Shuttering the mental institutions might not have been a great idea (10-10-2025--Hour2)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. I have some callers waiting at James and Tony. I will get you guys. Also, the phone number is also the WBT text line driven by Liberty Buick GMC, so you can text there. Last hour, we were going over the new initiative and the resuscitation of an old initiative to basically enforce law. Yeah in center city Charlotte, they're going to be putting more cops on the streets and they are actually going to strictly in force laws that are sort of like public nuisance laws, you know, that are on the books. But apparently we have inadvertently given too much grace and not that this was an intentional decision for the last five or six years or anything like that, but now we're going to course correct. I welcome the course correction, but I also would like to see some people offer some apologies for advocating the policies that led us to this place where, for example, the Uptown murder count is now two hundred percent higher than it was last year. And maybe you could offer an apology to the victims' families or the victims in all of the other violent crimes that have occurred in the center city that have spiked over the last year because of the court system. And by the way, I like you people are saying this on the text line. It's not new to me because I've been saying it to you for the last month and a half, which is the police are making arrests. The problem is the court system. The problem is the guidelines that the judges have issued for the bail and the magistrates who are following those guidelines and letting people out. I also found out today from Cedar posts he does a blog. He's been a longtime Charlotte blogger, and he pointed out that apparently the Mecklimberg County inmate records get wiped after two years, So if you're trying to find out if somebody's got a rap sheet that goes back a decade, you can't. I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Gary not my fault McFadden would do that as sheriff. Probably it happened before his time. He had nothing to do with it at all. Maybe it's a server space issue, you know, it's just a it's a memory capacity deal on the tech side. Maybe. But it also makes it difficult to know, if you're a citizen or a journalist, whether somebody who has been arrested, you know, forty times over the last five years, has actually been arrested that many times over five years if you're if you're you know, artificially wiping the records. So it's only the most recent two years. Is that that grace that we've inadvertently given. All right, let's go over to the phones here and chat with James. Hello, James, welcome to the program. Hey, you were reading a listing of basically what are nuisance laws? Yes, okay, Now, I worked for the sheriff for a number of years and if people got arrested on those almost every time, and this includes our frequent flyers and our uh well for lack of a better term, our our drunks and winos, uh, you know, the panhandlers and the rest of the crowd. They would get arrested, they wouldn't get out because they couldn't, you know, they couldn't make a five dollar bond, a litt alone, a five hundred dollars bond. And then they go in front of a judge. Within twenty four or forty eight hours, he give them time serving, maybe back out on the street. Yeah, that's been going on for as long as I can remember. Right, But they're off the street for twenty four hours. Yeah, and then they turn around and do exactly the same thing all over again. Yeah, so nobody, nobody ever puts them in jail for any other length of time. Right, Well, but they're off the at least they're off the street. So again, this is a two This is a two faceted problem. Right, You've got the arrests, and then you have the judicial system. And if you have and so if you're trying to if you're trying to create a safer environment for law abiding citizens in Uptown and you have a broken court system, that's not that's not putting people away, right, that they're not doing their job. Then yeah, you're relying on police to make the arrests. And at least then you're gonna you're gonna take them off the street for a certain amount of time. And yeah, they're frequent fires, they're gonna they're gonna be publicly disorderly, they're gonna be publicly intoxicated. They're gonna do it again. Yeah, and then you come up and send them back over to the jail, and yes, they're gonna stay there for a couple hours, maybe a day, and yes they're gonna be back out on the street, and yes they're going to reoffend. But until the court system shapes up, I don't know any other thing to do here. Well, the judges, for as long as I can remember, in the twenty sixth Judicial District, which is Mecklenburg County, they public nuisance laws. They don't do anything with the people except let them back out. And even if the guy ends up going over to mental health because he's you know, as the one gentleman that I was listening to said about the lackos that you see down down, usually he's back out on the street. Within twenty four to forty eight hours, right, because they determine he's not a danger to himself or the public, and he's back out on the street, and of course, at worst, mental health puts him on an outpatient treatment but outpatient treatment systems don't function. The guy doesn't take his meds when he's back out on the street, so he ends up dealing with the police again. And now that revolving doors starts, right. Yeah, no, I do not disagree with you at all, but I don't are you saying that's an argument not to put more police out there patrolling. Well, first of all, the Charlotte Police Department has got a major issue with not enough officers. And from the time they apply until the time that they get out of the academy is something like eighteen months. So just to get and most one of the big problems with the City of Charlotte is people don't want to go to work for the City Charlotte. Yeah, because they don't want to work for the city council and the mayor. Now I get it, but I'm trying to find a solution with the circumstances we are in. And so given the reality of where we are, they're saying they're going to put more cops in Uptown and in South End. They're going to beef up police presence. And I say, good, yeah, except they're taking them away from someplace else. They say, they're not. Where are they going to get the bodies because they don't have them. That's well, I mean, that's you saying that. They say. They say they're not drawing these officers out of other areas. Now, maybe that