Thanks. It’s time for a new facility in Portland- Oregon State Hospital North.
Actually, that is not original thought. When I ran for Council in 2024, the Oregon State Hospital’s retired chief medical officer ( I think, she was) recommended that. Said badly needed.
I’ve noticed there have been zero comments from our Governor or the Multnomah County Chair, likely because it’s politically inconvenient. Both the Governor and Chair were clamoring all over themselves to preemptively denounce the FPS shooting of 2 drug traffickers last year, but can’t bother themselves to provide any reassurances to the community after a suicide bombing. The Chair is too busy defending needle handouts near schools and the governor is in her mansion taking marching orders from DRO and SEIU.
I am hopeful about the changes in HB2005, but as you said, we don’t have the beds. That is not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s a way to undermine progress towards accountability, just like the Deflection Center.
Our community deserves better. I’ll be voting for the Republican gubernatorial candidate, for the first time, because of these exact failures and so many more.
“Disability Rights Oregon--which is ironically having a fund raiser today--have a firm hold on public policy and politicians like Gov. Tina Kotek.”
With the continued, openly public struggles of the mentally ill and chronically addicted, who obviously have no sense of personal agency, and of situations like this bombing, organization like Disability Rights Oregon MIGHT have a moment or two of reflection and realize their extremism is actually harming the persons they actually state they care about.
Thanks for your efforts to try and prevent what happened. It takes a lot of courage to in any way try to help a man as obviously motivated to hurt himself and others. A major problem is that people don't in any way want to be involved because of the possibility of a high potential for bad outcomes. I think Portlanders recognize 99 percent of people with mild, moderate and severe mental health disorders are not a threat to the safety or civility of the city.
For many reasons which wouldn't be appropriate to go into now, I strongly oppose the idea of sending people like Mr. Whitman to long term psychiatric institutions. Instead, he should have been prosecuted vigorously, punished, and receive appropriate mental health care in prison. The extent which their behavior is affected by mental health disorder should be taken into consideration at sentencing by the judge. As an aside, the cost per patient per year at the Oregon State Hospital is 489,000 dollars per year compared to 80,000 dollars at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
I support judicial commitment hearings within 12 hours of hospital emergency room admission, giving the police more legal authority to transport people they believe have severe mental health problems and causing problems with safety, civility or public beauty to hospitals by safely forcing them if necessary. If after a psychiatrist interviews them in the hospital emergency room, they should be referred for an immediate civil commitment hearing in the hospital. This would be practical and in fact hospital hearings are done now in some facilities in Oregon. I support substituted consent to treatment administered by the judge or perhaps a family member, to assist the treatment staff so that they can lawfully administer modern psychiatric treatments. Ongoing consultation regarding the liberty interests of the patient makes a community hospital based judicial presence very helpful for these individuals. Six weeks of general hospital psychiatric care maximum is a good period of time for the effects of mental health care in a hospital to be effective and why I believe civil commitment should be capped at six weeks. Such a system would be of benefit to the community, the families of the severely mentally ill, the individuals with severe mental problems, and the overall budget of the city given the crime and problems expended managing the ongoing public emergency that is downtown and elsewhere in Multnomah County.
While the laws and procedures I am describing could be a reality someday, currently we are far from that here in Oregon. What is needed is a thorough reconceptualization taking into account the limitations of psychiatric care, which are significant, especially with an individual like Mr. Whitman, from what I have read, was. Despite, what people would like to believe, psychiatric care is the not the go to answer for every person who the criminal justice system doesn't care to prosecute. It can be a small part of the answer sometimes in people who lean to violence, but of limited help. Ongoing, psychiatric services both within the jail and prison communities, along with strong support from the criminal justice system with the mental health system are needed. People who assault nurses in psychiatric units should be prosecuted. People who break public laws should be held accountable and punished appropriately always which includes routinely now a variety of factors including mental illness.
The vast majority of people with mild, moderate and severe mental disorders do not pose a threat to themselves, others, or to the civility of Portland. That bears repeating again and again. For the few that do, we can learn from this event, that more containment is needed. Changing laws and procedures can help make our communities safer and more humane and more just. Events like this are going to happen no matter what we do, but it is necessary to significantly strengthen both general hospital psychiatric unit capacity, the criteria and procedures surrounding mental health commitment, the poor current laws regarding consent during involuntary hospitalization, and to encourage change among those who are passive in confronting crime in our communities. The frequency by which such attacks are happening in communities around the country should remind people that ignoring people with criminal intent, no matter their mental disorder or state, is a big loser for communities.
