THE POLICE officer who found 18-year-old Justin Sheets wandering down Virginia Beach Boulevard in his pajamas last March had two options.
He could treat Sheets as a sick person or as a criminal. On a good day, it's an ordeal for a police officer to find an available bed in a psychiatric center for someone showing signs of mental illness. On a bad day, that option simply does not exist.
And so Sheets was branded a criminal that day because the Virginia Beach Jail was the only place willing and able to give him a bunk. He sat in his cell for a week on suicide watch, without psychiatric treatment, eating his own feces.
The teen's story should be a shock to the conscience of every Virginian. Tragically, it's a story being repeated routinely in virtually every community.
A mental health commission established by Chief Justice Leroy Hassell estimates 15 percent of all inmates in state prisons and jails are seriously mentally ill. The group is asking lawmakers to establish crisis centers for people like Justin who are picked up by police.
Only a handful of emergency crisis centers exist today, and they have fewer than 100 beds. Gov. Tim
Kaine has budgeted $14.6 million to add 36 beds at these crisis centers and hire more around-the-clock emergency psychiatrists. That would start moving Virginia away from its shameful policy of warehousing the mentally ill in jail cells.
It is disgraceful that Sheets spent a week in jail on a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct, and disgraceful that any jail is put in this position.
The sad truth is that Sheets was lucky. His mother and stepfather pleaded, screamed and threatened police, jail staff and a judge, and finally won an order to have the teenager evaluated. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
If two people who love him had not been beating at the doors of the jail, Sheets would have spent months, not days, behind bars.
Sheriff Paul Lanteigne estimates that it typically takes at least six months to find an available bed for a deranged inmate at Eastern State Hospital or a nearby psychiatric center. Scores of people are sitting in his jail today, long after they would normally have been released on minor charges, because they are too sick to be freed.
Sheets is back home and responding well to medication. His mother, Anne Martin, is trying to clear her son's record. Even as she struggles with that lingering injustice, she is anguished at the thought of others still sitting in the Virginia Beach jail waiting for help.
"The majority of mentally ill people they get are homeless and they don't have anyone," she said.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Upload Your Video
iTunes Podcast
Video Feeds
Watch The Dot
Human Rights..Anyone??
Justin’s mother should thank God that that he came out of jail in one piece. Va. Beach police, sheriff’s office, city council, manager ect think they are above the law that we pay them to enforce.
I have no doubt that are police officers deal with challenging situations and behavior that would test anyone at times…
…………..NO EXCUSE……………
They are paid to serve and protect…especially the most vulnerable citizens, our children the elderly and the mentally ill… Who should all be treated with kid gloves not just the lost five year olds…?
Thank God the officers who were following Sheriff Paul Lanteignes proper protocol in dealing with Janice Johnson (the grandmother who was beaten and released with a broken nose dentures ect) were not on duty.
Every citizen who pays taxes should watch the video…. It says it all about Va.Beaches protocol in dealing with not only the mentally ill but anyone who they may find offensive or annoying…. Abercrombie, the block ect, ect …
a friend
wow, i am a personal friend of justin's and have never found him to show any signs of personal illness. i had yet up until i read this been able to get a straight story as to what happened. i dont believe he shouldve been put in jail at all nor do i believe he shouldve been put into a mental facility. however i did not do his spych eval so i dont know if he is mentally ill or not but i have never found him to show any signs of it.
Some mentally ill people do belong in jail
Everyone has sympathy for the harmless mentally ill people who cannot care for themselves, but that is no reason to give 'get out of jail free' cards to everyone who is mentally ill.
Remember that before killing 32 people at Virginia Tech, Cho committed crimes, stalking and unlawful invasions of privacy, which should have resulted in prosecution, but did not because he was excused by Tech police because of his his history of mental illness. Had the police not discouraged the women who were stalked from pressing charges, the Tech massacre might have been averted.
Mentally ill people who commit crimes against the persons or safety of others should be prosecuted just like anyone else, and leave it to a jury to determine if their mental illness is severe enough to warrant treatment instead of incarceration.
OUr punitive legal system/society
THe way we treat mental illness isn't too far away from the Dark Ages. It appears our legal system has the upper hand in this department and in dealing out the consequences. Just look at how many people are in jail over misdeameanor drug charges.
It's time the legal system takes a back seat in dealing out the penalities and letting the medical community take the forefront in dealing with these issues. Sadly, our wonderful president has cut mental health funding so he can have his war funding.
It's time to wake up and deal with these issues in a proactive holistic way and stop ruining peoples lives forever with these punitive heavy handed penalities.
Liz Day