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St. Petersburg Times

November 17, 2002

Reprinted with permission of the author. All rights reserved.

LETTER
The mentally ill need help before crisis

Donald F. Eslinger, Seminole County Sheriff, and past president, Florida Sheriffs Association

Re: Officers must do better by mentally ill, Nov. 10.

There are few who would disagree with Mary Jo Melone's assertion that law enforcement officers must continue to do whatever we can to ensure that encounters with people who are psychotic end peacefully.

But we cannot overlook that police and deputies can only enforce the laws that are currently on the books -- and one of those laws is putting people with severe mental illnesses in grave danger, forcing them to deteriorate to a point of crisis before the state can help them.

Florida's mental health treatment law, the Baker Act, prohibits early intervention when someone is deteriorating into a mental health crisis; consequently, families must wait until a person becomes dangerous to get intervention, often then doing so by calling law enforcement. And Florida is one of only nine states that doesn't allow court-ordered outpatient treatment for those who are too sick to realize that they need help.

That means that law enforcement officers are more likely to be the ones managing people with mental illnesses in severe crisis than mental health professionals. And no matter how in-depth or widespread the training, we are not doctors or psychiatrists.

Last year, law enforcement handled more Baker Act cases than burglaries, initiating approximately 100 each day. Couple that with the fact that there are more than 10,000 inmates with severe mental illnesses in Florida jails -- more than four times as many as in our remaining psychiatric hospitals -- and it isn't difficult to see that we are in an urgent situation.

The Florida Sheriffs Association is spearheading reform of the Baker Act to authorize judges to order community-based treatment and allow humane intervention for Baker Act recidivists before they become dangerous. Whether or not a revision in the law could have helped David Montgomery is uncertain -- but it is a fact that he and thousands of others like him deserve a chance to get treatment before a crisis strikes and they end up in jail or in the morgue.

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