Last week, DC police forcefully entered a man’s home and fatally shot him, twice.  Jean Louis, a mentally ill 55-year-old, had resided in the same apartment for over thirty years.  His neighbors knew him to be alternately friendly and erratic, but on the day of his death, he had neither hurt anyone nor committed a crime.  In fact, he had been attempting to ward off mental health authorities, resisting residential treatment.  When police arrived on the scene, he allegedly used a self-sharpened screwdriver to keep them at bay, locking himself in his home and lunging forward when they broke through the door.  After killing Mr. Louis, police claimed that they feared he was armed, despite the fact that they crossed his threshold thinking he was unconscious. They found no weapons in the apartment.

The scene raises a number of deeply troubling issues.  Why was Mr. Louis’s patent disease left unmanaged for years?  Why was he killed, instead of treated for his illness, as he would have been if afflicted with cancer, diabetes, or heart failure?  Moreover, why is there no outrage?

Perhaps because the tragedy is, astoundingly, not astounding.  Mr. Louis’s death generated a measly two news clippings; his story is just one in a million.  In fact, most of the mentally ill are left without care.  Federal law prohibits hospitals from turning away patients in dire need, regardless of ability to pay.  Yet mentally ill patients who seek urgent care, but cannot afford admission into a private hospital, are often discharged after just a few days, even if they are a clear danger to themselves or others.  Emergency room doctors report that finding an open bed in a mental health unit is often impossible, leaving desperately ill patients to fend for themselves.  Prisons are home to three times as many mentally ill individuals as treatment facilities; many of these inmates cycle from jail cells to the streets and back again, without obtaining care.  Even our veterans suffering from crippling post-traumatic stress disorder are placed on waiting lists that do not turn over for months, and sometimes years.  In fact, the 9th Circuit recently concluded that the Dept. of Veterans Affairs’ “unchecked incompetence” is so severe as to violate the statutory and constitutional rights of these often suicidal patients. READ MORE »