Demonize the Mentally Ill \o/

[adalger]

It's all the disabled guy's fault.

Some selected quotes with my reactions:

Though Campione never threatened her family, Neri said she called police between October and January because she felt he needed help.

Really. Because that's totally your decision to make. Right?

He was later shot to death by police after pointing a pellet gun that looked like a handgun at officers at the Regional Transportation Center.

And that's all the context we get. Nothing to say why or even whether there was any interaction leading up to this, or why the police were there in the first place. (For non-locals, the RTC is a bus and train station. Do the police in *your* town hang out at the local commuter public transit hubs? Most places I've lived, they were conspicuous by their absence, even when said hubs were known for shady or downright criminal activity.)

An expert said Campione's death highlights the difficulty of finding help for the mentally ill while protecting their liberty and free speech.

Because obviously he needed help. After all, someone else shot him. It must be his fault.

"The days of depriving people of liberty to protect their own safety is largely absent today," said Shane, a former Newark, N.J. police captain.

Yes. That's called progress.

Shane said it's going to take a difficult, long public discussion to decide how police and other agencies address mental health issues if the victim doesn't want to get help.

I'm sorry progress is so disappointing to you, Mr. Shane. Pro tip: shooting them doesn't help. (On the bright side, at least the victim is correctly identified as a victim.)

She said she called the cops on three occasions when Campione:

1. shone the high beams of his car into her living room window, scaring her children.


2. stood under a street lamp in the early morning hours in his black outfit, swaying back and forth, smoking a cigarette and moving his ski mask off and on his face.


3. was lying in the middle of a side street, punching the air, then later banging on a metallic object in his front yard.

Okay. 3, I can see a call for maybe disorderly conduct. 2 ... would seem plausible if it were a stranger, but that's not the case. (Earlier in the article she claims to have considered him "her friend." But 1? I can't imagine this would have resulted in a call to the police for anyone not known to be mentally ill unless there was a long history of antagonism, which is contraindicated (see 2). That seriously smacks of harassment.

Neri said her neighbor left few possessions. "He had no curtains," she said. "He had a TV and one chair, no other furniture. I felt bad."

"You are charged with being insufficiently materialistic. As you can't respond to the charge due to your current deadness, this court finds you guilty. And weird."

I'm terribly afraid any comments made will be even more ableist than the article itself. I have no intention of trying to engage or even read there, because I really don't have that much room for more anger in my life.

ETA: Context! This explains why the police were there. I'm not sure if I feel any differently about it, because it isn't clear from this that he did anything wrong -- besides being insufficiently like other people.

Comments

[terajk]

UGH. WTF!Azula does not have enough PWD rage for this.

"The days of depriving people of liberty to protect their own safety is largely absent today," said Shane, a former Newark, N.J. police captain.

Shane is actually wrong about this. It's easy to say: "Wow, look how badly we used to treat [group of people]! and ignore the stuff that still goes on.

Also, whenever someone with a mental illness gets killed by police, someone always says it's a "tragedy," which is part of the problem right there. I mean, it's a tragedy--it's just a terrible thing that happened! It's not like anyone actually *did* anything to cause it. Especially not because IT. KEEPS. HAPPENING.

/rage

[adalger]

I think my larger problem with that quote is what he goes on to say afterward. In context, it's clear he's not saying "Look how badly we used to treat them," but rather, "Look how much good we used to be able to do for them that we can't any more because of these stupid laws." In the putatively necessary long and difficult public discussion about how to treat people who don't want help, it doesn't seem "leave them the hell alone" is an option. Apparently, "don't shoot them" is problematic even.

But yeah, rage. I think, if I'm honest, a major motivator for this post was to seek validation of my anger. I don't identify as any oppressed group, but I like to think of myself as an ally. I feel better about my calling-out if people who are directly affected by the issues have a voice in it, and are saying (and seeing) the same things as I am.

[jadedmusings]

Speaking as a parent who lives alone with her son, I can see calling the police if someone came to my house and shone their high beams in any window in my house. I have a huge phobia of break-ins (no, I've never been a victim of a break-in and I don't really know where it comes from). Of course, for anyone to be able to do that to me, they would have to be on my property anyway, right next to my house, which would be trespassing first and foremost.

The last one, for laying in the street, yeah that's a matter of public safety for him and for anyone driving who might not be able to see him (or driving while distracted and unable to stop in time). Banging something in his front yard? Maybe a noise disturbance if it was after a certain time, but beyond that? He's in his yard banging. Could be doing construction for all we know.

Standing under a street light smoking? Walk down any street in any city sometime. If you don't find someone smoking under a street lamp, I'd find that really bizarre. Maybe if he was trying to harass passers-by.

And oh no, he was poor and had few possessions. What a tragedy! Never mind he was shot, that's not as important as pointing out how weird and poor he was. A side of classism with my ableism entrée. Yum!

[adalger]

Well, yeah. It does all come across as a big pile of "this is why he got shot" that makes the reason something other than "three police officers pointed guns at him and pulled the triggers."

My perspective on high beams is maybe different. My neighbors pulling into their assigned parking space will shine their lights on my living room. Addresses aren't available to do a Google Map street view, but Court Street has houses close together. It isn't clear to me that he wasn't just pulling into his driveway. What really comes across to me, though, is "omg crazy scary person, I can't just go ask him to turn off his lights! even though he's MY FRIEND!"

[jadedmusings]

Eh, I have lived in a more heavily populated area before and I get headlights will occasionally shine into the rooms, but that's a bit different than if it just sits there shining in your room on high beams. And I'm not going to fault any woman for being afraid to approach a man regardless of if she knows him well or not, especially if he's behaving in a way that is perceived as being out of character from previous interactions.

And yeah, I'm not sure why we need to no everything about his home life and his relationship with one neighbor anyway. It would be enough to say that he was seen with a gun (or what was thought to be a gun) at a restaurant while being possibly publicly intoxicated, police were called, and he pulled the gun out at some point. That's the story, and not even one that's all that unusual. Tragic, yes, but not something that hasn't happened before. That there's this whole story about how he acted "weird" or "crazy" day-to-day is just asinine on the part of the news.

And the lack of detail about how precisely we get from "police being called" to the victim pulling his "gun" out on the cops makes me wonder about the potential for police misconduct.

[adalger]

And I'm not going to fault any woman for being afraid to approach a man regardless of if she knows him well or not, especially if he's behaving in a way that is perceived as being out of character from previous interactions.

Ah. Yes. I'm a middle-aged white guy. I'm not always sensitive to where caution might be reasonable in other people when I wouldn't find it necessary for myself. Your point is well taken, and thanks for the reminder.

Police misconduct is certainly a possibility, although institutionalized idiocy is also a strong suspect. I mean, seriously, mental issues or not, drunk with a gun suggests maybe, I dunno, some SUBTLETY might be in order?

Really, though, as above to terajk, thanks for chiming in with an indication that I'm not way off-base or totally out of line in seeing something wrong with this story.

[jadedmusings]

Not off-base at all. It did read like someone looking for an excuse to single out a person for being different and as a back-door to open up a discussion about locking up certain people in society "for their own good and our safety." That neighbor seemed to be cashing in on her fifteen minutes more than anything. "Oh yeah, that guy? He was just weird! I called the police on him a few times!"