmates.
It's a similar story in other large county jails around the state. In Onondaga
County, jail officials estimate 20 percent of the inmates are mentally ill. In
Monroe County, it's 30 percent.
"They've closed the mental hospitals and pushed those people into the jails.
It's appalling that they are here," said Niagara County Sheriff Thomas A.
Beilein.
He estimates that 25 percent of the 420 inmates in his Lockport jail have some
sort of mental problem.
At the Erie County facility, those 100 beds represent roughly one-sixth of the
jail's capacity. The county spends close to $200,000 a year to medicate the
inmates and thousands more for psychiatric counseling.
To meet the needs of mentally ill people who run up against the law, Buffalo
City Court in September will expand to include Mental Health Court. It will be
an effort to stop the "recycling" of mentally ill people inpenal institutions,
according to Michael Weiner, Erie County mental health commissioner.
"It will be an expansion of Judge (Robert) Russell's Drug Court for defendants
with serious mental health problems who have repeat minor offenses that are
nonviolent," Weiner said.
The goal is to place these individuals in monitored treatment programs rather
than return them to jail.
"We're looking at improving the quality of life for these people," Weiner said.
But these developments are no guarantee that mentally ill individuals won't slip
through the cracks and meet with tragic ends.
Consider the case of Michael T. Bennett, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic.
He reportedly died July 5 after repeatedly jumping off his bed headfirst into
the bars of his cell in the holding center in downtown Buffalo.
"Other inmates said it sounded like a truck hitting the building. He was doing
somersaults off his cot and body slams face first into the cell's bars," said
Chief Deputy Richard T. Donovan, who is heading one of two investigations into
the circumstances of Bennett's death.
Two autopsies also have been conducted, but the cause of Bennett's death remains
unknown, pending the results of toxicology tests, which are expected in several
weeks.
"He had swelling to the face area and trauma to the throat and back," Donovan
said, explaining that his investigation will determine if the injuries were
self-inflicted.
After his arrest July 2, Bennett, 28, sat in a cell for three days. Police said
that they found him walking naked down a Lower West Side street and that he
fought with officers when they tried to take him into custody.
Reola Bennett, his mother, had called 911 a few hours before his 10 p.m. arrest
to report that her son was acting strangely. Fearing he might crash his car, she
provided authorities his license plate number.
Her hope, she said later, was that police would pick him up
and take him to Erie County Medical Center for psychiatric help. Several months
earlier, Bennett had told his family he was feeling better, and he apparently
stopped taking his medication.
Fewer places to go
That is often the case with mentally ill people. Symptoms of their illness clear
up, and they stop taking prescribed psychotropic drugs, according to mental
health experts.
It is estimated that up to 16 percent of inmates in the United States suffer
from some form of mental illness. At the Erie County Holding Center, 6 percent
of the approximately 600 inmates have "serious and persistent mental illness."
That group is part of an estimated 11 percent to 16 percent who exhibit some
kind of mental disorder, according to Weiner.
The problem is not just a local one.
In Monroe County, an estimated 375 of the approximately 1,250 county jail
inmates have had mental health problems, Undersheriff Daniel Greene said.
"Unfortunately, as the budgets get tighter, there are not as many places for
people to go when they're arrested and they have (mental health) problems,"
Greene added.
Across the state, approximately 33,000 prisoners were confined in county jails
in 1998, and estimates peg the number of mentally ill prisoners at anywhere from
5 to 15 percent, according to the state Office of Mental Health.
The state provides services to mentally ill inmates in state prisons, but local
jails are responsible for providing their own psychiatric services, said Roger
Klingman, spokesman for the state Office of Mental Health.
The funneling of huge numbers of mentally ill people into the criminal-justice
system even has a name: "trans-institutionalization."
It was spawned after state-run psychiatric hospitals began closing or downsizing
about 30 years ago, as medications improved and as society changed its outlook
on warehousing mentally ill people.
The transition has been anything but smooth. A void in
outpatient services created an environment where many of these individuals found
themselves with no one to watch out for them. The result was jail, usually on
minor offenses, like what happened with Bennett.
But Klingman said the state has taken steps to respond to problems as mental
health services moved to a community-based system. For instance, he cited
increased state funding for case managers, the individuals who coordinate care
for people with mental illnesses, and state-run suicide-prevention programs to
train jail and lockup officers.
A matter of economics
By default, county jails have become a major receptacle for mentally ill people,
because local police agencies place those they arrest in holding centers while
their court cases are pending.
And the Erie County Holding Center ranks close to the top of the list in the
Buffalo Niagara region when it comes to accommodations for mentally ill people.