turns out to be a lie, but that's what they have said. Okay. Well, to be perfectly frank and honest with you, I do from looking at it from the years that I worked and the people that I know in both in the agencies, I don't think you're being told the truth. Yeah that's possible. That's possible, but I don't know that to be I don't know it either way. So, James, I appreciate the call. Again, I'm not saying this is the fix. I've never said that. In fact, I keep saying the problem is the court system. I keep saying that. So I don't understand, like why, And I'm not saying this about James, but like there are people on the text line that are saying, like, it's not the cops it's the court system. Like I know, I've been saying that. I've been saying that to you for like two months, so longer than that, actually, So I agree. That is a separate part of the criminal justice system though, right, that's the court system. The first thing is law enforcement. So I'm okay with not more than okay. I support them going after these public nuisance crimes, cracking down on this quality of life stuff. You got people that live uptown, they have they pay their taxes, they're law abiding. They should not have to be walking over er you know, people lying on the sidewalk in front of their door, defecating on their front steps, like that should not be acceptable, right, And the first step there is enforcing the law, which means you got to have a cop interact with that person. And so I'm okay, like I support I support the Crown initiative and the E do the entertainment district thing. Yeah, put more cops out there. It will act as a deterrent for some. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life. And our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Create Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. I have a message on the Twitter machine from RUSS. Additional policing and enforcement is a great first step, but as you said, it's judicial and mental health reform that'll make the biggest impact. I read somewhere years ago that something like close to thirty percent of all violent crimes were committed by people who were out on bail, ankle monitors, early release, etc. I've also heard from some officers that depending on where they patrol, they can spend up to a third of their time on just a handful of real offenders. Right, So one of the things I would do. I still do it on occasion, but when I was a reporter, I would do this a lot. And I would ask if I'm interviewing somebody about a policy that they're proposing or something, I would ask them to walk me through it, like lay it out for me, walk me through, like how this actually works in real life, you know. So if we take it as a given that the courts being completely controlled by Democrats infected with this you know, this suicidal empathy impulse and this this mind virus where like they can't hold people accountable and they're going to let everybody out, right, So assume that that is not changing what can be done to try to minimize harm for citizens in Charlotte. And I think that, yeah, putting more cops into the center city where crime has been spiking over the last that you make more arrests. Oh, but they're gonna get out, Yes, I know, I agree that is going to happen. They're going to then just get released right back out, and then they're going to get arrested again, and then they're gonna get released and then arrested and released and arrested and released. I get it, I agree, But in the time that they are spending interacting with that law enforcement officer, then being put into the cruiser, taken to the jail, processed, and then before they get released, however long that is, they are no longer out on the street. So rather than being on the street twenty four hours in a day, they may only be on the street for eighteen hours. That's end improvement, you know. Look, I'm trying to take a win anywhere I can get it, Okay, I'm like, if we can get six hours of rest, but six hours of relief a day from the repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat offenders, get them off the street for a couple of hours, that's better than not off the street at all, you know. Regarding the diversion of the officers, this was covered, I told you. According to CMPD, Major Jene Limb told Queen City News, policing in other areas will not be negatively affected when we set a recruit class. We disseminate the graduating class not just in the Central Division, but across all thirteen. So there's really I would push back against that to say that we spread that love if you will across our patrol division. Again, that may not occur. That could be a lie. I don't know, I have no evidence of it. All I'm saying is, this is what the police department is telling us, is that they're not going to be moving officers from other districts into Uptown in order to create this Crown initiative. I'm not saying I believe it. I'm not saying I don't believe it. I'm just telling you that's what they said, and hopefully they're not lying. Right, all right, let me jump over and get Lisa on the program. Hello Lisa, Hello, mister Kroner. I had a couple of points. I agree with you about having more police presence downtown being a good thing. I mean, for one thing, somebody who's going to choose to lay around downtown has got a problem with some type an attitude that's not acceptable. So I mean that's one reason to have more police. But I also want to add that I don't know if this effects that or not. But I was a volunteer in the big jail downtown. This has been like ten or twelve years ago in the Chaplain's office, and I learned at that point that they had they were overbooked. In other words, there were people that were sleeping on the floor at that point. We may need we may need more jail space. And then there's the mental health issue. I worked at this hospital in Raleigh when I was a student and after that, and these hospitals have been closed down. Dix is no longer there. Those people beginning about the mid nineteen seventies were turned out onto the streets, and now they've got a small one in Charlotte. But I mean, even having it here may impact the fact that we have more mental health people around, but they largely were put out onto the streets. Then I want to add that there's some services that are downtown, like crisis assistance. There's a bus transit center where people might be, you know, come downtown they otherwise wouldn't. That doesn't say they. Should be laying around on the park benches or whatever. And then affordable housing is another issue, because they've torn down a lot