[Editorial] Make Provisions For Our Mentally Ill

May 14, 2008

The shooting death of 67-year-old Jackson resident K.C. Battle says plenty about the local community’s inability to handle mental illness.

The more dismissive crowd would probably say the best way to handle people like Battle is precisely the way Hinds County sheriff’s deputies handled it: four gun shots in the face and body. But there has to be a better answer than that.

Jackson is an urban area with a unique set of challenges exclusive to urban areas. One of these challenges is our significant population of mentally ill residents.

Battle had a history of mental illness. His family was in the process of getting him committed. Somewhere in his record lay an indication of what officers were walking into when they got the call for 3526 Cromwell St. There are proper techniques and training designed to de-escalate a situation like the one involving Battle, but the deputies didn’t know it. That kind of training costs money, and neither the city nor the county has it.

The problem doesn’t stop with de-escalation training. Local government needs a place to temporarily house people with distinct mental issues, so that some guy seeing Elvis crawling out of his bellybutton doesn’t get housed with real criminals whose antisocial behavior stems from more common causes. Some assume the nearby Mississippi State Hospital is open and ready to take them. It isn’t. Getting someone committed is no easy fight. Battle’s family was wrangling through the process of doing just that before deputies showed up and made the issue moot.

Some cities pay local hospitals to open more beds to safely house the mentally ill, at least until their family members find long-term care for them. Jackson Mayor Frank Melton has paid University Medical Center for much, much less—having canceled $200,000 in annual payments from the hospital to the city in 2005 for special fire equipment and fire training because he felt it wasn’t right to take their money.

Even if Jackson or Hinds County had a facility ready to house the county’s nightly roundup of mentally ill residents, it does not likely employ many personnel who recognize when a potential suspect has a greater issue to deal with than the vagrancy charge for which they were arrested.

The mentally ill aren’t going away any time soon. If Jackson is to be a real city of grace and benevolence, the city needs to find a more humane way to address them—something other than gunplay.

 
posted by on 05/14/08 at 04:51 PM. [printer-friendly version]   

posted by L.W. on 05/15/08 at 09:29 PM