Buffalo Psychiatric Center has 241 beds; ECMC, 132; and Buffalo General
Hospital, 107. Next is the holding center with its 100 beds, followed by the
private BryLin Hospitals with 88 beds and several other hospitals with smaller
numbers of beds.
In total, Western New York has about 700 hospital beds certified to handle
mentally ill people.
The big difference between the holding center and these hospitals is the cost.
To provide a year of hospitalization at a facility like Buffalo Psychiatric
Center, the price hits about $100,000. At the holding center, the annual cost to
house an inmate is about $30,000.
"It's a matter of economics. At the holding center, you can get three for the
price of one when you compare it to the psychiatric center," said Lynne M.
Shuster, local coordinator of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. "It's
not about people, it's about dollars."
Beilein said that Niagara County government is providing his department more
treatment resources but that jail is not the proper setting for mentally ill
people.
"In the last year, we had a female inmate who popped out her artificial eye and
swallowed it. Is she a criminal or is she an insane person?" Beilein asked.
Shuster said that it is often so difficult to get an individual admitted to a
psychiatric facility for long-term care that she sometimes advises relatives of
the ill individual to have him arrested.
"Families are so desperate to have a member, usually it's a son, hospitalized
that I will advise them to have him arrested," she said. "But every time I do
that, I know what the risks are.
"They may be beaten or assaulted in jail, and they may commit suicide or end up
with a criminal record they don't deserve. But you have to get them in a place
you hope is safer than the streets. It's not much of a choice, is it? But when
you see the child you love disappearing into madness, what do you do?"
Wheels in motion
The day after Bennett's arrest, his mother was relieved when a forensic
psychiatric exam was ordered for him. She thought her son would be going to a
hospital to get the help he needed.
"I was there in City Court when the judge ordered Michael be taken to a hospital
and not put back in jail," she said.
But it wasn't to be that simple.
Before he could be placed in ECMC's psychiatric unit, the holding center's
forensic staff had to assess his condition and issue an order for an involuntary
psychiatric evaluation.
A psychiatrist met with Bennett two days later, on the afternoon of July 5, and
authorized the transfer to ECMC. But by 4:25 p.m., Bennett was slamming himself
against the bars of his cell, according to holding center Deputy Superintendent
Robert A. Koch.
"The wheels were put in motion to send him to ECMC, but unfortunately it didn't
happen fast enough," Koch said.
When jail deputies tried to remove him from his cell in the Delta cellblock,
where mentally troubled inmates are confined, he fought back and had to be
subdued, according to Chief Deputy Donovan.
"He was removed from the cell with what we thought was a minimal amount of
force. He was given first aid attention, and then at 5:15 p.m. he stopped
breathing," Donovan said.
Doctors at ECMC pronounced Bennett dead at 6:10 p.m.
"It's a terrible thing for his family, a sad situation," Donovan said.
Reola Bennett said that she is angry and that no amount of explanation will
bring her son back.
Holding center authorities, she said, should have taken him to the medical
center Wednesday, immediately after his court appearance.
"The deputies knew he was paranoid schizophrenic. It was in his file. He was
diagnosed three years ago," Reola Bennett said. "Our suspicion is that Michael
stopped taking his medicine four or five months ago because he thought he was
feeling better, but there's no way you're better with this paranoid
schizophrenia."
Speedier service
Joseph W. Liebergall, executive director of the county's Forensic Mental Health
Service at the jail, refused to comment directly on the Bennett case. But he
said mental health assistance is readily available to inmates.
"The holding center is a licensed outpatient mental health clinic, and we see
people here quicker than on the outside. Try getting yourself mentally
evaluated. You'll have to wait weeks or a month for an appointment. Inmates have
quicker access," Liebergall said.
Upon release from the holding center, he said, mentally ill inmates are now more
closely monitored.
"The county's resources have been expanded over the years due to Kendra's Law,
which mandates participation in outpatient treatment. There's more capacity for
case management," he said.
Kendra's Law is named for Kendra Webdale of Fredonia, who died in January 1999
when she was pushed in front of a Manhattan subway train by a man suffering from
schizophrenia who had stopped taking his medication.
It's far from a perfect world beyond the jail.
"I can tell you the lengths of stays for people who go to mental hospitals are
too brief," Liebergall said.
Stays range from seven to nine days, according to Shuster, the mental health
advocate, "when they should be three weeks for most people."
In addition to Donovan's investigation, the state's Corrections Commission is
conducting a review of Bennett's death.
"It will determine if this individual should have been acted on sooner with
services or interventions. The review is about what we can learn so that this
doesn't happen again," said Weiner, the mental health commissioner.
