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Violence again raises concerns about adequate mental health resources
BRONX — The recent arrest of
a client residing at the Bronx Psychiatric Center has once again raised concerns about the state providing adequate resources not only to treat people with mental illness, but to ensure public safety.
The client, a registered sex offender with numerous rape and sexual abuse convictions, was arrested for allegedly stalking and raping a 64-year-old woman who uses a walker. He had been living at the center’s Transitional Living Residence (TLR).
“The (TLR) program is a good program if they run it the way it was designed,” said Abraham Benjamin, Bronx Psychiatric Local president. “I want it to be effective, but we need the right kind of individuals in these programs.”
State psychiatric hospitals, including Bronx Psychiatric
Center, provide outpatients with a “transitional living residence” for those clients who can live alone but still need some assistance before assimilating into the community.
When they were created, the transitional living residences received clients who were screened,
signed a contract where they
agreed to take their medication, attend programs that helped them assimilate into the community and observe rules and regulations for the residence.
However, within the last decade or more, clients have been pouring into the residences directly from the criminal justice system.
“We’re talking about people
that have been discharged directly from jail to a TLR and you can’t get them to do anything,” said Michael June, a mental health therapy
aide at South Beach Psychiatric Hospital on Staten Island. “They come to us in handcuffs, with dual diagnosis, chemical dependency and psychiatric problems.”
There are generally 24 clients
in a TLR ward and two workers at most. At Bronx and South Beach Psychiatric Centers, no fewer than half a dozen registered sex offenders reside. Many, like the one arrested, often come and go as they please, don’t take their medication and don’t follow the rules they agreed to in the contract.
Some of these clients have brought weapons into the residence or have
Bronx Psychiatric Center Local President Abraham Benjamin stands in front of the Transitional Living Residence holding one of the contracts clients are required to sign and abide by.
6 The Work Force
February 2018
assaulted or committed other lewd acts inside the residence. When these instances are reported, the clients may be arrested and detained briefly but given their mental health history, they are usually returned to the facility within hours.
“When you have a client who has prior arrests, a long rap sheet and is not concerned about his actions because he’s allowed to return to the facility, it emboldens them,” said June.
It also puts workers and other clients at risk, said Benjamin.
“It’s a disservice to the individuals we’re serving because we are not giving them the help they need,”
said Benjamin. “We want our individuals to assimilate back into the community but we have to give them the tools. Instead it’s creating dangers for them, the workers and the community.”
— David Galarza
AFSCME, other groups submit briefs for Janus case
FSCME recently submitted arguments in Janus in late February. representation. long line of attacks by billionaire its brief on the merits of the If facts, law and precedent matter, While the case stems from an CEOs and corporate interests who
corporate-backed U.S. Supreme Court case, Janus v. AFSCME Council 31.
More than 35 amicus, or “friend of the court” briefs, have also been submitted on behalf of AFSCME Council 31 from legal experts, economists, public employers, elected leaders, civil rights groups and religious leaders. The authors of these brief range across the political spectrum.
The court will hear oral
the court should rule in favor of working people in the Janus case, just as they did in the 1977 Abood v. Detroit Board of Education decision, when they found the state and local governments’ system of ordering their labor relations to be constitutional.
Janus, like Abood, examines whether public employees should be required to pay an agency, or ‘fair share,’ fee to help cover the costs
of negotiating contracts and worker
Illinois state employee who objected to paying the fair share fee because of his opposition to unions, this case is truly backed by well-funded sources who want to block our freedom to join together in union.
Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 is an attack on the freedoms of working people by corporate interests and the wealthy who have been rigging the rules to get ahead.
“This case is nothing more than the latest and most egregious in a
don’t believe that working people should have the same freedoms they do,” AFSCME International President Lee Saunders said. “Working people have the facts, and 40 years of sound law are on our side. If the case is decided based on its legal merits, the freedom of working people to join together in strong unions will prevail and the Abood precedent should stand.”