With the recent passage of a “public safety” referendum in our St. Croix County, with just over 54 percent voting “yes,” I was pleased to see that among the nine new positions created there were two “mental health co-respondents.”
That’s a good start. As is, to a maybe lesser degree as you will see, having two corrections deputies. And a recently elected district attorney who ran, in part, on a platform of keeping the mental health of all county citizens, and those whom they come into contact with, in mind.
Ours is a growing county with a newer and diverse, (and often rowdy or worse), influx of people, especially late-night, from surrounding areas, to deal with. But we also have other concerns with personnel position issues.
— Forteen precincts, so little time. As the polls would close in just minutes as 8 p.m. neared on April 2, and already tables were being torn down and chairs hauled off at this town site, to prep in advance of a quick-paced count of hundreds and hundreds of paper ballots.
There were more than two dozen voting booths, open at the back but facing a wall and having big wooden slats on the sides for voter privacy, about two booths for every precinct along all of the main side wall in this, the still growing township of Hudson, and more than a dozen other compartments set in a row ahead of them, of similar size, the first to be dismantled starting at 10 minutes prior to the hour.
About a dozen election officials were glancing quickly — some a bit faster than others — at the one-sheet paper ballots, with the race of the most concern being president, setting them in one of two stacks adjacent to each other.
A bin of very scant use was labeled as bad ballots, and one other that was not used and ushered away, was termed “dog licenses.” Most of the tallying was done in a bit over a halfhour.
I had been signed in, and ID verified, as an election observer and given chair No. 4, even though I was the only one who showed up in this capacity, and that hint at apathy is a little appalling. My employer for the night, the Associated Press, had me going to this second site in the county first, because of the gravity of the election. The main site weighed in at 56 precincts.
From my scant observance, it seemed likely the a ballot or two could on rare occasian be mis-filed, before the ultimate cavassing, but I highly doubt these would be anywhere near as high in number as Trump is often alleging. —
But back to the main piece, and first the backstory: A few years back, when suffering through time with a violent and abusive and mentally ill and deadbeat renter who was an in-law, and the various fallout that went with that experience, (such things are always a two-way street, although in this one the lanes were quite clearly defined), I got to see briefly these inner workings at the jail. I could say much more, but for now will stay on-topic.
(And there were some positive moments or more than just moments, from the occasional compassionate or helpful or even fun deputy, to that judge who took some extra time out of a busy court calendar to talk to a group of observing students, for again, more than a moment or two. But that should be expected, not extraordinary.)
The most glaring need I saw was for a 24/7 nurse. As it is, or was, if you are ushered into the jail on a Friday night, despite their repeated protestations to the contrary, you will almost certainly be without any of your medication, even if prescribed, until Monday morning, and in practice that might mean closer to noon.
The nurse has to approve all dispensing of medication, when she comes in after the weekend, or weekday evening. What do they do with someone who has a serious need for insulin, for example? If nothing else, the prospect of liability concerns should scare the lawyer out of you. And people have died in the care of the county jail.
I myself was repeatedly denied meds for my Tourette Syndrome, which can have very serious consequences.
Jail staff may have concluded that my massive symptoms, which were plainly shown, were from some other illegal factor and not a lack of prescriptions, but they are not doctors and aren’t qualified to make this call.
As it was, a mental health nurse, even if the medical matter is not mentally oriented, often brought in to make assessments of alleged offender wellbeing, actually said to me: Tourette’s, that’s just a bunch of muscle jerks and bad words, right.
Many first year medical students know its much broader then that. She did not and would not be corrected. I told her there are five steps that will now play out with me, with the last being cardiac arrest. As it was, I was rushed to the hospital, but only upon my release from custody, and the ER doctor made the diagnosis of “significant cardiac incident of unknown origin.” But I know. And knew.
During my time there, I saw many people with tics, some severe. I saw two people who were relatively new arrivals quickly from stress develop severe coprolalia, the involuntary utterance of obscenities that effects an estimated 40 percent of Touretter’s — and you could imagine how well that played with deputies. In a bizarre twist, I shouted instructions over a loudspeaker from my cell to deputies on how to give the effected people meds. One deputy even thanked me for my service. The national Tourette Syndrome Association says, regretably, that many of its tens of thousands of members end up in squabbles with often ill-informed officers.
Obvious, if just for liability concerns, the jail also could use a this time, part-time consultant on neurological issues and also its sometimes flagrant violations — I have more I could tell — of (quite minor) sexual harrasment and (major) the Americans With Disalities Act. What, you can’t hold onto a phone because you are ticking so badly and can’t maintain “control” of it. No one phone call for you. What a liberal judge would do with such cases!
And frankly, from what I saw at the jail, deputies weren’t that terribly busy. (So they could just use a bit of added training, or cross-training. More on that in a future post.)
But it doesn’t stop there. Nor do I. Ever see at the parking lot of the local cop shop, a bunch of those many new squad cars just … sitting there. Always, you can see at least one, usually more, while at least at some times as an explanation, the officers are inside with other duties. Obviously, scheduling the use of those cars to keep them all in actual service more frequently would be a VERY big, though apparently needed job. A part-time scheduling person might even save taxpayer money. (It should be said that now with new deputies, at least for that department, there may be more feet on the floor to patrol with them.) And one driver who acts as a partial observer points out that there is a need to have some of these squads sitting in the lot as a backup, if only at times when other units are being serviced for repairs. So need newer news that aren’t in the shop much?
And we’ve all seen those squads who just didn’t seem that busy, even when there is a big county to cover. Case in point, one seen driving through Second Street in Hudson, then diverting slowly east for a block, then go around in little rush the whole block, and minutes later back north again on the main drag. Who knows, maybe needed to be on the phone about … something? There will be such things in law enforcement.
I will back off from an earlier position I have taken, where I’ve advocated that agencies stick to their juristictions and not “roam.” This could be especially true with the State Patrol, and maybe they should stick to Interstate 94, known to be a large drug corridor, not drift through a few close-by neighborhoods and than back to the freeway. In particular, I in an earlier year saw one drive past a few people leaving the then-Pudge’s Bar and walking slowly across the street to their car. The squad drove a couple of blocks down and then back again, and questioned the bunch, without incident. And again, going out of its way to follow, turn by turn through town, a car with hippie-like decals on its sides. I don’t know, maybe that was reason enough to suspect something.
Anyway, with so many greater patrolling needs, maybe its now time for such agencies to help each other out as needed, not make sure they stick to a spot. But if there is such mutual aid, should it be officially run past oversight groups like the Hudson City Council?
And to the officer who I saw come to a full stop on Second Street, then say to a small group of young men, apparently going to their car in the middle of a big block, “don’t you jaywalk in our town …” Buddy, even though there has been some even violent behavior to combat, do you really have to be that confrontational? Don’t be like their neighboring Minneapolis. Not exactly spreading good will.
So then, a reason to write columns like this.