Fairfax Sheriff Candidate Responds To My Blog About Diversion and CIT

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Bryan Wolfe

Bryan Wolfe

I recently published a blog critical of Bryan Wolfe, the Republican candidate for Fairfax County (Va.) Sheriff running against incumbent Sheriff Stacey A. Kincaid, a Democrat. I wrote that quotes attributed to Mr. Wolfe, a retired police officer who has Crisis Intervention Team training, showed a lack of understanding about jail diversion. Mr. Wolfe felt my blog mischaracterized his views. Here is his response. 

CIT, Jail Diversion and the Sheriff’s Office

Several weeks ago Pete Earley posted a blog about comments I made during an interview with a Fairfax Times newspaper reporter.  Mr. Earley questioned my understanding of a crisis intervention diversion program.  Unless you are a law enforcement officer, it’s difficult for most citizens to understand the true meaning of a diversion program.  So let me take a moment to explain my views.

First you must understand that a fully operational diversion program requires an incredible amount of funding to get started. It must also be a collaborative effort by the local government, judicial system, community mental health treatment facilities and local stakeholders. Unfortunately Fairfax has just now started a new Diversion First program and it will take several years for all the stakeholders and the funding for it to become fully operational. People suffering from mental illness are being swept up in our criminal justice system – right now. Keeping them safe is not something that we can wait to do and there are several changes that need to be made right now.

The police and sheriff’s office have different roles. Our police are responsible for enforcing the laws and making the community safe. They are the first responders when dealing with persons who are mentally ill. The sheriff’s office turned over all law enforcement responsibilities in our county to the police department back in 1942.  Deputies are not responsible for making arrests or investigating crimes. The sheriff’s main responsibility is running the jail. With that being said, the sheriff should be focusing all of her time on how to keep jail inmates safe and secure.  The police are the ones and the only ones deciding who and when a person is a candidate for the diversion program. You may have noticed that I haven’t written one word about the role of the sheriff or her deputies in diversion. That is because the deputies have no involvement or discretion about who is brought to the jail.  

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John Oliver Talks Mental Illness Reform: Blaming the Mentally Ill For Gun Violence Is A Red Herring

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Bravo to John Oliver who in twelve minutes manages with humor to say what many of us have been trying to tell the public for years!

1 in 4 Inmates Have A Mental Illness: Quit Bickering & End The Cycle

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(10-4-15) Mira Signer, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Virginia, reminds us in this Op Ed printed this weekend in The Washington Post that we know how to help persons with mental illnesses who are locked in Virginia’s jails and prisons — we simply aren’t doing it.

This is true in other states as well. The problem is not a lack of knowledge but of political clout.  I believe we will only gain that power when we create a strong mental health coalition and a PAC that will contribute to campaigns of candidates who support mental health reform.  Thanks Mira for speaking out so eloquently.

Closing the gaps in mental health care in Virginia

By Mira Signer  Published in The Washington Post

Two recent incidents, each horrifying, should give Virginians pause about how much progress has been made in recent years regarding our mental-health system.

●  Twenty-four-year-old Jamycheal Mitchell, who had a history of mental illness, died in a Virginia jail while waiting three months for a hospital bed to open up.

● Natasha McKenna, a 37-year-old mother from Alexandria with a history of mental illness, died in a Fairfax County jail after being shocked multiple times with a Taser. Her death was ruled accidental.

So many questions. So much heartbreak. So much outrage.

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A Boston Doctor Washes Feet And Treats Street People “Lost In Plain Sight”

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After Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, was published, I wanted to write a book about homelessness. Georgetown Ministries in Washington D.C. allowed me to spend several weeks with one of its workers who patrolled the streets handing out water bottles and helping mostly homeless men who had mental illnesses and co-occurring addictions. I met a handful well enough to write what I thought was a fabulous book proposal.

But when my agent showed it to my editor, he rejected it, telling me that “No one wants to pay $30 for a book about those people.”