Going back to the 1950's and institutionalizing for long periods many of the severely mentally ill is inconsistent with modern psychiatric treatments which act relatively rapidly and are effective for many.
As a born and raised Portland Oregonian, I never cease to be amazed at our inability to use best practices from other states and municipalities. Our insistence on "Oregon Solutions" without regard to trade-offs is mind-boggling.
From state agency software to drug policy to mental health services to land management....the beat goes on.
Would it hurt to simply evaluate other tried and true methods, platforms, regulatory structures that have been validated elsewhere as potential solutions to these problems?
We seem to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at every turn. I would like to implement the Costanza model of doing everything opposite from what our feckless leaders think we should do for a while. The results couldn't be worse.
A realization that European housing models are based on statist financing that ignores future capital expenditure to keep rents low. Meaning, your condo is great Year 1 but is an eroding asset without equity growth because there is no money for refurbishments and improvements over time. I could have saved them the money because I lived in a 50-year old viennese state condo for 3 years and saw it first hand. Oh, and I had to pay a non-refundable downpayment and wait 10 months for my unit.
Can I ask, after the 6 weeks of inpatient hospitalization, are you suggesting supervised outpatient treatment for those not in jail? I believe Whitman was committing behavior that at least warranted some form of punishment, though prison seems unlikely.
Also, as a nurse, I have been paying attention to ONA legislation as they continue to push for it to be a crime to assault nurses, but it continues to fail due in part to Disability Rights Oregon. They say “it would disproportionately affect the mentally ill.” I do not agree with this because HCPs are caring individuals that are bound by a code of ethics. I have been assaulted a couple of times and feared assault more times than I can count. However, most people, even with complex mental illness and disability respond to boundaries. Boundaries are something our local society is deeply lacking.
I think that when it comes to committed patients, that all means should be taken by the criminal justice system to ensure the safety of the public and the patient. And of course, the staff, which are often as you point out are sometimes assaulted and often feel fear at work in difficult environments. It makes me angry to see the criminal justice system pawn the responsibility for public safety off on mental health.
Some people are conveying by their behavior that they need to be locked up and probably Whitman was one of those. And in fact, sometimes testimony provided at sentencing for crime, also includes aggravating factors, one of which very well might include, as strong drive to aggression. As you well know as a nurse who sees this firsthand more than others, medications have a small but significant role to limit aggression. Essentially, the criminal justice system, doesn’t know how to incarcerate these individuals, so they pass them off to mental health.
I think people see through statements like from the DA and others, that when failures in the criminal justice system, lead to bad outcomes, the call is for a separate agency, like mental health, to be funded more. It is an attempt to place blame on a health care endeavor that is directed at serving people with mild, moderate, and severe disorders, not at keeping the public safe. The public safety job falls squarely on the criminal justice system and of course on individuals who are responsible for their behavior no matter their mental state.
I think efforts by assertive case management for some patients should start at hospitalization. I think that if they agree to those services at discharge, they are an essential tool to help them stay out of the hospital and lead better, more responsible, lives. I don’t have an answer to what to do with them if they don’t want to continue services post discharge. I do think that with a substituted consent by the judge in commitments, would lead to much more effective inpatient care for those forced into the hospital, and would prevent discharges that were premature.
The real news here is that Norm Frink and the other elite members of the MAC couldn't move the needle. Whitman was scary, but this is even scarier for the folks who have been outflanked by forces of revolution. What no one wants to talk about is that the Whitman escapade fits neatly into the radical "eat the rich" narrative that is now part of the socialist/communist jihad. For proof consult your local telephone pole's posters.
I don't agree with expanding the state hospital system. The failure here is on the criminal justice system. The mental health system is designed to serve people with mild, moderate, and severe mental disorders. When people break public laws, that is in the criminal justice department. Can psychiatrists and others, assist to lessen aggression? To a small but significant degree. But in conjunction under the auspices of the criminal justice system. It shouldn't be just refer to mental health, but mental health and the criminal justice system working together.
