Montana Shackles Mentally Ill

[Traveling_Home]

----- Original Message -----
From: ADAPTMT
To: [e-mail]
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 6:07 PM
Subject: Request for help for legislation on transporting folks with mental
illness


Hi Steph,
When you have a minute, could you please forward this to the family?
Thanks!
Marsha

Hi Everyone,
We here in Montana are trying to get some much needed reform in how folks with
mental illness are transported to the hospital or court. Currently, the
practice is to shackle people- handcuffs, belly chain, ankle cuffs- like
criminals, because they have a disability. It is barbaric and certainly not
therapeutic in any way, and must be changed. While we have some proposed
legislation now on the table, it would be so helpful to have leads to similar
legislation in other states, especially model legislation.
Thanks for any leads you can provide!
Marsha

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[cassiepriam]

1. I know I will get flamed. But some may need to be restrained.

Depends upon the mental status of the person being transported.

Some will need to be restrained in some way if they are a threat to themselves or others.

It is about safety.

And police are not usually equipped to make a determination who is mentally ill and who is not, when someone is being violent and threatening.

[emad]

2. Most mental patients are chemically restrained these days making

shackles obsolete.

Same as padded cells, strait jackets etc.

Shackles are a gross violation of basic human rights and degrade the restraining authorities.

[kestrel91316]

3. I hope you get shacked in chains some day when all you need is

some drugs or a straightjacket.

People like you are why I support use of the guillotine.

My mother has been mentally ill for decades. I'm rather touchy about those who abuse the mentally ill.

[undergroundpanther]

4. I have been through this

got arrested for graffiti which consisted of sketching on a culvert with a graphite pencil. Judge threw it out.Other than that I have no run ins with police. But since I am mentally ill and so was my friend who was in the same program as I whom was talking to me as I sketched away, we both got shackled. I did what the cop asked of me .However when he came to arrest us I asked him what he was arresting us for..He said public defacing of property...And I told him the next rain shower will wash away the pencil lines it's graphite,Than I asked do you arrest kids who draw on sidewalks with chalk too, if so, I'd better warn their parents..

I rode to the station they finger printed me and all shackled both me and my friend to bars on the wall. I had to tell them that I had to take meds at 6 I had to call my residential housing program to bring my meds, It was embarrassing, my friend had epilepsy so her skipping her meds especially with the twitchy fluorescent light in the room we were chained to the wall would have been a bad idea.
So we got them brought up and they wouldn't let us use both our hands to take our fucking pills..


Anyway it was an all night affair. eventually I was moved to a holding bench where I sat chained there for hours while I overheard the commissioner doing a cross word or something,fucking off. It amused me he was asking the cop watching me for word definitions, I realized the cop was clueless, so I yelled back the definitions because I knew them anyway. .For words like wimple...

I asked the cop watching me to scratch my nose as it was driving me nuts itching and well both my hands were bound to the bench.He was kind enough to scratch it..All this time I was fuming but hiding it.
Anyways I finally get to go in to see the commissioner and he realized I was the one who answered his entire puzzle for him ,He bellowed what are you doing with your life!! at me. I told him I don't know what to do with it.All I want is to get my stuff back, get out of these stupid chains and go home. I never asked to be born in this world and I don't like it here. To me life hurts it ain't worth much,when it hurts like this to live. I don't know what to do with my life I'm trying to survive my emotions inside first.

He said he was amazed at how I knew all those words.
I said it comes with the territory of being gifted and it ain't as wonderful as it seems to be gifted if you are stuck with it .In fact it sucks alot.It has caused me more pain than one would expect.

He had all my stuff arrayed on his desk and started looking through my sketchbook, as if that was ok, he didn't even ask me just walked over my boundaries..He said those drawings yours? I said yeah, He asked if I made the box I said yeah.. He was admiring my box and said he thought I did amazing drawings.He told me I had so much potential..I said nothing..


I asked to go home again . He released me, with a paper with a court date and all. The shackles were off and a cop drove me home.


But it wasn't over...the bastard cops stole my sketchbox that I took like years to build and collect, a full set of metal tip rapidograph pens @ twenty bucks a pop,my professional compass that drew as smoothly as glass, my metal french curves, metal ruler, an artist bridge, all my kick ass erasers and my really good grade mechanical pencils and leads,the leads for these pencils cost like 7 bucks and last forever.

As for the lead holders they don't make them anymore..they were metal and adjustable to whatever diameter lead you stuck in it. They had a little dial at the top that told you the hardness of the leads in it I had 8 of them in a rainbow color array.I bought one a month for 8 months.

I had a click eraser not with the cheesy plastic holder like they do now, but a metal one...And the box that held it all ,I made myself. It was out of purple heartwood and tulip-wood,as near where I lived was a craftwoods store.The box was worked with a psychedelic design inlay of a flying panther and egyptian designs all over it done with different kinds of wood veneers , I even embedded rhinestones in the panther's eyes and it was all dipped in envirotex and closed with a lion head clasp. It had obnoxiously cool leopard hinges and a handle made of of two cats leaping up and touching front paws to carry the thing.

I had four little lion paws on the corners that I could slide off because if I lifted a panel I had installed it became an easel for colored pencils, I am thankful I didn't have my berols in there that day. I had made leather holders for the mechanical pencils rapidographs & ink containers,erasers an the compass with cats of different kinds carved into the leather, all dyed in technicolor.

If you flipped the box over, the other side of the box opened up and was big enough to hold plenty of sheets of 8 by 11 paper and a really cool wood clipboard my friends got me for my birthday of purple heartwood.. This box took me the better part of a year to make it and even longer to find the hardware and save up to buy all the stuff I kept in it over time.. Gone. I went back to the station asking for it for like 8 times but I never got it back. The cops were totally dismissing of me. And I hated it. I'm still pissed off about that.

[NMMNG]

5. I worked in the mental health field for five years

Not once did I ever encounter a situation where any form of physical restraint was necessary.

[sandnsea]

6. I used to transport the mentally ill

They were stabilized and medicated. I always felt safe with them. All they usually want is to get someplace secure where they can feel better.

[Tommy Jefferson]

7. Platitudes versus Reality

You are correct.

Mentally ill people can be very dangerous.

Anyone who tells you they can't, has never worked with very mentally ill people.

I have seen them cut people to shreds, break bones, and cause permanently debilitating injuries to caretakers and staff.

Most people who bemoan the use of physical and mechanical restraint do so for the warm fuzzy it brings them. They've never had to actually restrain a person actively trying to harm themselves or others.