Detroit Free Press, November 27, 2011:

After closing psychiatric hospitals, Michigan incarcerates mentally ill



Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon spoke for most sheriffs when he said, during a community meeting earlier this year, that his jail had become his county’s largest mental health care institution.

Over the last two decades, changes in state policy and big cuts in funding for community mental health care have pushed hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people into county jails and state prisons.

Between 1987 and 2003, Michigan closed three-quarters of its 16 state psychiatric hospitals… The state now provides the sixth-lowest number of psychiatric beds per capita in the nation, reports the Treatment Advocacy Center.

The original intent was to replace the lost hospital capacity with improved, community-based mental health care systems. But the promised support for those systems never came. Instead, they’ve received dramatic cutbacks in state funding. The result?

A University of Michigan study last year found that more than 20% of the state’s prisoners had severe mental disabilities — and far more were mentally ill. The same study found that 65% of prisoners with severe mental disabilities had received no treatment in the previous 12 months.

The problem is even worse in county jails, where psychiatric treatment is virtually nonexistent. In 1999, a Department of Community Health study of jails in Wayne, Kent and Clinton Counties found that more than half their populations were mentally ill… If anything, the crisis has worsened since then.

Vermont may be headed down this same path. Governor Shumlin wants to abandon the flooded Vermont State Hospital and replace it (most likely) with a smaller inpatient facility, plus improved community-based mental health services.

Remember that Treatment Advocacy Center ranking? The one that put Michigan sixth-lowest in the nation in psychiatric beds per capita? Coming in just below Michigan, at number five, was Vermont. And that report was written before the closing of the Vermont State Hospital.

There are some in the mental health advocacy community — and in the GMD community — who don’t want a new state hospital. They’d prefer a stronger community-based system. I agree that we need more and better community options. But we still need a state hospital of some kind. Two points:

Promises of improved community-based services are easily made and rarely kept. The Free Press story highlights this concern. You might argue that Vermont won’t make the same mistakes as Michigan. But look at a bit of history: the state hospital closures began under a good Democratic Governor, James Blanchard. But he was followed by a Republican, John Engler, who was firmly dedicated to cutting taxes and spending. You may trust Shumlin to promote a strong community-based system, but would you feel the same way about a future Governor Dubie or Lunderville or Lauzon?

And on this particular issue, I don’t trust the current Administration. Shumlin may have good intentions, but even before Irene, state government was facing some very tough times. Now, state officials are frequently invoking the specter of Irene as a harbinger of even more belt-tightening. I doubt that spending on any program will be increasing much; and mental health is usually at the top of the list for cutbacks.

Community services, no matter how good, cannot completely take the place of psychiatric hospitalization. The vast majority of cases can be — and should be — handled in the community. But there are a small number of people for whom hospitalization is the best option. Or the least bad option, anyway.  

We’re talking about a tiny percentage of people here. Before Irene, VSH had 50 beds. That’s .0008% of Vermont’s population, or roughly 1 in every 11,000 Vermonters. The absence of VSH is already putting a huge strain on the entire mental health care system. Its capacity was barely adequate to begin with, and is inadequate now. The result is poorer care, not only for those who would have been hospitalized, but for those displaced from care by the post-VSH domino effect.  

There are many stories about the horrors of state hospitals. Some are true. Some are true, but are old news; state hospitals are much better places than they used to be. And some are not entirely accurate: hospitalization comes at the lowest point of someone’s life, and is one of the worst events of his or her life. Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying that they’re making it up. I am saying that for all of us, our perceptions and memories are affected by our state of mind at the time.

And if the Michigan experience is at all predictive for Vermont, the most likely alternative to a state hospital isn’t a rugged, well-funded community mental health system. It’s warehousing of the mentally ill in jails and prisons. That would be worse than hospitalization.  

 Longtime media observer Jim Romenesko visited his archive way-back machine yesterday to see what he was writing about ten years ago. Among other items is a Vermont-based story the Rutland-Herald had in November 2001. It seems just months after September 11 a photographer on assignment for the Brattleboro Reformer was seen taking photos of Vermont Yankee and the police threatened him with arrest under a Vermont State treason statute.  

