kqueen blogs under the moniker "Perry's State" and has entered "someone else will take care of that" from April 26th. The article can be summarized as a piece that vaguely touches on the social problems of homelessness and mental illness. The piece is a compilations of some statistics, anecdotal situations, and observations regarding the two topics and again, does not differentiate nor combine the two topics into a blatant point.
The article starts off with common-knowledge statistics about how awful Texas, ranking near the bottom consistently. However, Texas is a low-tax, low-services state, so that kinda goes hand-in-hand. However, if we consider the average spending of $165-360/person in the highest states, we still have to remember that $360/person is shoveling sand at the tide regarding health care costs. My point is that nationally mentally health care is underfunded.
kqueen then goes on to discuss 2 incidents in which mentally ill people died. Herbert Babeley was a paranoid schizophrenic who was reported to have been off his medication. Babeley was shot and killed by APD officers when he brandished and fired a shotgun at the officers. kqueen then quotes the head of the TCRP as having said "no deescalation techniques were used." Harrington was not present at the shooting, so how does he know that no de-escalation techniques were not used, and who is to say that any de-escalation techniques were needed? Maybe APD showed up to the scene, Babelay was calm and showed no threat until he stepped out blasting. Consider this: if Babeley had no documented mental health illness, would this even be an issue? I personally find firing a gun at an officer inexcuseable, sober, intoxicated, mentally healthy or not. Babeley fired a gun at the cops, he got shot and killed. Hiding behing "he's mentally ill" doesn't excuse Babeley's actions, period.
Consider Sophia King. Need reference? Here. Mrs. King had a long standing mental health history and a 118-page rap sheet with APD. One day, she went after the apartment maintenence person with a knife. APD officers warned her multiple times to put the knife down. She refused to put the knife down, went after the innocent bystander and was shot and killed. The situation is tragic but if I had to judge between burying a maintenence man just doing a job and a mentally ill person trying to kill another person, sorry mentally ill person you lose. Consider Babeley vs. the APD officers. Sorry Babeley, better you than those cops.
Case in point - Brandon Daniels. Brandon Daniels killed APD SPO Jaime Padron. Padron was dispatched to Walmart for a person acting strange. On arrival, Daniels was not moving. Upon Padron approaching Daniels, Daniels surprised Padron and essentially executed him. Officer Padron had no chance and now he is dead. Daniels is reported to be bipolar and have been under the influence of bath salts. Even still, neither of those make the death of Padron excuseable. I hope Daniels gets the death penalty, even if he is mentally ill. My opinion. I'm not saying no lienency for the mentally ill, just not in the cases of innocent people getting killed because of them.
Let's now discuss Reginald Demps. Demps had a long history of schizophrenia and had made multiple attempts to seek help. From my long and very experienced tenure, Demps seems to have pursued every avenue available to him, from going to Austin State Hospital, unfortunately being turned away, and a local emergency room, and yet still taking his own life. The author then states that Demps had been evaluated and "with no major signs of threat" was discharged from the emergency room where he offed himself shortly after. As awful as Demps taking his own life is, there is only so much "the system" can do. If a person with a mental health history has been observed for several hours, is sober, denies any desire to kill or hurt themselves or anyone else, how can any health care provider know Demps would have gone and hung himself after? People aren't fucking mind readers.
kqueen's 3rd paragraph is where things start to really go off the rails for me. kqueen states JFK was responsible for the breakdown of the mental healthcare system in this country. I have to argue that kqueen doesn't know their facts at this point. JFK's profoundly progressive New Frontier legislative agenda did more for poor, uninsured and the needy than any other president in the 20th or 21st century. LBJ continued that same trend. If kqueen really wants to know who to blame for the dismantling of "the system" for mental healthcare, take a look at Reagan. Supply side economics slashed government health care programs for national defense spending.
Continuing on, kqueen states "there is no place in Austin dedicated to assessing the medical needs," taking us away from the original topic of homelessness vs. mental health. Now we are debating medical needs too? Giving the author the benefit of doubt, I assume they mean there is no place to be mentally assessed. Well, kqueen is wrong on that point.
Please excuse any further punctuation issues - my keyboard is freaking out on me.
Psychiatric Emergency Services PES is at 56 East Avenue. Furthermore, APD CIT Crisis Intervention Team are officers who are trained in mental health situations and can commit patients if need be. Then, there is ASH, Austin Lakes, and Shoal Creek that can offer assessment and treatment. kqueen also states "A majority of people are not provided the proper care, including medicine and follow up care." kqueen needs to understand that short of holding hands or tying people down, these people ARE afforded follow up care; the patients just choose to not follow up. Moreover, a lot of them CHOOSE to drink alcohol and further complicate their mental health. I also have to mention the irony in a medication which name i cannot remember that is used to treat depression also can cause suicidal feelings... So even if we provide people with care, the care they recieve might cause them to kill themselves.
"We have found ourselves in a pressing situation where police find it easier to take a person to jail, instead of getting people the help they need" is a ridiculous statement. Police officers might take a person with mental illness to jail if they are intoxicated to sober up, but they don't take people to jail unless they have broken laws. If a person is having an acute mental health issue and have broken the law, they go to the hospital first. Believe me, I know. I am the person they call to take them to the hospital. Often times, the police officers won't even pursue charges for minor infractions.
"We need to help every person as if they were our family or friends, these people out suffering and somebody needs to step up; the state and/ or local government, along with the people within the community." This is the liberal hollow statement I so often hear yet never see anyone do anything about. First, these people's suffering might be lessened if they chose to abstain from alcohol. Alcohol and mental illness don't mix. So, maybe we should start by outlawing alcohol. Wait, we did that already and it didn't go so well. Second, even though it is my job, I probably do more for the homeless and mentally ill than anybody else. As soon as someone does more than I do, then they can have my attention and empathy. Lastly, the people of this community have done something - they haven't enacted laws against panhandling or homelessness. The city of Austin has ordinances but no laws. They have done something by not enacting legislation and being tolerant of the homeless population.
The major issues I have with the author's point is that while homelessness and mental illness often beget the other, the author fails to delineate each individually. Moreover, the author really never makes a solid point other than a liberal "somebody needs to do something." Lastly, kquees never really readdresses homelessness through the blog after the initial statement about the homeless. I would have found the piece more titillating if there was more substance than a typical liberal hollow call to action.
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