One of the questions raised by Bennett's family and friends is why he was
arrested in the first place.
"It should have never gotten to the point where he was naked. He should have
been picked up earlier and taken straight to the medical center," said Cecilia
Robinson, Bennett's girlfriend. "He didn't deserve to die that way. He was such
a good person."
Bennett, who lived with his mother on Colvin Avenue, was arrested in front of
Robinson's home on Seventh Street.
Weiner says it is important to ask why Bennett was not taken to a mental
facility right away.
"Hopefully in time we'll have an answer showing whether there was justification
for directing this individual to law enforcement instead of a psychiatric
setting," he said.
The police, he speculated, might have perceived Bennett to be involved in some
sort of sex-related activity because he was walking naked in public.
"You have to remember that law enforcement officers are not clinicians. They
could have viewed this as a sexual perpetrator. Their evaluation could be
entirely different," Weiner said.
Of Bennett's death, Shuster offered this unhappy observation: "It's not the
first death of a mentally ill patient in jail, and it won't be the last."
3. BUFFALO NEWS, July 28, 2002
[Editor's Note: TAC president E. Fuller Torrey and executive
director Mary Zdanowicz did some additional research about the numbers of
prisoners in New York with untreated mental illnesses - and found data to
suggest that the percentage of people with mental illnesses in jails is lowest
in the county that uses Kendra's Law most consistently. Not surprising.]
KENDRA'S LAW COULD HELP MENTALLY ILL INMATES
By E. Fuller Torrey and Mary T. Zdanowicz
The "trans-institutionalization" of citizens with mental illnesses from
hospitals to jails is a national tragedy, not one restricted to New York's
counties. But New York is unique in that it has a mechanism to help stem the
tide. Unfortunately, some New York counties are not making use of Kendra's Law,
a progressive law that can stop the revolving door of medication non-compliance
that lands so many people with mental illness behind bars.
Kendra's Law allows courts to order certain individuals with severe mental
illnesses to comply with treatment while living in the community, a process
called assisted outpatient treatment. Erie County uses Kendra's Law, and it
appears to be working. Six percent of people in Erie County jail have a severe
mental illness, one-third less than Onondaga County jail (20 percent),
one-fourth less than Niagara County jail (25 percent) and one-fifth less than
Monroe County jail (30 percent).
This is not surprising. Court-ordered outpatient treatment, which is the basis
of Kendra's Law, has been shown to significantly reduce the risk of arrest for
individuals with a history of prior arrests or violence and hospitalizations --
and is used in Erie County at least three times more per capita than in these
other counties.
Niagara and Onondaga counties have used court orders to guarantee treatment for
only two people in the 30 months that Kendra's Law has been in effect. Yet, each
county has more than 100 people with mental illnesses in their jails on any
given day.
Anyone concerned about infringing on people's rights by requiring them to take
medication should visit a jail. It is not a pretty sight. One Florida judge
regularly takes people on a tour of the section of a local jail that houses
inmates with mental illness. The images visitors see invariably drive home the
message that reform is needed, including that state laws must be changed to
incorporate assisted outpatient treatment like New York's Kendra's Law.
Advocates in several states are pushing for treatment laws like New York's. Erie
County's reduced jail population is not the only indication that Kendra's Law
works when it is used. The statewide results from the first 141 people to
receive assisted outpatient treatment showed:
- A 129 percent increase in medication compliance.
- A 26 percent decrease in harmful behavior.
- A 100 percent decrease in homelessness.
Increasing medication compliance is the key. Michael Bennett, who died after
repeatedly jumping headfirst into the bars of his cell, ended up in that cell
because he stopped taking medication for paranoid schizophrenia. He fought with
police as they tried to take him into custody, which may have contributed to
their decision to take him to jail rather than a hospital.
Medication non-compliance is known to contribute to the kind of violent behavior
Bennett exhibited. In one study of assisted outpatient treatment, individuals
who didn't take their medication were 63 percent more likely to be violent than
individuals who complied with treatment regimens. The same study showed that
court-ordered routine community services for at least six months reduced the
risk of violence by half.
Court-ordered treatment for individuals who refuse medication and have a history
of repeated institutionalization is not just common sense -- it also makes
fiscal sense.
But even Erie County could do better -- it spends $200,000 each year to medicate
inmates. What good does that do if there is no way to ensure that they continue
taking medication when released from jail? It is far more humane and cost
effective to use Kendra's Law to ensure that people continue taking medication
and stay out of jail -- which costs an additional $30,000 annually per person on
top of the cost of medication.