Eagle-eyed Vermont Yankee officials saw a photographer taking photos and called police. Rob Williams, the Vermont Yankee spokes-person/flack back then, noted with reassuring gravitas worthy of the times:

“It’s a police matter. We have been in a heightened state of awareness and we’ve been working closely with the Vernon Police Department,” Williams said

Vernon Police Chief Randy Wheelock (who reportedly knew the photographer) and Windham County State’s Attorney Dan Davis referred to Vermont Statute Title 13, Section 3481, titled "Treason and other offenses against the government”:

Davis said he became aware of the treason statute after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and especially after three men of Middle Eastern appearance were seen photographing the Bellows Falls hydroelectric station owned by U.S. Gen.        

“I don’t think it’s a good time to be publishing photos of Vermont Yankee,” Davis said. “But I didn’t write the law.”

The relevant Vermont law states that it is unlawful: “while the United States is at war or threatened with war” to map, draw, model or picture without authorization “property of any corporation subject to the supervision of the public service board, or of any municipality or part thereof” punishment calls for imprisonment of not more than ten years.

States Attorney Davis said he would be surprised if this case was prosecuted. The Rutland Herald and others noted then that an image of the Vermont Yankee control room was featured on the VY website.  

My sense is that we aren’t that crazy anymore. However, if asked to I am not confident that I could prove it.  

On Monday you had to get to the Vermont Supreme Court hearing room an hour early to be assured of a seat. By the time it became obvious that Governor Shumlin was running late, the crowd that included House Speaker Shap Smith, former House Majority Leader Floyd Nease, Reps. Tony Klein, Tim Jerman, and Bill Lippert, and State Treasurer Beth Pearce was standing two and three deep along the back wall and down the sides, with an overflow crowd out in the hallway.

But for me, the first highlight came half an hour before that, when about-to-be-sworn-in Supreme Court Justice Beth Robinson entered the room to place a folder and a glass of water on the podium. The crowd stood and erupted into applause. Beth made shooshing, sit-down motions, which were ignored for at least 5 minutes. “No, wait, it hasn’t started yet,” she tried to explain.

Oh, but it had.

The esteem, the respect, the sense of recognition for hard work done with total integrity, the idea of justice achieved for a formerly despised minority – those had all begun, in some cases long before Monday afternoon’s ceremony, in others the moment her nomination was announced on October 18.

There was an amazing amount of laughter (check out Glenn Russell’s photos) for such a solemn occasion, much of it prompted by Susan Murray, Beth’s law partner at Langrock Sperry & Wool and co-activist for marriage equality.

Murray, detailing the qualities that Robinson brings to the Supreme Court, recalled many excursions walking up Mt. Philo together, talking strategy or just taking a break. “Beth would say, ‘Excuse me just  a minute,’ and then run the rest of the way up the mountain and back. And then, if she still had more energy, she’d do it again. There’s not a lazy bone in her body.” She called Beth’s intelligence “breathtaking,” and her mind “agile,” and “a pleasure to watch as it worked” through a case.

She assured the other justices of what the rest of us had already seen that afternoon and years before: “There’s no grandstanding, no arrogance or ego” to Beth. She listens, is patient, a team player, has an uncanny ability to ask just the right question at the right time, Murray went on. “And most importantly, she has the ability to laugh at herself.”

Another highlight was a comment by Denise Johnson, Vermont’s first female Supreme Court Justice, whose retirement opened up the seat on the Court that Beth will occupy: “If you’re here long enough,” she said, “today’s dissent will become tomorrow’s majority.”

There was appreciative laughter among the audience members, most of whom had been here long enough to know that in the ground-breaking Baker v State case that led to civil unions, Johnson dissented from the majority’s “discrimination is unconstitutional, it’s the legislature’s job to fix it” decision in favor of a ruling for full marriage equality.

“Enjoy the company of friends,” family, colleagues, and well-wishers now, Johnson advised Robinson, because it will all go away soon, “as former colleagues begin to treat you with deference and distance.” The task of making rulings fair and standing up under legal and public criticism afterwards, Johnson advised, “makes advocacy and arguing a case before this court look easy.”

