XPost: can.politics, bc.politics, ont.politics   
   XPost: ab.politics, tor.general   
   From: ConsRCons@govt.cda   
      
   There seems to always be money - in huge amounts - for the choice   
   programs of the federal government.  Like prisons for marijuana growers   
   and palaces for their spy agency.   
   But there never seems to be money for institutions that would see   
   mentally ill people OFF our streets and getting care, like any other ill   
   person.   
      
   Those types are left to wander our streets, cope for themselves, and   
   often become major problems for both citizens and police forces.  And   
   our police forces, seemingly untrained in how to handle them, just taser   
   them or shoot them dead.   
      
   We need a new government.  And we need a very different type of   
   government.  These people should not be on our streets; nor should they   
   be targets for cops.   
   And yeah . . .  we DO have the money; the Harper Cons just don't think   
   this is a priority.   
   ______________________________   
   By Christie Blatchford, Postmedia NewsJanuary 13, 2014   
      
      
   Inquest into police shootings missing the main problem   
      
      
      
   TORONTO — It is surely possible to go further afield from the cold,   
   cruel realities of frontline policing than the coroner’s inquest   
   examining three Toronto police shooting deaths of mentally ill people   
   travelled on Monday.   
      
   But offhand, I can’t think of how.   
      
   The inquest’s final witnesses were Barbara Hall, chief commissioner of   
   the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and Ashley Lawrence, an analyst   
   with the commission.   
      
   Together, they testified about the commission’s suspicion that police   
   use of force may have a “differentiated impact” on the mentally ill and   
   that this is, as Hall said, “a serious, serious human rights issue.”   
      
   Bear with me here:  The mentally ill fall under the ambit of the   
   commission in the first place because of their disability (the code   
   protects from discrimination 17 groups, including Ontarians with   
   disabilities, physical and invisible, which includes mental illness) and   
   police, as Lawrence testified, “have an obligation to accommodate   
   disability up to the point where it’s unsafe,” which would be considered   
   “undue hardship” in other spheres.   
      
   In any case, the commission has identified mental health as one of its   
   key priorities.   
      
   So keen was the OHRC to contribute what one lawyer generously called its   
   “wealth of information” that Hall and Lawrence volunteered to attend the   
   inquest.   
      
   Since mid-October, the jurors have been hearing evidence about the   
   deaths of 25-year-old Reyal Jardine-Douglas, who died on Aug. 29, 2010;   
   Sylvia Klibingaitis, who was 52 when she was killed on Oct. 7, 2011; and   
   Michael Eligon, a 29-year-old who died on Feb. 3, 2012.   
      
   While inquests into all the deaths were mandatory, they were lumped   
   together as one, the focus, as coroner’s counsel Michael Blain told the   
   jurors in his opening statement, on Toronto police.   
      
   Now, if that made a superficial sort of sense — the three were, after   
   all, shot by police — this was hardly the only thing they had in common.   
      
   Jardine-Douglas was so ill in the days immediately before his death that   
   his worried family took him to a doctor, who found that despite the   
   hallucinations his family reported, he was not an immediate threat to   
   himself or others, which is widely understood to be the test for   
   involuntary admission in Ontario.   
      
   But the doctor recommended a proper assessment and the family duly took   
   Jardine-Douglas to hospital early the next morning.   
      
   But shortly before anyone came to see him, he disappeared.   
      
   He came back on Aug. 29, and in a complicated series of events, ended up   
   with his mother and sister in his sister’s car.  His sister became so   
   worried about him that she took the keys and called 911.  Ultimately,   
   Jardine-Douglas boarded a bus, where, upon spotting a police cruiser, he   
   unwrapped a knife, ignored commands to drop it, and moved toward two   
   officers who boarded the bus.  The officers backed away, but   
   Jardine-Douglas kept coming, and was shot twice.   
      
   Klibingaitis had been ill since 2009, was diagnosed during a   
   hospitalization, and thereafter regularly saw a psychiatrist.  She was   
   able to keep working, but the medication she was on caused serious   
   side-effects such that she had to stop in 2011.   
      
   Before her death, Klibingaitis saw her psychiatrist and requested   
   admission, then changed her mind and left the hospital. She was worried   
   about her ailing mother; she was afraid of being homeless; her daughter   
   was leaving the country.   
      
   This all coalesced on Oct. 7. Klibingaitis called 911 to report that she   
   had a knife and wanted to kill her mother.   
      
   Police were dispatched, but did nothing more provocative than look in   
   the windows and then set up a perimeter a distance away.   
      
   Klibingaitis emerged from the house, carrying a large knife and ran   
   toward the officers at speed. She was shot.   
      
   Eligon had been living with mental illness for some time. He had a   
   regular worker and a psychiatrist. He was taken by police to Toronto   
   East General, where paperwork was completed for a 72-hour involuntary   
   admission.   
      
   However, there was no bed for him there, nor at St. Joseph’s Health   
   Centre, where his worker and psychiatrist were based.   
      
   So, after about 36 hours of waiting for actual help to no avail, Eligon   
   left, wearing only a hospital gown and socks.   
      
   In short order, he stole two pairs of scissors from a store and stabbed   
   the shopkeeper in the hand, tried to convince a couple of women and a   
   man to hand over their car keys, and apparently tried to break into some   
   houses.   
      
   When finally confronted by police, Eligon refused to drop the scissors   
   and was still moving toward the officers, who were skipping backwards,   
   when he was shot.   
      
   The critical thing these poor people had in common, it seems to me, was   
   not that they were shot by police, but how ill-served they and their   
   loving families were by the shambles of what passes as the mental   
   health-care system in Ontario.   
      
   That’s where the focus of the inquest should have been, on the doctors,   
   hospitals, clinics, advocates and legislators who render it so difficult   
   for the seriously mentally ill in crisis to receive help.  Surely the   
   primary human right is the right of the sick to have a reasonable chance   
   of getting well.   
      
   Worth noting is that neither Hall, nor Lawrence nor the three staff who   
   accompanied them to the inquest had seen the videos showing the deaths   
   of Jardine-Douglas, Klibingaitis or Eligon.   
      
   Pity: One glimpse of Klibingaitis, for instance, charging at full-tilt   
   boogie with her knife clears the head of dusty academic theories and   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)