New York has what states like Florida want -- a humane way to keep people with
mental illness in treatment and out of jail. Onondaga, Niagara and Monroe
counties will never stem the tide of mentally ill jail inmates unless they start
using Kendra's Law to treat citizens with mental illness in their homes rather
than in jail.
E. FULLER TORREY, M.D., is president and MARY T. ZDANOWICZ is
executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Va.,
http://www.psychlaws.org, a national
nonprofit organization working to eliminate barriers to treatment of severe
mental illness
4. BUFFALO NEWS, July 30, 2002
[Editor's Note: Pat Webdale was also horrified to read of New
York tragedies that could have been prevented by current law. Understandable.
Kendra's Law is named after her daughter, who died after being pushed in front
of a subway train by a man with severe mental illness who was off his
medication. Mrs. Webdale continues to display her compassion for preventing the
suffering caused by untreated mental illnesses.]
USE KENDRA'S LAW TO HELP MENTALLY ILL
The front-page news article on mentally ill offenders is a sad commentary on the
struggle family members endure when trying to get treatment for severe mental
illnesses for their loved ones. The death of Michael T. Bennett was a tragedy
allowed to happen by the system. The comment suggesting that he may have been
viewed as a sexual predator was ludicrous. It reminds me of another mentally ill
man who was running naked through the streets of Michigan in August 2000. No one
paid him any attention except to laugh at him. On Aug. 17, he beat Kevin
Heisinger to death in the Kalamazoo bus station. A sexual predator is more
likely on the Internet than walking naked down a street.
Most cities now train police officers to deal with the
mentally ill. The model in Oswego is to have one mental health professional work
with one police officer to interact with a person suffering from a mental
illness. Bennett will suffer no more, but his family will suffer for the rest of
their lives.
A law is only good if it is known and understood, and families are encouraged to
use it. Kendra's Law is the law. You have a right to use it. It may be your only
hope. Voluntary treatment is not often sought by the mentally ill. Many stop
using medication when they think they feel better.
It breaks my heart to see people die day after day due to mental illness. The
people in charge may be doing a lot, but it is what they are not doing that
allows devastating loss of life to continue. Kendra's Law supplied more case
management and funding, but it must be used for its original purpose: to assist
those who cannot assist themselves to get treatment and take medication.
Pat Webdale, Fredonia
5. THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE,
July 30, 2002
[Editor's Note: Utah is one of the states that might look
longingly at a system like the one that is available to New York citizens. A
Utah bill that would have removed the imminent dangerousness requirement and
allowed for early treatment intervention never even made it to the floor for a
vote by the Utah legislature in 2000. In June of that same year, a Utah police
officer confronted a man with a severe untreated mental illness. The result was
physical trauma for the officer, and a just-rendered jail sentence for the man
who attacked him. He now becomes just another of those with severe mental
illness in Utah's jails and prisons, more than twice as many people with severe
mental illnesses than in the state's remaining state psychiatric facility.]
MAN WHO STABBED OFFICER GETS UP TO 15 YEARS IN JAIL
A mentally ill man who repeatedly stabbed a Salt Lake City police officer with a
broken vodka bottle two years ago was sent to prison Monday for up to 15 years.
Third District Judge Judith Atherton recommended that Brent Darrel Bindrup be
housed in the Utah State Prison's mental health unit because he was diagnosed
with chronic schizophrenia. The judge also suggested Bindrup, 45, should be
released to a halfway house for the mentally ill as soon as a bed is available.
On June 25, 2000, police were called to 150 W. 400 South, where Bindrup and
another homeless man were arguing over the contents of a garbage Dumpster.
Officer Richard Walton arrived to find Bindrup -- who lost a leg in a
construction accident decades ago -- sitting in a wheelchair. The other man was
gone.
When Walton identified himself, Bindrup jumped from his wheelchair and began
stabbing the officer in the arm and leg with the broken liquor bottle.
A second officer arrived to find Walton bleeding severely but still struggling
with Bindrup on the ground. The officer's wounds required 80 stitches. He has
recovered and is back to work in the detective division.
Charged with first-degree felony aggravated attempted murder, Bindrup pleaded
guilty and mentally ill to the lesser crime of second-degree felony aggravated
assault. Bindrup received two years of treatment at the Utah State Hospital
before he was deemed legally competent to proceed with the case.
6. ST. LOUIS
POST-DISPATCH, August 4, 2002
[Editor's Note: Johnny Johnson's history and the decline family
members noticed since he was discharged from a psychiatric institution should
have been enough to get him help, but he was not deemed a danger to himself or
others. Johnson has confessed to the murder of a 6-year-old girl, and will
likely be compelled to join the other prisoners with severe mental illnesses in
Missouri's jails and prisons - more than three times the number than in the
state's remaining psychiatric hospitals.]