When Beth spoke, she thanked everyone, acknowledging Justice Johnson’s role on the court: “You’ve been a model for me, you’ve broken barriers I haven’t even had to think about.”

Perhaps her most moving thanks went to her parents, who had driven from Indiana for the occasion: “If I am half as fair and compassionate as a justice as you have been as parents, Vermont is in good hands.” Beth also reassured her new colleagues: “Despite the puffery of the last few minutes, I know I don’t have a clue,” she said, and promised to listen and learn and depend on their guidance.

“I know I’m not always going to get it right on the law,” she told us, “much as I love the law. I’ve come to love the people whose lives are affected by the law. My pledge is to always remember the people, and not just the abstraction of the law.

And then Beth Robinson was sworn in as the newest justice of the Vermont Supreme Court.

Cross posted at Rational Resistance.

I first heard of Barney Frank when I was a relatively new Legal Services lawyer back in 1981. It was the first year of Reagan's presidency, and also the first year Reagan tried to implement his war on the poor by killing off the Legal Services Corporation. We heard that the appropriation for Legal Services was going to be taken up, so a few of us went to watch the debate on the floor of the house on C-SPAN, which was also brand new at the time.

Although Frank was a new congressman (it was his first term), he was the floor manager for the Legal Services appropriation. I was completely impressed. He was pretty much everything you see when you see him today: smart, prepared, funny, and completely unwilling to back down from a fight.

We won the funding debate, and even in a year when Reagan was getting Congress, under Tip O'Neill, to give him just about everything he wanted, he never succeeded in destroying legal services for the poor.

In the last thirty years Frank has always been a strong voice for working people and those exploited by the powerful, big money interests that have come to increasingly dominate our government.

What has made him so popular, though, is not just his unapologetic liberalism, but also the pugnacious and witty way he disemboweled the other side.

Other people will have their favorite Frank moments, but I'll just close with this one:

Norsehorse AKA Morgan Brown is a successful and foresighted activist who keeps three blogs, Vermont Watch, Montpelier Matters, and Beyond Vermont State Hospital. Though this interview occurred the week before Irene hit us, Morgan’s insights into the state of mental health services in Vermont remain salient. For he has not merely been calling for the shutdown of Vermont State Hospital, he is recommending a community-based treatment model. If you agree with him, please sign this petition:

We the undersigned petition Governor Peter Shumlin of the State of Vermont to support the building of a more robust community-based mental health services system, including a major increase in peer run alternative services and supports as well as more affordable housing opportunities, in order to foster a holistic and healing, cross-disabilities, independent living, recovery-based and trauma-informed model, rather than building a new Vermont State Hospital (VSH).

Click here to sign on

When I first interviewed Morgan way back in the dark days of the Douglas administration, he was working on saving the state’s Housing Coordinator position. Not only did that position survive the chopping block, but that Coordinator actually assisted Morgan in securing permanent housing.

Last Spring, Morgan noticed that a Governor’s Housing the Homeless Summit was open only to stakeholders. Morgan acted quickly and got the Summit open the public.

Over the Summer and Fall, Morgan tracked Montpelier’s Taser Committee hearings. Just this month, Montpelier’s Police Chief withdrew his request for tasers.

Now Morgan would be the first to say that these successes were group efforts (though I think he pretty much solely got the Housing Summit open to the public.)

So when Morgan challenges the Shumlin Administration’s intent on building a new State Hospital, you have believe that maybe citizen activism could turn the tide!

Click here to sign on

You’ve got to give it to Vermont Department of Environmental Engineering’s Todd Menees for getting some straight talk about post-Irene stream mitigation into the Free Press today.

It’s obviously become a major bone of contention within the Administration as to how much is too much intervention.

Menees says:

“When you dig down too deep, the water can’t get out onto the flood plain,”…which is where rivers are supposed to go when they flood.

And then Governor Shumlin says:

“We’ve got to get in here and get this work done…Irene left a mess behind and it’s got to be cleaned up.”

And then Menees says:

“We don’t want to take out every blessed stick,” …noting that clearing the way in one spot could cause further damage downstream.

