Thing about mental illness is, we use to keep them in asylums until the movie one flew over the cook coos nest came out and exposed the abuse that went on in them. Instead of "revamping" the system they thought it would be "more humane" to release the patients. Ya more "humane" for them to fend for themselves for food, shelter and clothing. It won't be until we go back to putting them in a hospital that will help them that society will be just a little bit safer. Some times we have to consider what is best for someone and I'm sorry but if that means we have to take away some of their rights to do so then so be it. Because some people can't make "sound decisions" for themselves.
The police are the very last resort in protecting the public from people with mental illness who are dangerous to others. It shouldn't even be their job except in situations or immediate threat. Targeting the police with the word "failure" is begging the question. The "system": from national health care down to state and local government is the real issue. Improving and managing that is huge, so it's just easier to point at an agency and declare "failure"! A better approach for moving forward given the system's limitations is to ask, what happened and are there any small changes we can make in response, which appears to be happening.
In the meantime. people, especially families, will always be vulnerable to persons with mental illness who are inadequately treated or confined.
Great piece, though Im not so sure a stabbing and M11 crime would actually keep him in jail, given the current state of our criminal justice system. Many of these individuals are charged with Assault 4, technically not a M11 crime. There have been continued stories of people being harmed or killed by individuals deemed unable to aid and assist, who are medicated just long enough to face charges and then are dumped back on the streets.
Some recent examples of cases where previous crimes and acts of violence didn’t seem to matter until it was too late:
- Vashon Locust, who set fire to Councilor Avalos’ home
- Jordan Christ, who killed James Elliot at a max stop. Christ had multiple violent cases dismissed as he was deemed unfit to stand trial.
- Victor Palmer-Raegan randomly attacked 2 women in NW and stabbed a bystander in the back. He was charged with assault 4 (not M11) and given 2 years probation, no jail time.
Then there’s bail reform, which lets criminals (mentally ill or not) out within hours of arrest, many times to repeat the same behaviors and not show up to court. Luckily bail reform is going back on the ballot to stop catch-and-release. The police are somewhat fault in the case you discuss and that needs to improve, but in many cases, what the police do is undermined by the courts. This also creates moral injury with police officers who are trying to protect the public. They cannot be the be-all end-all for our mental health crisis.
The state and Multnomah county are to blame for failing to create adequate mental health infrastructure we’ve known we needed well before Kotek was speaker of the house.
Thank you for your article. Public perceptions and remedies are a way to find ways to make things better.
I think, as often happens when writing about mental illness, there is a tendency to mischaracterize a diagnosis and create more stigma. In fact, many people with schizophrenia do quite well with treatment, have few side effects, and a significant number might have a significant break in reality, and fully recover, with no treatment whatsoever. Of course, there are blatant examples of severe illness, which Rosen documents, as do you in the Grail case, and of course we need broad reform of the police handling of these cases and the mental health system. While both these agencies, the police, and the mental health system deserve scrutiny and reform, you failed to mention what is probably been the biggest contributor of our difficulties, which is the legal professions neglect of the severely mentally ill. For many years, they have sat on their hands, not properly devising a significant legal remedy for the delicate balance between the liberty interests of the severely mentally ill and the public need for safety, civility, and beauty in the town square. The adoption nationwide of defining the key legal issue, as the patients right to refuse, attributing it as a civil rights matter, rather than a practical reality can't be more evident, and probably more than anything else has caused the very problems we have in our major cities and elsewhere. And on the other hand, even now, we have no judicial hearing for civil commitment before at best seven days and usually much longer. In other words, people who are forced into treatment by physicians in local hospitals, have much less civil rights than criminals who are jailed who at least get arraigned before a judge. And even worse, once hospitalized forcibly, they retain their right to consent or nonconsent to treatment, making their treatment often ineffectual and temporary. We force them into treatment, and then we don't treat them. I could go on and on, but leave it to say that someone with some common sense needs to devise a different way, so that the immediate dangerousness issues at times, along with those who are gravely ill and refusing help, can get the kind of proper care for a limited period, which in modern psychiatry should be no longer than six weeks.
This article correctly emphasizes that the Jonathan Grall case was not an unavoidable tragedy but the result of identifiable failures by the Portland Police Bureau to follow up on a serious violent assault that, if properly investigated and referred, would almost certainly have prevented a later homicide. The author calls for improved training, supervision, procedures, and corrective work action within the Bureau to prevent similar failures in the future.
Those remedies are sensible as far as they go, but they treat accountability primarily as an internal managerial matter, meaning accountability of officers and supervisors to bureau leadership. That framing understates both the structural and cultural constraints under which the Bureau operates. In practice, meaningful corrective action depends on the framework of collective bargaining and grievance arbitration, and on the institutional culture shared by the Bureau and the Police Association. Over time, that culture has tended to discourage supervisory enforcement, normalize the absence of consequences for administrative failure, and treat civilian oversight as external rather than integral to professional practice. Without explicit engagement by police labor leadership and a cultural shift that affirms accountability to civilian authority, internal reforms alone are unlikely to produce durable change.