RELATIVES SAY THEY SAW ACCUSED KILLER'S SLIDE
Jeremy Kohler
The siblings and girlfriend of Johnny Johnson, charged with murdering a
6-year-old girl, say he had begun unraveling after his release from a mental
hospital in January.
Johnny Johnson was unraveling again. His family could see the signs this summer,
and his big brother, Bobby, tried to do something about it.
Family members gave this account: Johnny had seemed happy after his release from
a mental hospital last January. He said he was committed to raising his son. He
had high hopes for the future. But it didn't last. He missed two meetings with
his probation officer in July. He had started getting high with his friends in
Valley Park, leaving his girlfriend alone to care for her son, 4, and the
2-year-old son they have together.
That made Bobby afraid. Twice as a teenager, Johnny had slit his wrists and had
to be sewn up by doctors. Now 24 and a father, Johnny's self-destructive
impulses were hurting other people.
On Tuesday afternoon, July 23, Bobby picked up Johnny at their grandmother's
house in Kirkwood and they went for coffee. Bobby pleaded with Johnny to visit
his probation officer.
"You'll end up back in jail," Bobby warned.
Johnny assured him: "I'll go."
Later that day at his grandmother's house, Johnny scratched a note for his
girlfriend. "I love you," he wrote. "I'll be home OK I mean it. We will spend
time together when I get back. OXXOOXXO."
But he never came back.
He found a ride to Valley Park. He slept on the couch where an old acquaintance,
Ernie Williamson, was staying. Police say that on Friday, July 26, Johnson lured
Williamson's 6-year-old daughter, Cassandra "Casey" Williamson, out of the
house. Authorities say he carried her piggyback to the ruins of an old glass
factory, tried to rape her, struck her on the head with a rock, and buried her,
according to charges against him. Police say he has confessed to the killing.
They called him Pee-Wee
If there were clues that Johnson was capable of this, his siblings and his
girlfriend say they missed them. He seemed to love children. He had baby-sat for
his nieces and nephews and was raising his own son.
Doctors diagnosed Johnson as schizophrenic, his family said. He was given
Zyprexa, a newer-generation antipsychotic drug after he was released from a
state mental health facility in January. But he complained it made him feel
"like a zombie." So he stopped taking it.
"He's been more withdrawn from everybody ever since he got out of that
hospital," said his sister, Katie Johnson, 29. "If any of us would have thought
this would have occurred, we would have had him committed."
Johnny Johnson, the youngest of four children, grew up poor in Valley Park. His
parents divorced, and his father left the family when he was 2. His mother,
Connie, supported the family on her salary as an aide at a nursing home. This
account of his life before the killing is based on interviews with his eldest
brother, Bobby, sister Katie and his girlfriend, 23, who asked not to be
identified.
As an adolescent, Johnson was moody, smaller and mentally slower than kids his
age. His few friends were much younger. They called him Pee-Wee. He accepted the
moniker, later having it tattooed on his chest.
If he had a talent to brag about, it was his ability to sketch. His family
compared his drawings with those of his father, but he rarely had a chance to
learn from him. Robert V. Johnson was rarely involved in his kids' lives. He
died from diabetes in 1999.
All of the Johnson kids, Bobby and Johnny, Eric, now 27, and Katie were close to
their grandfather, June Owens. One day the three brothers were helping Owens in
the garden. Owens went into the kitchen and sat down and said he was losing his
vision. Then he said he was losing his hearing. The boys watched him die from a
heart attack.
"He'd pretty much raised us all as a father figure," Bobby Johnson said.
That seemed to contribute to Johnny's depression. He would threaten suicide to
pressure his mother, Connie, to agree to his demands. Twice he cut his wrists
badly enough that he had to go to the emergency room. Sometimes he would cut
himself just to hurt himself.
The family bounced between Valley Park and their grandparents' house in Kirkwood
during the 1980s and '90s. But they spent most of their time on Benton Street in
Valley Park. It was a small town, and everyone knew everyone else.
Katie Johnson became friends with a girl down the street, Angela W ideman.
Katie's first kiss came when she was 13 from a boy in town, Ernie Williamson.
But it was Angela and Ernie Williamson who would eventually marry and have four
children. One of them would be Casey.
Three siblings in prison
Bobby Johnson was the only one of the Johnson kids who stayed out of serious
trouble. None of the siblings graduated from high school, but Bobby Johnson got
his GED. He's married with two daughters and lives in Kirkwood. He makes a
living as a construction worker.