The obvious disconnect between the Governor’s agenda and that of his science experts only worsens as the pressure builds.  While conceding that he is “not a scientist,” Shumlin seems unmoved:

“Our lesson in all areas where we don’t have development (is), let the river have a flood plain. In areas where we do have development … find the balance between maintaining flood protection and natural resources…That may mean doing more maintenance in some of those areas than we have in the past.”

It’s enough to make an engineer weep.  

Says Menees:

“I have people screaming at me every day – they say you care more about the fish than the people…if it’s good for the river, it’s good for the people and it’s good for the fish. People don’t get that.”

His boss, Commissioner David Mears, walking the thin-line as he attempts to reconcile the science staff’s position with that of the governor, has this to say about his boss’s position:

“The governor’s response has been visceral.”

Which one might take to mean that his head is less than sufficiently involved.

In comes Secy. of State Deb Markowitz, (aka The Peacemaker) apparently charged with the impossible task of maintaining a unified message from the Administration on this sensitive issue:

“When the governor is on the road with homeowners he’s empathizing,” Markowitz said. “He’s also saying you need to talk to the river engineer.”

Piece of advice to the Governor: when you enjoy the distinction of being “Greenest Governor” in the country, you would do well to listen carefully to your scientists before you make promises you may later come to regret.

(crossposted at five before chaos)

As I was going through my usual Sunday morning newsdump, this article over at Alternet caught my eye, which asked the important question:

When local police departments are armed with military grade equipment, the soldier's mentality is not far behind. Domestic policing has come to resemble a string of combat operations in a scene that repeats itself every time an Occupy encampment is raided, which raises the question: exactly what type of policing equipment is in the arsenal of law enforcement agencies in America?

The article then goes on to answer the question, detailing the process that has led to our ever-increasing militarization of our civilian police forces, as well as all of the nifty crowd-destroying gadgets that are rapidly becoming available to them.  Several major cities are mentioned, and then, much to my surprise, this:

The Vermont State Police are now the proud owners of a BearCat G3 as well. A $189,400 DHS grant, in addition to $65,998 worth of forfeited assets from convicted drug dealers, were used to cover the vehicle's $255,398 cost. The state police say they plan on sharing it with city and county law enforcement agencies, should they “face an active shooter, high-risk warrant subject, or barricaded suspect.”

This is a Bearcat G3:

Photo: VSP

According to Police Magazine:

The vehicle can carry 10 fully geared-up tactical officers, who respond with the truck. It’s powered by a diesel engine, provides higher-riding clearance, and allows officers to deploy less-lethal chemical munitions from inside the vehicle.

The PM article makes it sound more like it’s something they needed for natural disasters, yet I can think of few where less-lethal chemical munitions need to be deployed from inside the vehicle. It’s just a reminder that as much as we like to think that in Vermont, we’re somewhat insulated from a lot of the civil unrest (and more importantly, its ever-increasing retaliation and suppression), that those days are over. Don’t you feel safer, now?

We’ll start with this:

Shoppers who had come to the Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch on Thursday night for the much-advertised Black Friday sale got more than they bargained for when a woman used pepper spray to gain an advantage.

Anna Recalde said her teenage children were hit with the spray. At one point, she said, she smelled her 16-year-old son and asked him, “What is that?”

“Mom,” he replied, “I was just pepper-sprayed.”

And this:

A woman who pepper-sprayed other shoppers Thursday night at the Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch had armed herself with the caustic spray to gain an advantage in the fight for merchandise at the Black Friday sale, a fire captain said.

The woman, who is still being sought, used the spray in more than one area of the Wal-Mart “to gain preferred access to a variety of locations in the store,” said Los Angeles Fire Capt. James Carson.

Sadly, this is not all.

There is also this:

Things got out of control at one Wal-Mart near Little Rock, Arkansas on Black Friday as shoppers went wild over a good deal on kitchen appliances.

Screams could be heard as the greedy shoppers struggled to grab one (or five) of the $2 waffle irons.

And there is this:

The second Wal-Mart spraying (so far) was more in line with what we’ve come to expect when it comes to pepper spray and crowds: an off-duty police officer working store security used the weapon in the midst of a mass of unarmed shoppers. This time it was Kinston, N.C., where the painful spray wafted through a Wal-Mart.

