Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Seattle Is Dying

That is the name of a documentary by KOMO TV in Seattle, Washington.  They have reported on the intersection of the homeless/addiction/mental health/criminality problem.

My wife, the lovely and talented Belle has been a Mental Health/Developmental Disability nurse for over 40 years and puts the blame on the Clinton Administration, who started shutting down mental health hospitals because of yada, yada, yada, civil rights, these-people-deserve better, their rights to live in the community trump your rights to live in a safe, pleasant environment.

It's a problem for the police all over the country, especially if you work in an urban environment.  Even in this small city in central Louisiana, we have the same problem, to a lesser extent.  Where I happen to work, in the downtown area, we have a magnet for the homeless, but it is not just confined to the downtown area.  I talk regularly with the homeless coordinator for the schools, and we have approximately a thousand homeless children in the area.  She works tirelessly trying to insure that these children have a safe place to live and the things they need to succeed, and her work is never-ending.  It's a problem everywhere, and kudos to KOMO for highlighting the problem.

It's a great documentary, and I'm going to leave it right here so that I can find it later.



We need to get a handle on this as a society.  This is a police problem, but it is not a police issue.  By and large, we're doing our job.  This is a problem that other agencies need to address.  Seattle estimates that they spend a billion dollars a year on the problem.  Across the US, there is no telling how much we spend.  And, since 1992, it's been an abject failure.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not by the least do I favor Clinton over Reagan, but as I recall, it was Reagan that opened (or closed per point of view) the mental-health institution doors along about 1981/82 ...

'course - I have old-people's memory.

Pawpaw said...

You might be right. My lady blames it on Clinton, but the DOJ might not have gotten around to us here in Louisiana until Clinton was in office. Still, the mental health system is in crisis. I ha have a daughter-in-law in the mental halth field and she's always complaining about the lac of MH beds for people in crisis.