4 ms·

> In one case, a homeless man in Sacramento, California, living under a bridge received 190 citations from police (almost all related to sleeping outside and ca

> In one case, a homeless man in Sacramento, California, living under a bridge received 190 citations from police (almost all related to sleeping outside and camping) and wound up being assessed $104,000 in unpayable fines. When he died of cancer in 2016, there were thirty-seven warrants out for his arrest. Whose definition of public safety does any of this serve? On the flip side, the government is powerless to address chronic mental health issues without a paper trail. We all know that poverty and mental health issues are deeply entwined. The government can't just compel mental health care on a whim. They need evidence. Evidence like trespassing citations, public intoxication arrests, and citations for defacating in public. Evidence like 911 calls when a senile resident continues to forget to turn off the oven.

coldtea 8y ago
>On the flip side, the government is powerless to address chronic mental health issues without a paper trail. We all know that poverty and mental health issues are deeply entwined. Only in the absence of a civilized public welfare system.
- humanrebar 8y ago
  I'm arguing for one of those, actually. But even though I'd like to see more resources focused on these problems, we can't just spend our way into good mental health care. When people are in danger or harming others, care and treatment sometimes has to be compelled. People have a right to their day in court, so some amount of evidence has to be gathered so judges can objectively rule on the relevant questions.
  - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
    I don’t think camping and sleeping under bridges are dangerous or harming others. I’m confused how this example shows your point, since your point is about dangerous people, and I’m not sure if people who sleep under bridges are necessarily dangerous.
    - nradov 8y ago
      Camping and sleeping under bridges harms everyone because of all the waste that ends up in watersheds. I've helped out with cleaning up riverbanks a couple times after illegal encampments were removed. Those places were like disaster areas and toxic waste dumps.
      - prolikewh0a 8y ago
        There's no trash removal for these people, and they're shut out of all public bathrooms. What do we really expect? i-5 in Seattle is absolutely trashed from Northgate to Downtown because Jenny Durkan and previous mayors have raided homeless encampments out of view, away from other homes, spending millions of dollars to displace them instead of just giving them garbage cans and a few porta potties. They end up on i5 and in tent camps downtown and it looks like a dump.
        nradov 8y ago
        I'm not familiar with the situation in Seattle, but in areas where homeless shelters have open beds then I really expect people to use them instead of wrecking ecologically sensitive areas. And in the cleanups I helped with, there were multiple public garbage cans within a couple blocks.
        prolikewh0a 8y ago
        https://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166666265/why-some-homeless-choose-the-streets-over-shelters https://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166666265/why-some-homeless-c...
      - thatjsguy 8y ago
        I live in Michigan, where PFAS are being found in water supplies all over the state. Companies did and still do dump poisonous chemicals into the environment, and day by day certain alphabet soup agencies give them more and more license to do so. We can talk about some garbage along a river bank after we prosecute large companies for knowingly poisoning entire swaths of land and bodies of water for decades, considering the scale on which they can harm people and the resources they have to avoid doing so.
0xcde4c3db 8y ago
In my (American) experience, few governments show any sign of wanting to address mental health in a serious way. They seem to care more about appearing to address mental health than actually getting anything done. It's easy to end up with bullshit like "resilience training" for schoolchildren when there's a critical shortage of psychiatrists and hospital beds.
- candiodari 8y ago
  Given the constant flow of mental health scandals, I'm not entirely sure what is worse: no mental health or mental health. Just a few days ago an institution for mentally ill women got convicted for recording (and then discussing with the "patients" on their "evalution") what was said when they met with a lawyer. Ok. So an investigation that was done earlier on the year was made public that already complained about this. When the press read that they published another few details: * one patient was isolated and "fixated" (tied spread eagle to a bed) for 13 days because she bit her nails * another patient had that done to her for over 2 months. The reason ? Nobody bothered to write anything down. * several patients died without a clear reason And ... no worries, the government agency responsible for it will "do a thorough review" of the system. Comments by the management on the issue are expected by the end of the year ... Also, I seem to have no problem finding desperate pleas of patients on fora and on youtube about how they get incarcerated in such institutions for idiotically small reasons. Mental health, when it does exist, seems like it's more a way for government employees to torture people who make a dumb legal mistake (like asking for help from a government psychiatrist) than it was ever meant to help anyone. The people working there were on TV. Maybe it's just me but the impression I got was that these were incredibly dumb and definitely not the sort of people that can be trusted with the care over others. And, in case you're wondering, the psychiatrist on staff ? There is no psychiatrist on staff, one comes for 2 days per month. I'm sure it saved the government some money. Is this really what you want to do to the homeless ? It does not seem like an improvement to me.
  - 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
    Yeah, there's a whole other dimension of this where facilities and processes become oriented toward controlling and containing patients rather than empowering them. But I think it has the same root causes as the broader lack of motivation among authorities to seriously engage: 1) Mental health treatment represents a legitimately difficult set of problems with no known recipe for success in the general case. 2) Mentally ill people are routinely dehumanized and otherwise marginalized.
wu-ikkyu 8y ago
>The government can't just compel mental health care on a whim. They need evidence. Evidence like trespassing citations, public intoxication arrests, and citations for defacating in public These are not signs of mental illness, and should not be considered reasons to imprison someone in a mental health facility and/or forcibly drug them.
- CaptSpify 8y ago
  I agree with you, but couldn't they be indicators of mental issues? In the same way that me stumbling doesn't mean I'm drunk, but the likelihood of someone stumbling goes up when they are drunk.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

coldtea 8y ago

>On the flip side, the government is powerless to address chronic mental health issues without a paper trail. We all know that poverty and mental health issues are deeply entwined. Only in the absence of a civilized public welfare system.