“Sgt. Roland Davis of Kinston Public Safety says Walmart hired off-duty police officers to help with security during their Black Friday event today,” reports WITN-TV. “Davis says an officer was trying to quell a disturbance and make an arrest, and used pepper spray.”

[…]

Not all Wal-Mart trips ended in pepper spray, but several others did end in police action. In Rome, N.Y., a man was arrested after “several shoppers at the electronics department were pushed to the ground and several fights broke out,” according to NBC3 in Syracuse. And in Cave Creek, Ariz., the bomb squad took a suspected explosive device out of a Wal-Mart employee break room.

Other incidents occurred outside Wal-Mart stores early in the morning of Black Friday. In Myrtle Beach, S.C., a woman was shot in the foot during an armed robbery outside a Wal-Mart at around 1 AM. In San Leandro, Calif., a man was reportedly shot outside a Wal-Mart at about 2 a.m. “after suspects asked the victims for their items and were refused,” leading to a fight.

There’s a temptation with these stories to make jokes, to move into snark and satire.  

I’m not up for that today, because what I’m seeing here is actually something that I think of as part of a disintegration of the sense of other people as human beings and I don’t want to contribute to that sense by making jokes about it, parodying it or diminishing it.  

I’ve been isolated as of late.  While recovering from surgery, I’m avoiding crowds or pretty much any group of people larger than three.  I’ll be around people again soon enough, but right now, I’m just getting stronger and to the point where I won’t wince if someone accidentally bumps into me.  This is good and healthy for me right now, but it also means I don’t have as strong a sense of what’s going on in the outside world.  I’m in my own relatively pleasant bubble right now where I am fortunate enough to have the resources to heal nicely and not be worried about how much I spend on a waffle iron or whether someone else will get the bargain before me.

Intellectually, from my experience with social psychology and history, I understand what I’m seeing.  When people are placed in roles in which their choices are limited or they see others as enemy, they more easily dehumanize them.  This applies as easily to prisoners and guards as it does to cops and protestors as it does to […please bear with me as I wrap this phrase around my head for a moment…] er… “competitive shoppers.”

It’s easier to deal with these situations by dehumanizing others, by treating people as though they are inferior to you or yourself or your kind.

Intellectually, academically, I get this.

I’m just having trouble with the concept of actually acting on it and behaving as though it is somehow acceptable to pepper spray children.

There is something seriously wrong with this, and I just can’t bring myself to joke about it.

   No straight line can be drawn from the pepper spray incident on the UC Davis campus but it does  make an interesting backdrop from which to read about the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board. Dave Zirin explains in The Nation:

In 2010, [scandalized Penn State’s  recently resigned President] Spanier chose [UC Davis Chancellor Linda] Katehi to join an elite team of twenty college presidents on what’s called the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, which “promotes discussion and outreach between research universities and the FBI.”

The Advisory Board, started in 2005 has concerns that include violent acts by animal rights terrorists, research theft, acquisition or theft of technology and information sensitive enough to harm national security. Secrecy surrounds the meetings between university officials and the FBI and the contents are kept classified. Zirin writes:

As has been true with the FBI since Hoover, give them a foothold, and they’ll take off their shoes and get cozy. Their classified mandate has since expanded to such euphemisms as “counter-terrorism” and “public safety.” It also expanded federal anti-terrorism task forces to include the dark-helmeted pepper-spray brigades, otherwise known as the campus police.

After a week of images showing black helmeted body armored police on US streets and campuses and questions being raised (the National Lawyers Guild filed a FOIA request with DHS and FBI) about possible national “agency” coordination in the almost simultaneous break-up of Occupy encampments, Zirin’s closing questions are appropriate.  

Given the personal character on display by these two individuals, [former Penn President Spanier and UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi] why should anyone trust that the classified meetings have stayed in the realm of “cyber theft” and intellectual property rights? What did the FBI tell Chancellor Katehi about how to deal with the peacefully assembled Occupiers? Was “counter-terrorism” advice given on how to handle her own students?