I’m glad that Dr. James J. O’Connell and the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program didn’t listen to my editor because Dr. O’Connell’s recently published book Stories From the Shadows: Reflections of a Street Doctor, is one that I wished I would have written. It is a gem and one of the best books about homeless Americans that has ever been written.

Stories From the Shadows is being marketed as a memoir, but it really isn’t. What Dr. O’Connell has assembled are 30 short stories online — some more diary entries than narrative tales  — about men and women who have crossed paths with him since 1985 after he earned his M.D. at Harvard Medical School, completed his residency in internal medication at Massachusetts General Hospital and decided to spend a stint inside what then was New England’s largest and oldest shelter in Boston.

He intended to stay only a few months before moving to what surely would have been a rewarding and profitable career in oncology. He not only stayed working as a doctor on the streets, but two years later helped form the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. Scores of homeless men and women in Boston are better because of it.

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Dying in Jail Cells: No Room In State Hospitals For Jailed Prisoners

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mitchell(9-30-15) In a comprehensive front page story in today’s edition, The Washington Post describes how a 24 year old black man with mental illness died in jail after waiting three months to be sent to a Virginia state mental hospital.

I published a blog about Jamycheal Mitchell’s death earlier this month based on a story written by Lisa Suhay in the Christian Science Monitor. Post reporter Justin Jouvenal goes beyond that initial story to expose an ongoing national scandal — the warehousing of persons with mental illnesses in local jails because of a lack of psychiatric beds in state hospitals.

Mitchell should never have been jailed. He was accused of stealing $5.05 worth of food from a convenience store. He should have been diverted into community care and treatment. His death is yet another senseless tragedy caused by our neglect in providing adequate mental health services and reforming our criminal justice system with an emphasis on diversion.

Mitchell’s name can be added to an increasing number of preventible tragedies that have happened because we are using our jails and prisons as defacto mental asylums. What the public needs to understand is that even if Mitchell had been sent to a state hospital, the goal of the doctors there would have been to restore him to competency for trial — not necessarily to treat him!

Kudos to the Post and Reporter Jouvenal for continuing to expose flaws in our mental health system here in Virginia and across the nation and to Mira Signer, NAMI’s executive director in Virginia, for speaking out about this travesty.

Man accused of stealing $5 in snacks died in jail as he waited for space at mental hospital

By Justin Jouvenal   The Washington Post 

Jamycheal Mitchell had stopped taking his schizophrenia medication before he walked into a 7-Eleven near his family’s Portsmouth, Va., home in April and allegedly stole a Mountain Dew, a Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake totaling $5.05.

After the 24-year-old’s arrest, a judge ordered him to a state psychiatric hospital to get help. But like an increasing number of the mentally ill, he sat in jail for months as he waited for a bed to open.

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NAACP Asks Me To Speak About Natasha McKenna’s Death; Her Family Issues Public Statement

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PRESS PLAY BELOW TO HEAR MY MY SIX MINUTE SPEECH AT THE RALLY* (also see correction at bottom of blog.)

 

A new crisis assessment center for persons with mental illnesses in Fairfax County, Virginia, should be named after Natasha McKenna. That is what I told a crowd Sunday (9-27-15) outside the jail where the 37 year-old black woman was stunned with a taser four times by sheriff’s deputies and later died.

Shirley Ginwright, the president of the Fairfax Chapter of the NAACP, asked me to speak at the rally. In my six minute talk, I said McKenna should never have been arrested or taken to jail. She had schizophrenia and had been to emergency rooms seeking help five times prior to her incarceration.

I asked  the NAACP to recommend that the county’s new crisis center be named in Natasha McKenna’s honor to remind everyone of the importance of jail diversion and of providing community based mental health services.  Having a mental illness should not be a crime.

Natasha McKenna’s family’s attorney, Harvey Volzer, read a statement at the rally, which I’ve printed below. It is the first time the family has spoken about their loss.

As we have coped with the tragic loss of our beloved Natasha McKenna, our family would like to thank everyone who has prayed for us and supported us. Natasha’s death weighs heavy on our hearts because our dear loved one suffered and died unnecessarily.

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