of the cheaper in housing and replaced it with condominiums across the city. And I think this contributes to I don't know how you get a handle on all those different issues. You might increase the jail spice for one thing, and the police. Yeah, no, there are It's a multifaceted problem. It's going to take a lot of different initiatives to get at it, no doubt about Yeah, no doubt about it. In fact, I have a piece here from the New York Times about the closing of the institutions. I'm going to get to that after the news. At least I appreciate the call. Thank you, all right, take care. Yeah. The headline on the article is how release of mental patience began. It is from the New York Times, October thirtieth, nineteen eighty four. So when I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's, and before he died, my mom and my dad took care of him as he got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments and not much support for caregivers and family. But things are different today because of the work of so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina. It's a great organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot to me. I participate in the annual Walk to end Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year and it's called once again Pete's Pack. You can sign up and you can join the team and walk with us. It's on October eighteenth, that truest field. Sign up at alz dot org slash Walk and then you can search for my team name Pete's Pack. There's also a link at thepetepod dot com. There's also a link in the description of this podcast. Also, I'll be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh, and so you can make a team and join that one too, or make a donation and help me hit my goal of five thousand dollars. If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can go to alz dot org slash walk for all the dates and locations. We're closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me for a different future? For families for more time for treatments. This is why we New York Times headline how release of mental patients began. It's a piece by Richard Lyons from nineteen eighty four. The policy that led to the release of most of the nation's mentally ill patients from the hospital to the community is now widely regarded as a major policy failure. Sweeping critiques of the policy, notably the recent report of the American Psychiatric Association, have spread the blame everywhere, faulting politicians, civil libertarian lawyers as well as psychiatrists, but who specifically played some of the more important roles in the formation of this ill fated policy. What motivated these influential people and what lessons are to be learned. The detailed picture has emerged from a series of interviews into review of public records, research reports, and institutional recommendations. The picture is one of cost conscious policymakers who were quick to bos optimistic projections that were in some instances buttressed by misinformation and by a willingness to suspend skepticism. I am struck just at the way this story is written and how we have devolved as a society. Like you would not read this kind of writing in the New York Times nowadays. Just like the words like buttressed, you know, they just wouldn't use that word anymore. Many of the psychiatrists involved as practitioners and policymakers in the nineteen fifties and sixties said in the interviews that heavy responsibility lay on a sometimes neglected aspect of the problem, the over reliance on drugs. Drugs bad, Okay. The record show that the politicians were dogged by the image and financial problems posed by the state hospitals, and that the scientific and medical establishment sold Congress and the state legislatures a quick fix for a complicated problem that was bought site unseen. Right. So it's a fascinating article. It's very very lengthy. I'm not going to give you obviously, I'm going to read the whole thing here, just giving you the highlights. But this idea that the psychiatric world was like, we got these new drugs, and these new drugs can do wonders. Just give these people the pills, give them the drugs, and then we can close down all the institutions. Those things are inhumane. Did you see Jack Nicholson and one flow over the cuckoo's nest, and we can't have that, you know. Doctor Robert Felix, who was then director of the National Institute of Mental Health, a major figure in the shift to community centers, says, now, upon reflection, quote, many of those patients who left the state hospitals never should have done so. We psychiatrists saw too much of the old snake pit, saw too many people who shouldn't have been there, and we over reacted. The result is not what we intended, and perhaps we didn't ask the questions that should have been asked when developing a new concept. But psychiatrists are human too, and we tried our hardest. Trust the experts, they say, right. Doctor John Talbot, president of the American Psychiatric Association, quote, the psychiatrists involved in the policy making at that time certainly oversold community treatment, and our credibility today is probably damaged because of it. He said. The policies were quote based partly on wishful thinking, partly on the enormousness of the problem and the lack of a silver bullet to resolve it. The original policy changes were backed at the time by scores of national professional and philanthropic organizations, as well as several hundred people prominent in medicine, academia, and politics. The belief then was widespread that the same scientific researchers who had conjured up antibiotics and vaccines during the outburst of medical discovery in the fifties and sixties had also developed penicillins to cure psychoses and thus revolutionize the treatment of the mentally ill. And also, so you have that going on, but at the same time you have growing economic and political liability faced by state lawmakers. There was a ton of tax revenue being used to support state mental hospitals, and the institutions themselves were increasingly thought of as snake pits or facilities that few people even wanted. There was a thing called the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health. This was an independent body that was set up by Congress in nineteen fifty five. One of the vice president of this commission, doctor M. Brewster Smith from the University of California, a psychologist, said, extravagant claims were made for the benefits of shifting from state hospitals to community clinics. See so you also have this ability of the law state lawmakers to