The DA and others calling for further public funding of mental health is a way of shielding themselves of criticism within their own agencies. I hope we stop pawning off aggressive individuals to the mental health system and start doing the important criminal justice work. Oregon would do well to adopt what Kansas, Utah, Idaho, and others have done by almost entirely eliminating insanity verdicts. Mitigation at sentencing taking into account mental illness can also lead to increased sentencing for people deemed a severe risk to others in the future. In some cases, however, it can be the compassionate lessening of sentence duration.
As you know, mental health professionals of all stripes are employed successfully in the jail and prison systems and most find their positions very rewarding professionally as they can lessen suffering and institutional disruptions.
I’m afraid you’ve got it all wrong. Unless Oregon were to pass a preventive detention law (which will never happen) the crimes committed by Whitman and Grall prior to their big crimes are not sufficient to incarcerate them permanently which is what they both needed.
So, you want the mental health system to preventively detain them? My profession does not want to be jailers on behalf of the criminal justice system. And apparently the criminal justice system isn't in these cases either. I think both systems need to work together and we might agree that it is proper to prosecute those who assault staff members in psychiatric facilities. I think a much more potent six-week limited commitment system with a substituted consent by the judge for treatment would vastly improve things in this area and make it a lot better. I don't know what to do with those who after treatment are not willing to engage voluntarily afterwards. I would just say that small infractions might be given the maximum sentence if you have compelling circumstances that indicate their aggression is likely to continue. Individuals like Whitman wear the system out. Very difficult.
You can call it what you want but just like the Yale Law graduate in The Best Minds they were mentally ill and clearly very dangerous to themselves and others. Your answer is completely unpractical as I wouild think any informed practitioner in Oregon’s criminal justice system would tell you.
I would say criminally minded and severely mentally ill. Best for him to be in prison or jail where there is more security, medication, and punishment for misdeeds. What you are saying is impractical for the criminal justice system is more impractical in the state mental system.
Thanks. It’s time for a new facility in Portland- Oregon State Hospital North.
Actually, that is not original thought. When I ran for Council in 2024, the Oregon State Hospital’s retired chief medical officer ( I think, she was) recommended that. Said badly needed.
Time for a new Governor (among other things) - just hoping enough other voters finally open their eyes and agree.
‘We have met the enemy and they are ours’
I’ve noticed there have been zero comments from our Governor or the Multnomah County Chair, likely because it’s politically inconvenient. Both the Governor and Chair were clamoring all over themselves to preemptively denounce the FPS shooting of 2 drug traffickers last year, but can’t bother themselves to provide any reassurances to the community after a suicide bombing. The Chair is too busy defending needle handouts near schools and the governor is in her mansion taking marching orders from DRO and SEIU.
I am hopeful about the changes in HB2005, but as you said, we don’t have the beds. That is not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s a way to undermine progress towards accountability, just like the Deflection Center.
Our community deserves better. I’ll be voting for the Republican gubernatorial candidate, for the first time, because of these exact failures and so many more.
“Disability Rights Oregon--which is ironically having a fund raiser today--have a firm hold on public policy and politicians like Gov. Tina Kotek.”
With the continued, openly public struggles of the mentally ill and chronically addicted, who obviously have no sense of personal agency, and of situations like this bombing, organization like Disability Rights Oregon MIGHT have a moment or two of reflection and realize their extremism is actually harming the persons they actually state they care about.
Thanks for your efforts to try and prevent what happened. It takes a lot of courage to in any way try to help a man as obviously motivated to hurt himself and others. A major problem is that people don't in any way want to be involved because of the possibility of a high potential for bad outcomes. I think Portlanders recognize 99 percent of people with mild, moderate and severe mental health disorders are not a threat to the safety or civility of the city.