The others chose tougher roads: Eric spent time in prison, and Katie is now
serving four months at a drug rehabilitation facility in Vandalia, Mo., after
violating probation on a burglary charge.
The police in Kirkwood got to know Johnny Johnson on a first-name basis. He
pleaded guilty to burglary and felony theft in 1997 and was sentenced to three
years' probation. The next year, he pleaded guilty to charges of felony theft,
burglary and stealing a firearm. Police said he had stolen an all-terrain
vehicle from a house in Kirkwood and firearms from another Kirkwood home.
St. Louis County Circuit Judge Bernhardt C. Drumm Jr. sentenced Johnson to seven
years in prison with a provision that he could be released early for good
behavior. He served four months and was released that summer to five years of
probation.
Within months, Johnson was already in trouble with probation officers, accused
by Kirkwood police of possessing drug paraphernalia and destroying property in
August 1998 and of possessing liquor three days later. In September of that
year, a probation officer noted in Johnson's court record that he had never been
evaluated for a mental illness. A probation officer assigned to Johnson would
not discuss his case with a reporter.
Johnson was free as long as he checked in with his probation officer. In 1999,
he moved in with his sister, Katie, who had three sons and was living in an
apartment near Pestalozzi Street and Compton Avenue in St. Louis. Johnny helped
with chores and with watching her boys.
That year, Johnny Johnson met a girl who had a son. The two had son together on
December 9, 1999. She developed an infection after childbirth and was
hospitalized for three days.
"He stayed with me the whole time," said the girlfriend, who is now 23. "We
talked about getting married."
She was in love. She appreciated Johnny's drawings and the poems he would write
her. He wrote about heaven and the stars. He drew butterflies and flowers. His
favorite show was "The Golden Girls." His favorite song was "Crimson and
Clover," the Tommy James and the Shondells' classic.
Bobby Johnson said he was happy for the couple, but concerned about their
ability to raise a child. The family of four moved in with Lillie Owens,
Johnny's grandmother, in Kirkwood.
"We were wary because he didn't have his head screwed on straight," Bobby
Johnson said. But the couple seemed to be making it work. "He would watch the
kids while she was at work. It just made him feel good about himself because he
had a kid. . . . Someone he could call his own."
Katie Johnson says the turnaround in her brother was remarkable. He loved his
son.
"He read to him," she said. "He played with him. Bathed and changed diapers. Fed
(him) his bottle. Chased him around the yard. The average dad thing. He seemed
to be a lot happier. I wish . . . I wish I had a couple of good pictures. Johnny
just had this glow about him. He did so well."
Danger to self or others?
But Johnson violated his probation again last year.
On Oct. 10, Drumm ordered him confined to the St. Louis Psychiatric Rehabilition
Center on Arsenal Street in St. Louis, where he was diagnosed as having
schizophrenia, a common mental illness that causes delusions, hallucinations and
disorganized thought.
While he was confined to the hospital, Johnson sketched a butterfly on a rose
and wrote a poem for his girlfriend.
The butterfly was flying
Now he is on a rose crying
He is all alone and so sad
He remembers all that he had
Drumm asked for a report that would assess Johnson's danger
to himself and others, and the likelihood he could meet the conditions of his
probation. Presumably, mental health experts gave Drumm a favorable report.
Instead of going back to prison or remaining a patient in a mental hospital,
Johnson was released from custody on Jan. 9.
As conditions of his release, he was to live with his grandmother, continue in
the care of doctors at the state hospital on Arsenal and work with a community
support worker. He also was to apply for Medicaid and disability benefits, work
toward a GED and continue to attend a drug-abuse education group.
He did all of these things - for a while, his girlfriend said. He star ted
eating better. He gained weight. He worked harder to develop a bond with his
son.
Back to Valley Park
Two months ago, Bobby Johnson stopped at a corner bar in Valley Park for a few
Bloody Marys and some breakfast. Angela Williamson was there.
"She had pictures of her kids and I had pictures of my kids," Bobby said. He had
met her oldest, 11-year-old Chelsea, once before. But this was the first time he
saw a picture of Casey. "She said she and Ernie were no longer together, how
things were rough."
Meanwhile, Johnny Johnson seemed to be coming unglued, the relatives and
girlfriend say. He and his girlfriend fought more and more. And he started
spending more time away from home and more time in Valley Park.
On July 23, after promising his brother he would contact his probation officer,
Johnny Johnson visited Valley Park for the last time.
After their visit, Bobby Johnson lost track of his brother. "Once he was gone, I
knew there was no finding him," he said.
