It was a surprise to hear gunfire up among the upscale apartments and condominiums on Russian Hill, a shock to see a panhandler waving a knife, and an absolute stunner to hear that when police fired on the man they killed him. Everyone would agree that it was a terrible, scary, unfortunate tragedy.The column goes on to quote Willie Brown (a liberal's liberal) as acknowledging what the core problem is here--and it isn't capitalism, or Ronald Reagan, but the profound error of deinstitutionalization.
But there was one part of it that didn't surprise those familiar with life on the street: the announcement by police that the man had mental health problems.
How many times is this going to happen? Someone living on the street, with severe mental issues, snaps and begins to behave erratically. The consequences are never good. In October, San Francisco police Sgt. Paget Mitchell was badly beaten by a disturbed homeless man, known as "the sign guy," who'd been putting up threatening posters in Justin Herman Plaza for months.
In the most recent case, the slain man (still unidentified) was well known to the Northern Station officers, and they were well aware of his drug and mental problems. But they were powerless to do anything. Like many homeless people with mental illness on San Francisco's streets, the panhandler was an explosion waiting to happen.
"There's lots of guys on the street like that," said Michael Carreiro, a homeless man who panhandles in front of the Walgreens at Polk Street and Broadway. "Some people just freak out when they see a cop. They don't know what they're doing."
Niels Tangherlini, a paramedic who started the San Francisco Outreach Team to work with homeless people, has seen this happen over and over. He recently talked about the tragedy and the toll of severely mentally ill people who refuse, or are unable, to take their medications.
"We could avert this tragedy if we could just get people to take their meds."
Getting mentally ill people to stay on their medications seems like an easy sell to most people. For all the arguments about homeless people in San Francisco, and the philosophical debates about housing and rent support, there is one clear truth - mentally ill people cannot be left alone on the street until they explode into violence or die of neglect.
The column points out that the excuses don't make any sense:
Why, over and over, are they put in such a dangerous, volatile situation? Why are any of us?
Why is it that the city is unwilling to fund Laura's Law, which forces severely mentally ill people to take their medications? The law has been passed in California, but it has to be funded by individual counties.
The reason, according to City Hall sources, is that it is too expensive.
More expensive than a man dead on the street?
Put a price on that.
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