Thing about mental illness is, we use to keep them in asylums until the movie one flew over the cook coos nest came out and exposed the abuse that went on in them. Instead of "revamping" the system they thought it would be "more humane" to release the patients. Ya more "humane" for them to fend for themselves for food, shelter and clothing. It won't be until we go back to putting them in a hospital that will help them that society will be just a little bit safer. Some times we have to consider what is best for someone and I'm sorry but if that means we have to take away some of their rights to do so then so be it. Because some people can't make "sound decisions" for themselves.
The police are the very last resort in protecting the public from people with mental illness who are dangerous to others. It shouldn't even be their job except in situations or immediate threat. Targeting the police with the word "failure" is begging the question. The "system": from national health care down to state and local government is the real issue. Improving and managing that is huge, so it's just easier to point at an agency and declare "failure"! A better approach for moving forward given the system's limitations is to ask, what happened and are there any small changes we can make in response, which appears to be happening.
In the meantime. people, especially families, will always be vulnerable to persons with mental illness who are inadequately treated or confined.
Great piece, though Im not so sure a stabbing and M11 crime would actually keep him in jail, given the current state of our criminal justice system. Many of these individuals are charged with Assault 4, technically not a M11 crime. There have been continued stories of people being harmed or killed by individuals deemed unable to aid and assist, who are medicated just long enough to face charges and then are dumped back on the streets.
Some recent examples of cases where previous crimes and acts of violence didn’t seem to matter until it was too late:
- Vashon Locust, who set fire to Councilor Avalos’ home
- Jordan Christ, who killed James Elliot at a max stop. Christ had multiple violent cases dismissed as he was deemed unfit to stand trial.
- Victor Palmer-Raegan randomly attacked 2 women in NW and stabbed a bystander in the back. He was charged with assault 4 (not M11) and given 2 years probation, no jail time.
Then there’s bail reform, which lets criminals (mentally ill or not) out within hours of arrest, many times to repeat the same behaviors and not show up to court. Luckily bail reform is going back on the ballot to stop catch-and-release. The police are somewhat fault in the case you discuss and that needs to improve, but in many cases, what the police do is undermined by the courts. This also creates moral injury with police officers who are trying to protect the public. They cannot be the be-all end-all for our mental health crisis.
The state and Multnomah county are to blame for failing to create adequate mental health infrastructure we’ve known we needed well before Kotek was speaker of the house.
Thank you for your article. Public perceptions and remedies are a way to find ways to make things better.
I think, as often happens when writing about mental illness, there is a tendency to mischaracterize a diagnosis and create more stigma. In fact, many people with schizophrenia do quite well with treatment, have few side effects, and a significant number might have a significant break in reality, and fully recover, with no treatment whatsoever. Of course, there are blatant examples of severe illness, which Rosen documents, as do you in the Grail case, and of course we need broad reform of the police handling of these cases and the mental health system. While both these agencies, the police, and the mental health system deserve scrutiny and reform, you failed to mention what is probably been the biggest contributor of our difficulties, which is the legal professions neglect of the severely mentally ill. For many years, they have sat on their hands, not properly devising a significant legal remedy for the delicate balance between the liberty interests of the severely mentally ill and the public need for safety, civility, and beauty in the town square. The adoption nationwide of defining the key legal issue, as the patients right to refuse, attributing it as a civil rights matter, rather than a practical reality can't be more evident, and probably more than anything else has caused the very problems we have in our major cities and elsewhere. And on the other hand, even now, we have no judicial hearing for civil commitment before at best seven days and usually much longer. In other words, people who are forced into treatment by physicians in local hospitals, have much less civil rights than criminals who are jailed who at least get arraigned before a judge. And even worse, once hospitalized forcibly, they retain their right to consent or nonconsent to treatment, making their treatment often ineffectual and temporary. We force them into treatment, and then we don't treat them. I could go on and on, but leave it to say that someone with some common sense needs to devise a different way, so that the immediate dangerousness issues at times, along with those who are gravely ill and refusing help, can get the kind of proper care for a limited period, which in modern psychiatry should be no longer than six weeks.
This article correctly emphasizes that the Jonathan Grall case was not an unavoidable tragedy but the result of identifiable failures by the Portland Police Bureau to follow up on a serious violent assault that, if properly investigated and referred, would almost certainly have prevented a later homicide. The author calls for improved training, supervision, procedures, and corrective work action within the Bureau to prevent similar failures in the future.
Those remedies are sensible as far as they go, but they treat accountability primarily as an internal managerial matter, meaning accountability of officers and supervisors to bureau leadership. That framing understates both the structural and cultural constraints under which the Bureau operates. In practice, meaningful corrective action depends on the framework of collective bargaining and grievance arbitration, and on the institutional culture shared by the Bureau and the Police Association. Over time, that culture has tended to discourage supervisory enforcement, normalize the absence of consequences for administrative failure, and treat civilian oversight as external rather than integral to professional practice. Without explicit engagement by police labor leadership and a cultural shift that affirms accountability to civilian authority, internal reforms alone are unlikely to produce durable change.
As far as I know, it has not be established that Nick Reiner killed his parents.