7. SAN FRANCISCO
CHRONICLE, August 5, 2002
[Editor's Note: Despite the devastating stories noted above and
in your daily paper, conventional wisdom asserts that rates of severe mental
illnesses - particularly schizophrenia - are in decline. TAC president Dr. E.
Fuller Torrey thinks otherwise, and outlines the arguments in his latest book,
The Invisible Plague. He writes: "Imagine an epidemic that affects over 4
million Americans, most of them in the prime of their lives, and will continue
to affect more than one in every one hundred people born, but that is not
recognized as a major public health problem and is largely ignored by
individuals overseeing the nation's health. This is the epidemic of insanity."
We know too well the results of this epidemic when left untreated - that
approximately 16% of those in America's jails and prisons have a severe mental
illness; that a full one-third of the homeless population are similarly
afflicted; and that approximately 5,000 suicides and 1,000 homicides each year
might be prevented with early and consistent treatment.
For more information on The Invisible Plague, visit TAC's web site at
http://www.psychlaws.org/GeneralResources/Index.htm#reading.]
INSANITY VIRUS -- A CRAZY IDEA?
Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
An unknown infectious agent may be responsible for a five-fold increase in
mental illness over the last two centuries, a controversial psychiatrist
proposes in a new book.
The claim by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a noted psychiatrist-author and scourge of
mainstream psychiatry, challenges common explanations that mental illness is
caused by a combination of genetic factors and environmental influences, such as
family upbringing. Torrey's new book also defies two schools of academic
thought: One is that rates of at least one major type of mental illness,
schizophrenia, have sharply declined or remained stable.
The second is that the extensive construction of "insane" asylums from the 18th
to the mid-20th centuries was at least partly driven by nonmedical aims -- to
suppress iconoclasts and other socially marginal people.
To test his hypothesis, Torrey and his associates are quietly investigating
whether they can ease mentally ill persons' symptoms by giving them antiviral
and anti-parasitic drugs. More than 100 volunteers are presently involved in the
trials, now under way at Sheppard-Pratt psychiatric hospital in Baltimore and at
a psychiatric hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where Torrey was a Peace Corps
physician in the 1960s.
Torrey, 65, is a prolific author and veteran gadfly who is also a professor of
psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Md. From 1970 to
1975, he was a special assistant to the director of the National Institutes of
Mental Health. Over the years, he has antagonized figures on both sides of
long-running debates over mental health care and involuntary commitment of the
mentally ill.
His new book, "The Invisible Plague: The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the
Present" (Rutgers University Press), co-authored with his research assistant
Judy Miller, has received respectful but not uncritical reviews. Acknowledging
he is "a distinguished U.S. researcher in psychiatry," Nature magazine's review
of the book called it a "highly informative and stimulating work."
TRADITIONAL DEBATE
Traditionally, debates over the origin of mental illness,
like debates over human nature in general, have tended to fall into two broad
camps, "nature" and "nurture."
The "nature" approach holds that biological factors, such as genes and
biochemical influences, control mental illness. The "nurture" approach
emphasizes environmental factors such as family upbringing. Historically,
psychiatry seems to swing back and forth between favoring one explanation or the
other.
The most famous "nurture" explanation, one that dominated American psychiatry
after World War II, came from psychoanalysis, especially the Freudian school,
which emphasized the importance of childhood sexual experiences. "There was no
scientific evidence to support it," Torrey and Miller assert.
Nowadays, "nature" theories attract more attention, especially with the
purported success of psychiatric medications such as Prozac, and the studies
that claim to link certain genes to specific mental illnesses.
Torrey acknowledges that mental illness, like most
illnesses, is influenced by genetic tendencies. Yet the genes are not
overriding: Even genetically identical twins can markedly differ in their degree
of mental health. Furthermore, as Torrey and Miller write in their book, "the
most serious criticism of genetic theories of schizophrenia and manic-depressive
illness . . . is what (the late British psychiatrist) Edward Hare labeled 'the
persistence problem.'
"From the middle of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century, most
individuals with schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness were confined to
asylums for the majority of their reproductive years. Their rate of procreation
was extraordinarily low, and so the transmission of their genes was infrequent.
Yet during these same years, the prevalence of schizophrenia and
manic-depressive illness increased rapidly."
This, plus the fact that scientists have had great difficulty finding a specific
genetic factor -- one that is consistently replicated in study after study --
"is a strong argument against these diseases being primarily genetic in origin."
