2013-02-18

Round up the crazies

In the 1970s, mentally ill patients were released from involuntary care facilities. Remember the homeless problem in the 1980s, blamed on Reaganomics? It was mostly mentally ill people who were no longer in mental hospitals. Now, with social mood turning down again, the approach to the mentally ill is turning authoritarian.
Scoop the nuts
The city is making a major push to sweep the streets of dangerous, mentally ill New Yorkers — and has even compiled a most-wanted list, The Post has learned.

The measure follows a pair of high-profile subway-shove fatalities from December allegedly involving mentally ill individuals.

The city has already drawn up a list of 25 targets, sources said.

“After the Queens subway attack [of immigrant Sunando Sen], the [city] decided to take a proactive approach to track down the most dangerous mental-health patients that currently have mental-hygiene warrants” out for them, a law-enforcement source said.

Those warrants mean that the patients are not wanted for a crime but instead are being sought because they are not getting their court-ordered treatment.

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