For many reasons which wouldn't be appropriate to go into now, I strongly oppose the idea of sending people like Mr. Whitman to long term psychiatric institutions. Instead, he should have been prosecuted vigorously, punished, and receive appropriate mental health care in prison. The extent which their behavior is affected by mental health disorder should be taken into consideration at sentencing by the judge. As an aside, the cost per patient per year at the Oregon State Hospital is 489,000 dollars per year compared to 80,000 dollars at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
I support judicial commitment hearings within 12 hours of hospital emergency room admission, giving the police more legal authority to transport people they believe have severe mental health problems and causing problems with safety, civility or public beauty to hospitals by safely forcing them if necessary. If after a psychiatrist interviews them in the hospital emergency room, they should be referred for an immediate civil commitment hearing in the hospital. This would be practical and in fact hospital hearings are done now in some facilities in Oregon. I support substituted consent to treatment administered by the judge or perhaps a family member, to assist the treatment staff so that they can lawfully administer modern psychiatric treatments. Ongoing consultation regarding the liberty interests of the patient makes a community hospital based judicial presence very helpful for these individuals. Six weeks of general hospital psychiatric care maximum is a good period of time for the effects of mental health care in a hospital to be effective and why I believe civil commitment should be capped at six weeks. Such a system would be of benefit to the community, the families of the severely mentally ill, the individuals with severe mental problems, and the overall budget of the city given the crime and problems expended managing the ongoing public emergency that is downtown and elsewhere in Multnomah County.
While the laws and procedures I am describing could be a reality someday, currently we are far from that here in Oregon. What is needed is a thorough reconceptualization taking into account the limitations of psychiatric care, which are significant, especially with an individual like Mr. Whitman, from what I have read, was. Despite, what people would like to believe, psychiatric care is the not the go to answer for every person who the criminal justice system doesn't care to prosecute. It can be a small part of the answer sometimes in people who lean to violence, but of limited help. Ongoing, psychiatric services both within the jail and prison communities, along with strong support from the criminal justice system with the mental health system are needed. People who assault nurses in psychiatric units should be prosecuted. People who break public laws should be held accountable and punished appropriately always which includes routinely now a variety of factors including mental illness.
The vast majority of people with mild, moderate and severe mental disorders do not pose a threat to themselves, others, or to the civility of Portland. That bears repeating again and again. For the few that do, we can learn from this event, that more containment is needed. Changing laws and procedures can help make our communities safer and more humane and more just. Events like this are going to happen no matter what we do, but it is necessary to significantly strengthen both general hospital psychiatric unit capacity, the criteria and procedures surrounding mental health commitment, the poor current laws regarding consent during involuntary hospitalization, and to encourage change among those who are passive in confronting crime in our communities. The frequency by which such attacks are happening in communities around the country should remind people that ignoring people with criminal intent, no matter their mental disorder or state, is a big loser for communities.
Going back to the 1950's and institutionalizing for long periods many of the severely mentally ill is inconsistent with modern psychiatric treatments which act relatively rapidly and are effective for many.
Can you run for governor, please?
As a born and raised Portland Oregonian, I never cease to be amazed at our inability to use best practices from other states and municipalities. Our insistence on "Oregon Solutions" without regard to trade-offs is mind-boggling.
From state agency software to drug policy to mental health services to land management....the beat goes on.
Would it hurt to simply evaluate other tried and true methods, platforms, regulatory structures that have been validated elsewhere as potential solutions to these problems?
We seem to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at every turn. I would like to implement the Costanza model of doing everything opposite from what our feckless leaders think we should do for a while. The results couldn't be worse.
And what did the city council trip to Vienna produce??
A realization that European housing models are based on statist financing that ignores future capital expenditure to keep rents low. Meaning, your condo is great Year 1 but is an eroding asset without equity growth because there is no money for refurbishments and improvements over time. I could have saved them the money because I lived in a 50-year old viennese state condo for 3 years and saw it first hand. Oh, and I had to pay a non-refundable downpayment and wait 10 months for my unit.
Can I ask, after the 6 weeks of inpatient hospitalization, are you suggesting supervised outpatient treatment for those not in jail? I believe Whitman was committing behavior that at least warranted some form of punishment, though prison seems unlikely.
Also, as a nurse, I have been paying attention to ONA legislation as they continue to push for it to be a crime to assault nurses, but it continues to fail due in part to Disability Rights Oregon. They say “it would disproportionately affect the mentally ill.” I do not agree with this because HCPs are caring individuals that are bound by a code of ethics. I have been assaulted a couple of times and feared assault more times than I can count. However, most people, even with complex mental illness and disability respond to boundaries. Boundaries are something our local society is deeply lacking.
