Things Come Back To Haunt You

No humor in this post, but I am pohlaxed.



The Baltimore City Paper, 6/26/09, has posted an article about the state's plan to close the only public inpatient psych treatment facility in Baltimore City.



Here is what came to my mind when I read the article.



This is right on the mark: "Not only is that detrimental to the patient, says John Burleigh, who was also a civil rights activist and friend of Walter P. Carter’s, it’s detrimental to the community. The Carter Center, he says, was created to address the unmet needs of minorities and low-income individuals in the city during a time when “many were being released from institutions, during the movement of deinstitutionalizing the mentally ill.” Many of those patients, he recalls, had few resources and ended up out on the streets. Because of their mental illnesses, these untreated patients would do things that were “socially unacceptable” and would end up incarcerated."



I was a Baltimore police officer at the time when deinstitutionalization was taking place as a result of court decisions, which said mentally ill people could not be held unless they were a danger to themselves or others. That usually translated to trying or succeeding in killing themselves or others, which usually falls under Mr. Burleigh's euphemism of "socially unacceptable" things.



The theory was that treatment would be provided at "community mental health centers.” In Irvington, where I worked, that meant a house off Frederick Road, where the patients could come and meds would be dispensed and I presume, the patients counseled. As you might guess, one of the problems with the mentally ill is that they don't like or want to take their meds. I never saw anyone go in or out of the community health office. I did arrest a number of former Spring Grove patients who did "socially unacceptable" things. My friend, Timothy Ridenour, was murdered in October 1975 by one such patient he was attempting to arrest.



That time was the beginning of the visible and intractable problem of homelessness in Baltimore.