humanrebar 8y ago
I'm arguing for one of those, actually. But even though I'd like to see more resources focused on these problems, we can't just spend our way into good mental health care. When people are in danger or harming others, care and treatment sometimes has to be compelled. People have a right to their day in court, so some amount of evidence has to be gathered so judges can objectively rule on the relevant questions.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  I don’t think camping and sleeping under bridges are dangerous or harming others. I’m confused how this example shows your point, since your point is about dangerous people, and I’m not sure if people who sleep under bridges are necessarily dangerous.
  - nradov 8y ago
    Camping and sleeping under bridges harms everyone because of all the waste that ends up in watersheds. I've helped out with cleaning up riverbanks a couple times after illegal encampments were removed. Those places were like disaster areas and toxic waste dumps.
    - prolikewh0a 8y ago
      There's no trash removal for these people, and they're shut out of all public bathrooms. What do we really expect? i-5 in Seattle is absolutely trashed from Northgate to Downtown because Jenny Durkan and previous mayors have raided homeless encampments out of view, away from other homes, spending millions of dollars to displace them instead of just giving them garbage cans and a few porta potties. They end up on i5 and in tent camps downtown and it looks like a dump.
      - nradov 8y ago
        I'm not familiar with the situation in Seattle, but in areas where homeless shelters have open beds then I really expect people to use them instead of wrecking ecologically sensitive areas. And in the cleanups I helped with, there were multiple public garbage cans within a couple blocks.
        prolikewh0a 8y ago
        https://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166666265/why-some-homeless-choose-the-streets-over-shelters https://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166666265/why-some-homeless-c...
    - thatjsguy 8y ago
      I live in Michigan, where PFAS are being found in water supplies all over the state. Companies did and still do dump poisonous chemicals into the environment, and day by day certain alphabet soup agencies give them more and more license to do so. We can talk about some garbage along a river bank after we prosecute large companies for knowingly poisoning entire swaths of land and bodies of water for decades, considering the scale on which they can harm people and the resources they have to avoid doing so.

0xcde4c3db 8y ago

In my (American) experience, few governments show any sign of wanting to address mental health in a serious way. They seem to care more about appearing to address mental health than actually getting anything done. It's easy to end up with bullshit like "resilience training" for schoolchildren when there's a critical shortage of psychiatrists and hospital beds.

candiodari 8y ago
Given the constant flow of mental health scandals, I'm not entirely sure what is worse: no mental health or mental health. Just a few days ago an institution for mentally ill women got convicted for recording (and then discussing with the "patients" on their "evalution") what was said when they met with a lawyer. Ok. So an investigation that was done earlier on the year was made public that already complained about this. When the press read that they published another few details: * one patient was isolated and "fixated" (tied spread eagle to a bed) for 13 days because she bit her nails * another patient had that done to her for over 2 months. The reason ? Nobody bothered to write anything down. * several patients died without a clear reason And ... no worries, the government agency responsible for it will "do a thorough review" of the system. Comments by the management on the issue are expected by the end of the year ... Also, I seem to have no problem finding desperate pleas of patients on fora and on youtube about how they get incarcerated in such institutions for idiotically small reasons. Mental health, when it does exist, seems like it's more a way for government employees to torture people who make a dumb legal mistake (like asking for help from a government psychiatrist) than it was ever meant to help anyone. The people working there were on TV. Maybe it's just me but the impression I got was that these were incredibly dumb and definitely not the sort of people that can be trusted with the care over others. And, in case you're wondering, the psychiatrist on staff ? There is no psychiatrist on staff, one comes for 2 days per month. I'm sure it saved the government some money. Is this really what you want to do to the homeless ? It does not seem like an improvement to me.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
  Yeah, there's a whole other dimension of this where facilities and processes become oriented toward controlling and containing patients rather than empowering them. But I think it has the same root causes as the broader lack of motivation among authorities to seriously engage: 1) Mental health treatment represents a legitimately difficult set of problems with no known recipe for success in the general case. 2) Mentally ill people are routinely dehumanized and otherwise marginalized.

wu-ikkyu 8y ago

>The government can't just compel mental health care on a whim. They need evidence. Evidence like trespassing citations, public intoxication arrests, and citations for defacating in public These are not signs of mental illness, and should not be considered reasons to imprison someone in a mental health facility and/or forcibly drug them.

CaptSpify 8y ago
I agree with you, but couldn't they be indicators of mental issues? In the same way that me stumbling doesn't mean I'm drunk, but the likelihood of someone stumbling goes up when they are drunk.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]