offload the costs onto the local jurisdictions with these community centers, community health because they're facing you know, any time there was any kind of abuse that occurred at a mental institution, you had the negative publicity, right, you had the bad pr and then you have the media running to the lawmakers saying, what are you going to do about it? You know, something needs to be done, we need new laws, which, by the way, media does that in no small part because if they can get laws changed, they win awards. Reporters win awards. It's true. Okay, you identify a problem that's out there, usually after some terrible case, you then agitate, you hold people accountable. You go to politicians, you stick a microphone in their face and you say, what are you going to do about this? The politician, recognizing that this is an opportunity for them to score some points while doing some damage control, they will then introduce some sort of a bill. We're going to crack down on this. We're going to offer this kind of program, this service to address this problem, whatever, maybe cut some ribbons with the ridiculously oversized scissors or something. And then the media, whoever was that, you know, was leading the charge on this initiative, on the coverage. They will then submit that coverage to their industry awards makers and they will win awards for it, and then that puffs up there, resume and they can move on to a bigger market. That's the dynamic to this day. That's what occurs. Here's a great idea. 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Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a great lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call her text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins of Aashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. All right, let me jump over and chat with Joe. Hello, Joe, welcome to the show. Hey Pete, thank you, Thank Macall. Sure, just kind a point I wanted to bring up. I hear filials and Josh Stein bring up this really subject about mental health, all the mental health of the of these career criminal thugs. My question is, what. About the mental health of the victims' families and the victims themselves. Where's the help coming from the state and the city For like the elderly gentleman, the veteran that was nearly beaten to death on the city bus. Left paralyzed, Yeah, he was left paralyzed from the neck down exactly exactly. So is there any help being offered by by Josh and by to to the families of these victims? Uh? And and and then I heard again today that there was a man that was abusing animals. He's put in jail with no bonds, but yet we have career criminals that are just basically given a get out of jail free card. I'm just not understanding how how things are being run. Well, it's uh, yeah, I mean the abuse of animals usually is a uh I mean that fits the profile of a future serial killer, you know, depending on the level of the. Books, he should be in jail. Agree with that, but yeah, it does. It does speak to the prioritization of victims in our system. It's sort of like this guy, this leftist streamer guy named Hassan Piker, who apparently like he does these seven eight hour long streams every single day, and in the background, he's got his dog that's just sitting on this little elevated bed and the dog doesn't move for seven or eight hours. And we finally found out this week how he does that is he has a shock caller, and he shocks the dog anytime it tries to get off that platform. And this caused the outrage. Right, the guy had been calling for the murder and violence against conservatives. That nobody cared about that, But now people are upset because he shocked the dog. Right. That's that's the prioritization we have in. Our society, exactly. I just want to bring that point a. Thanks for your show, piena appreciation, all right, but I appreciate it. Joe, Yeah, have a great weekend. This New York Times article from nineteen eighty four lays out who was responsible for the closing of the institutions. And you had all of these different groups with different incentives. Politicians, lawmakers. They didn't want the pr damage from the abuses that were reported in some of these institutions. They didn't want the costs, right, so they offloaded all of that said send it out to the community centers. You had psychiatrists that were like, this is the way forward. This is the hot new thing. We got these drugs now that we're going to just you know, put people on the drugs and that's going to solve the problem. Extravagant claims were made for the benefits of shifting from state hospitals to community clinics, said doctor Brewster Smith, who was the vice president of the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health and Independent Bodies set up by Congress in nineteen fifty five. He said the professional community made mistakes and was overly optimistic, but the political community wanted to save money. Charles Schlafer, a New New York advertising executive who served as secretary treasurer of this group, said that he was now disgusted with the advice presented by leading psychiatrists of that day. He said, quote tranquilizers became the panacea for the mentally ill. The state programs were buying them by the car load, sending the drugged patients back to the community, and the psychiatrists never tried to stop this. Local mental health centers were going to be the greatest thing going, but no one wanted to think it through. Legislation sought to create a nationwide network of locally based mental health centers, which, rather than large state hospitals, would be the main source of treatment. The center concept was aided by federal funds for four and a half years, after which it was hoped that the states and local governments would assume responsibility. You'll never guess what happened after that. Yeah, politicians and health experts were carrying out a public mandate they thought to abolish the abominable conditions of insane asylums. But in retrospect, it does seem clear that questions were not asked that might have been asked. In the thousands of pages of testimony before congressional committees in the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, little doubt was ever expressed about the wisdom of de institutionalization. I am reminded of the line from the documentary Jurassic Park. You spend so much time thinking how do we do it? You never stopped to think should we do it? All? Right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to the Pete Callner showed Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.