I think that when it comes to committed patients, that all means should be taken by the criminal justice system to ensure the safety of the public and the patient. And of course, the staff, which are often as you point out are sometimes assaulted and often feel fear at work in difficult environments. It makes me angry to see the criminal justice system pawn the responsibility for public safety off on mental health.
Some people are conveying by their behavior that they need to be locked up and probably Whitman was one of those. And in fact, sometimes testimony provided at sentencing for crime, also includes aggravating factors, one of which very well might include, as strong drive to aggression. As you well know as a nurse who sees this firsthand more than others, medications have a small but significant role to limit aggression. Essentially, the criminal justice system, doesn’t know how to incarcerate these individuals, so they pass them off to mental health.
I think people see through statements like from the DA and others, that when failures in the criminal justice system, lead to bad outcomes, the call is for a separate agency, like mental health, to be funded more. It is an attempt to place blame on a health care endeavor that is directed at serving people with mild, moderate, and severe disorders, not at keeping the public safe. The public safety job falls squarely on the criminal justice system and of course on individuals who are responsible for their behavior no matter their mental state.
I think efforts by assertive case management for some patients should start at hospitalization. I think that if they agree to those services at discharge, they are an essential tool to help them stay out of the hospital and lead better, more responsible, lives. I don’t have an answer to what to do with them if they don’t want to continue services post discharge. I do think that with a substituted consent by the judge in commitments, would lead to much more effective inpatient care for those forced into the hospital, and would prevent discharges that were premature.
Thanks for explaining all that Tom
The real news here is that Norm Frink and the other elite members of the MAC couldn't move the needle. Whitman was scary, but this is even scarier for the folks who have been outflanked by forces of revolution. What no one wants to talk about is that the Whitman escapade fits neatly into the radical "eat the rich" narrative that is now part of the socialist/communist jihad. For proof consult your local telephone pole's posters.
I don't agree with expanding the state hospital system. The failure here is on the criminal justice system. The mental health system is designed to serve people with mild, moderate, and severe mental disorders. When people break public laws, that is in the criminal justice department. Can psychiatrists and others, assist to lessen aggression? To a small but significant degree. But in conjunction under the auspices of the criminal justice system. It shouldn't be just refer to mental health, but mental health and the criminal justice system working together.
The DA and others calling for further public funding of mental health is a way of shielding themselves of criticism within their own agencies. I hope we stop pawning off aggressive individuals to the mental health system and start doing the important criminal justice work. Oregon would do well to adopt what Kansas, Utah, Idaho, and others have done by almost entirely eliminating insanity verdicts. Mitigation at sentencing taking into account mental illness can also lead to increased sentencing for people deemed a severe risk to others in the future. In some cases, however, it can be the compassionate lessening of sentence duration.
As you know, mental health professionals of all stripes are employed successfully in the jail and prison systems and most find their positions very rewarding professionally as they can lessen suffering and institutional disruptions.
I’m afraid you’ve got it all wrong. Unless Oregon were to pass a preventive detention law (which will never happen) the crimes committed by Whitman and Grall prior to their big crimes are not sufficient to incarcerate them permanently which is what they both needed.
So, you want the mental health system to preventively detain them? My profession does not want to be jailers on behalf of the criminal justice system. And apparently the criminal justice system isn't in these cases either. I think both systems need to work together and we might agree that it is proper to prosecute those who assault staff members in psychiatric facilities. I think a much more potent six-week limited commitment system with a substituted consent by the judge for treatment would vastly improve things in this area and make it a lot better. I don't know what to do with those who after treatment are not willing to engage voluntarily afterwards. I would just say that small infractions might be given the maximum sentence if you have compelling circumstances that indicate their aggression is likely to continue. Individuals like Whitman wear the system out. Very difficult.
You can call it what you want but just like the Yale Law graduate in The Best Minds they were mentally ill and clearly very dangerous to themselves and others. Your answer is completely unpractical as I wouild think any informed practitioner in Oregon’s criminal justice system would tell you.
I would say criminally minded and severely mentally ill. Best for him to be in prison or jail where there is more security, medication, and punishment for misdeeds. What you are saying is impractical for the criminal justice system is more impractical in the state mental system.