Tucker Carlson just did a piece entitled: "The homeless crisis is a symptom of our society collapsing in real time."
He is a jerk. And I really wish that conservative Christians would not find comfort in his cruel and hateful words.
But, if you can look past his basic mean-ness, there are some points that are true: Mentally ill people that self-medicate with alcohol and drugs are wandering around our cities and there is nothing to do with them other than let them do so.
Tucker's solution is this: "Pull up your pants and get the hell out of here. Go somewhere with lower standards."
I don't know where that is. But I guess because Tucker is rich it's where rich people are not. That's not a solution. It's just more mean-ness and cruelty.
HERE'S MY SOLUTION: Designate highly experienced people in the community that are then trained on dangerous mental illness signs to work with police with these people. If these people determine the person is a risk to themselves and/or others, they must go in for a 3 day evaluation. If then they are still deemed to be dangerous, those doctors can keep them for 10 days. And then it goes from there. We must bring back forced incarceration of mentally ill people that are a danger to themselves or others.
(You might say we already have that. WE DON'T. The vast majority of the time these people pass the verbal test of the initial evaluator. The questions are too obvious and easy to lie about. The person who is determined to make this call needs to get to know these people and then they need to be given a lot of power to make the call based on their overall evaluation of the situation.)
I truly enjoy working with these kinds of people. But I can't keep them around our community.
RIGHT NOW, I'm dealing with a situation where I think a homeless person is poisoning the coffee at our house with rat poison. This person is a repeated violent threat to all those around him. I REALLY need this guy to be evaluated by a mental health person. I REALLY need him on medication. But it's nearly impossible to do so. So what am I going to do? I'm going to probably end up throwing him out onto the streets where he then will become even worse. He'll become more violent and more dangerous to the entire city.
He is a jerk. And I really wish that conservative Christians would not find comfort in his cruel and hateful words.
But, if you can look past his basic mean-ness, there are some points that are true: Mentally ill people that self-medicate with alcohol and drugs are wandering around our cities and there is nothing to do with them other than let them do so.
Tucker's solution is this: "Pull up your pants and get the hell out of here. Go somewhere with lower standards."
I don't know where that is. But I guess because Tucker is rich it's where rich people are not. That's not a solution. It's just more mean-ness and cruelty.
HERE'S MY SOLUTION: Designate highly experienced people in the community that are then trained on dangerous mental illness signs to work with police with these people. If these people determine the person is a risk to themselves and/or others, they must go in for a 3 day evaluation. If then they are still deemed to be dangerous, those doctors can keep them for 10 days. And then it goes from there. We must bring back forced incarceration of mentally ill people that are a danger to themselves or others.
(You might say we already have that. WE DON'T. The vast majority of the time these people pass the verbal test of the initial evaluator. The questions are too obvious and easy to lie about. The person who is determined to make this call needs to get to know these people and then they need to be given a lot of power to make the call based on their overall evaluation of the situation.)
I truly enjoy working with these kinds of people. But I can't keep them around our community.
RIGHT NOW, I'm dealing with a situation where I think a homeless person is poisoning the coffee at our house with rat poison. This person is a repeated violent threat to all those around him. I REALLY need this guy to be evaluated by a mental health person. I REALLY need him on medication. But it's nearly impossible to do so. So what am I going to do? I'm going to probably end up throwing him out onto the streets where he then will become even worse. He'll become more violent and more dangerous to the entire city.