RATES INCREASING
What makes Torrey and Miller almost unique is that they are
among the few scholars (Hare is another one) who have seriously argued that
rates are increasing. In their book, Torrey and Miller cite medical records that
show a five-fold rise in mental illness since the 18th century. By mental
illness, they are referring to schizophrenia, severe manic depression and
psychotic depression.
They note that around 1750, the British author Samuel Johnson claimed
that insanity was increasing. One chart in their book shows that between 1840
and 1955, the number of "mentally ill" in the United States soared from 2,561 to
558,922. During that same period, the U.S. rate of mental illness rose from 0.
15 case per 1,000 persons to 3.38 per 1,000.
The best explanation for this trend, they argue, is
biological. They suspect that an unknown infectious agent is responsible for the
increase, and possibly other biological factors as well, such as "changes in
diet and exposure to toxins." Growing population and urbanization allowed the
infectious agent -- a virus or parasite -- to spread more rapidly in the densely
populated cities, they suggest.
But Torrey and Miller's argument contradicts older epidemiological studies that
show schizophrenia is decreasing or stable.
In 1990, the British medical journal The Lancet published the article "Is
Schizophrenia Disappearing?" by Geoffrey Der of the Institute of Psychiatry in
London and two colleagues. Their statistical analysis of patient data from
England and Wales persuaded them that "there has been a substantial decrease,
beginning in the mid-1960s, in the incidence of schizophrenia."
CHANGING DIAGNOSES
Critics accuse Torrey and Miller of sociological naivete.
That's because they don't adequately take into account the ever-changing
standards of psychiatric diagnosis. In other words, what one generation defines
as "mental disturbance" may be defined differently by another generation.
Their attempt to lump together mental illness rates from different centuries
"seems akin to comparing apples and oranges," Dr. Kenneth S. Piver said in a
review of their book for the June 26 Journal of the American Medical
Association.
There's a famous recent example of shifting psychiatric diagnoses:
homosexuality. Until the 1970s, psychiatrists classified it as a mental
disorder.
HISTORIANS ATTACKED
Torrey and Miller's book also attacks historians of
psychiatry. Since the 1960s, historians have argued that many asylum builders
were driven by nonmedical, even ignoble, motives. The most famous of these
scholars is the late Michel Foucault, a French luminary who taught
intermittently at UC Berkeley just before his death in 1984.
According to Foucault and researchers inspired by him, in the 18th, 19th and
20th centuries many so-called "insane" people were really just iconoclasts of
one sort or another -- harmless eccentrics, sexual deviants, troublesome elderly
people and the politically unorthodox. By defining them as "insane" and locking
them up, the authorities got rid of potential troublemakers.
Torrey and Miller disagree. They cite historical accounts indicating that our
ancestors were genuinely baffled by rising levels of insanity. It struck them as
something very new and terrifying, as not being merely the latest fashion in
iconoclasm. Judging by 19th century clinical descriptions of insane patients,
they would probably be judged mentally ill nowadays, too, Torrey says.
Torrey and Miller attack intellectuals, including Foucault, who they charge,
"have claimed that insane asylums were built merely to put away troublesome
people." These writers "got it completely wrong. The evidence we discuss in the
book makes it clear that insane asylums were built in response to a perceived
8. NEW ON THE TAC WEBSITE
The Treatment Advocacy Center is pleased to offer a new resource to family
members looking for help understanding state assisted treatment laws. You should
not have to be alone when you fight the battle to get treatment for someone with
a mental illness. An attorney can be instrumental in guiding you through the
legal maze surrounding mental illness laws. Our hope is that the directory will
be an invaluable resource in the battle to get help and understanding for those
who suffer from mental illness.
Because of the great need for qualified and experienced civil commitment
attorneys, there is no charge to attorneys for a listing in the directory or to
family members or others who wish to use it.
Browse the directory of civil commitment attorneys at:
http://www.psychlaws.org/LegalResources/search.asp
Disclaimer: The Treatment Advocacy Center does not directly
or indirectly warrant the qualifications or experience of any attorneys listed
in this directory. The directory is meant as a resource or guide in locating an
attorney. Although we have made every attempt to verify the information in this
database, we cannot ensure its accuracy. As with any such listing, we encourage
users to independently verify the qualifications of the individual before
employing their services.
Are you an attorney who would like to be listed? Do you know of a good attorney
who is not listed? Attorneys can apply for inclusion at:
http://www.psychlaws.org/LegalResources/AttorneyDirectory.htm
If your state is not listed in the directory, that means that no attorneys from
your state are in database yet. Check with your local NAMI affiliate for
assistance.
http://www.nami.org/cfapps/Affiliate_Finder/affiliate_finder.cfm
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