Carol Gotbaum and personal responsibility

[mosdef]

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the mentally ill are typically not that hot on personal responsibility.

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Indeed. If she was so mentally incapacitated that she could not be trusted with her own life, to whom does the responsibility fall? I would say not the police.

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Really? If the government is going to write laws defining who is mentally ill and granting the police the power to detain them to protect them from themselves and others (which they have) then they must also assume responsibility for the ill while their detained. They can't have it both ways.

The issue in this particular case is that it's not clear if the cops knew she was mentally ill. They detained her for being drunk and violent, and they can't be expected to either perform mental health assessments or read minds. How could they distinguish between her and someone who is just an ass?

[mjkidd]

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the mentally ill are typically not that hot on personal responsibility.

[/ QUOTE ]

Indeed. If she was so mentally incapacitated that she could not be trusted with her own life, to whom does the responsibility fall? I would say not the police.

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? If the government is going to write laws defining who is mentally ill and granting the police the power to detain them to protect them from themselves and others (which they have) then they must also assume responsibility for the ill while their detained. They can't have it both ways.

The issue in this particular case is that it's not clear if the cops knew she was mentally ill. They detained her for being drunk and violent, and they can't be expected to either perform mental health assessments or read minds. How could they distinguish between her and someone who is just an ass?

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It is hard to see how the police could have seen that she was suicidal or otherwise mentally ill. On the other hand, her husband knew both (as the wife's attorney indicated by recalling his frantic calls to police, warning them she posed a danger to herself). I cannot see how anyone would think that he is not the responsible party, if we are to engage in this sort of useless assessment of postmortem blame.

[Metric]

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the mentally ill are typically not that hot on personal responsibility.

[/ QUOTE ]

Indeed. If she was so mentally incapacitated that she could not be trusted with her own life, to whom does the responsibility fall? I would say not the police.

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? If the government is going to write laws defining who is mentally ill and granting the police the power to detain them to protect them from themselves and others (which they have) then they must also assume responsibility for the ill while their detained. They can't have it both ways.

The issue in this particular case is that it's not clear if the cops knew she was mentally ill. They detained her for being drunk and violent, and they can't be expected to either perform mental health assessments or read minds. How could they distinguish between her and someone who is just an ass?

[/ QUOTE ]

It is hard to see how the police could have seen that she was suicidal or otherwise mentally ill. On the other hand, her husband knew both (as the wife's attorney indicated by recalling his frantic calls to police, warning them she posed a danger to herself). I cannot see how anyone would think that he is not the responsible party, if we are to engage in this sort of useless assessment of postmortem blame.

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I'm sure we can blame the husband for some things. No problem. However, that doesn't absolve the cops -- if you're going to deprive someone of their liberty, you are by definition taking on responsibility for everything that happens to that person.

If this means that it becomes increasingly impractical to detain/arrest people for increasingly minor offenses, like making the wrong kind of joke at the airport, etc., then so be it. Depriving a person of their liberty is a serious act.

[jogger08152]

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the mentally ill are typically not that hot on personal responsibility.

[/ QUOTE ]

Indeed. If she was so mentally incapacitated that she could not be trusted with her own life, to whom does the responsibility fall? I would say not the police.

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? If the government is going to write laws defining who is mentally ill and granting the police the power to detain them to protect them from themselves and others (which they have) then they must also assume responsibility for the ill while their detained. They can't have it both ways.

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Your agenda caused you to miss poster's point: the family of the mentally ill individual ought not allow that individual to enter unescorted into situations that could cause the mental illness to come to the fore.

And yes, the government could quite easily write laws that would make this legally mandatory, rather than merely morally mandatory.

[mosdef]

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Really? If the government is going to write laws defining who is mentally ill and granting the police the power to detain them to protect them from themselves and others (which they have) then they must also assume responsibility for the ill while their detained. They can't have it both ways.

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Your agenda caused you to miss poster's point: the family of the mentally ill individual ought not allow that individual to enter unescorted into situations that could cause the mental illness to come to the fore.

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Sorry to bump this old thread, but I missed this response.

Of course I agree with you that the family has a moral obligation to not let this person out on their own where they are in danger. That was not the point.

For the part quoted above, I was posting in response to the assertion that the police do not have responsibility for taking care of the mentally ill. However, the police are granted the right to detain the mentally ill, as defined by the law. In exchange they must take responsibility for them while in custody. As I've already said, in this particular case that doesn't apply because the police has no reasonable expectation that the person was mentally ill, and aren't equipped to do that kind of assessment. But that doesn't mean that in general police aren't responsible for taking care of the mentally ill that they detain "for the public own good".

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And yes, the government could quite easily write laws that would make this legally mandatory, rather than merely morally mandatory.

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Sure, but those would be in addition to the laws that say when the police find a mentally ill person out in public that they think is dangerous then they can detain them. When they do that, they must assume responsibility for them.

[kevin017]

it is clearly not the polices fault.

the police do have a responsibility to protect you from yourself once in their custody, in a sense. but they only have to do what a normal person would find reasonably necessary. if they heard her slamming her head into the door and let it go on, boo on them, but i'm guessing we can count on one hand the number of people who have strangled themselves with their own handcuffs.