End Police “Wellness Checks.” Now.

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Are you a mental health worker or advocate?

Do you actually want to help dismantle police brutality and systemic racism in the U.S.?

Then take action, now, to mobilize people to demand a ban on police so-called “wellness checks” and police response to community health and mental health calls? Because police wellness checks kill. Black and brown people especially.

Countless Preventable Deaths

That’s right. Around the U.S. we have an obscene policy wherein if you see someone suicidal, or they have been not heard from recently, or they are yelling and in an extreme state of consciousness, you are to call the emergency phone line and the geniuses in your county government will send out the police. The police show up, sometimes with guns drawn and sometimes breaking down the door. And people who would not have died, die.

Let’s set aside for the moment all the times the police escalate violence when they show up for a “wellness check” (or “welfare check” or “safety check”) that results in injury and needless arrest. We know this happens. I’ve seen it. Someone is beaten and the police lie about what happened. Let’s just set that aside.

Let’s just talk about police killing people as a result of wellness checks.

Here are just a few examples found by searching with the terms “police death wellness welfare safety check.” Just a small fraction of the ones we know about because guess what, there is no national database on police killings or the races of those killed, no meaningful oversight or investigation, and we know the police cover up and lie about what happened all the time. Forgive me if I’ve left some people’s races off this list; news reports often don’t include that information:

  • In Albuquerque, New Mexico earlier this year, Valente Acosta-Bustillos was killed after his daughter was worried about him and police came for a so-called wellness check. Valente was Latino.
  • In Fort Worth, Texas in 2019, police murdered Atatiana Jefferson in her home after a neighbor called a non-emergency line concerned that her door was left open, requesting a wellness check. Atatiana was Black.
  • In Minneapolis in 2019, Travis Jordan was killed by two police officers at his home after his girlfriend called 911 because he was suicidal. Travis was Black.
  • In Gastonia, North Carolina in 2015, James Allen was murdered by a police officer after firefighters forced his door open during a wellness check “concerned he might need emergency assistance” because he wasn’t answering knocks to his door.
  • In Birmingham, Alabama in 2015, Douglas Harris was shot by police after officers went to his apartment for a wellness check because someone “heard he had dementia.”
  • In the Bronx borough of New York City in 2015, Denis Reyes needed medical attention so his mother called 911. But it was the police –in their role as “wellness” providers—who came instead, and he wound up dead. Denis was Latino.
  • In Brunswick County, North Carolina in 2014, police killed 18-year-old Keith Vidal after his family called for help because he was angry with his mother. Two police arrived and were talking with Vidal. Then a third showed up, threatened Vidal with a taser, and shot him to death when he tried to run away.
  • In White Plains, New York in 2011, Kenneth Chamberlain accidentally triggered his medic-alert bracelet. Police responded and he was dead after being hit by a taser, beanbag shotgun, and two handgun rounds. Kenneth was Black.
  • In Portland, Oregon in 2008, Jordan Case wandered into a neighbor’s apartment and apologized, explaining he was high on psychedelic mushrooms. The neighbor called for help, but again it was the police who responded to this wellness call instead. They ran Case down and shot him in the back of the head.

Again, just a few examples from a quick search, from public media accounts—when we know there are many, many more murders we don’t hear about.

But wait, these people probably died accidentally, so why do I use the word “murder?” Because our society planned, in a pre-meditated way, to send armed officers to these situations as a matter of policy, knowing full well there would be a serious risk of police provoking and/or escalating the situation. Police and the governments that fund them know that historically, “wellness check” policies and sending the police as first responders when people call for help consistently result in some people dying who did not need to die. To call these deaths “accidental” just defies reason. These people were murdered by the systemic violence of so-called wellness /safety checks by police, and police being dispatched to respond to calls for help when they shouldn’t be sent in the first place.

Let’s be clear. The police have no role to play in responding to mental health crises. None. The idea that a person in emotional crisis needs a person in a uniform carrying a gun, club, handcuffs, taser, and pepper spray—someone who is trained to kill— to show up to “help” them is absolutely insane. Orwellian. Madness.

Police provoke fear and things quickly escalate to violence. Then they lie about it and cover it up. And we’re going to make them emotional-crisis first responders?

The police have no role to play in mental health care, period. None. They don’t need to be trained to respond to mental health calls better, they don’t need more resources to respond to mental health calls better, they don’t need more funding to respond to mental health calls better, and they don’t need better policies around mental health calls.

Police must stop responding to any mental health calls, ever.

Where We’re at Now

Now is the time to get clear about this, because now is the time we are getting clear about the police in society.

In case you have become confused about the protests against police violence around the U.S. and world after the death of George Floyd, let’s just go over what we know:

Police in Minneapolis, Minnesota who knew they were being filmed tortured George Floyd, a Black man, to death for no reason while other officers stood around watching. The police officers’ bosses did nothing. The police autopsy lied about it to make the murder seem like it wasn’t a murder. When the video was shared and the entire U.S. erupted in the most serious protests since the Civil Rights Movement era, it was the protests—and only protests, not politicians—that finally forced Minneapolis to take action against the officers.

But the anti-police brutality protests around the country were met by more police violence—also seen on video on the Internet and TV news. Police are shown again and again to inflict brutality, to provoke peaceful protests into riots, to use rubber bullets, tear gas, tasers, clubs, and physical assault without reason or justification —and then when they were caught on video, to brazenly lie about it or make flimsy excuses. People around the U.S. and world, in perhaps the most dramatically clear and undeniable way in world history, now have the shocking truth about the real nature of the police staring us in the face. This is a truth Black people have been trying to get Whites to face for decades.

It became clear immediately and obviously that the U.S. police —openly and on video —murdered George Floyd, protected his killers, lied about it, and then inflicted violence and provocation on peaceful protestors because they do this all the time. It was plain to see that for police, all this was just business as usual, because they have been doing it for many decades and getting away with it. It is normal for U.S. police to murder people, lie about it, and get away with it. What is new here is that maybe for the first time, the evidence is so undeniably obvious, and the brutality towards protestors so widespread, that people are waking up to the horrifying fact of systemic police violence and racism.

So that’s where we are at.

We remember the Ferguson protests and the promises of reforms under a Black president. Those promises of reforms did nothing, and the police—who are murdering protestors in growing numbers—know they can continue to get away with their violence even after Ferguson.

So, finally, what is happening now is that people are realizing two things:

First, we have to have protests. Not marches —which have done nothing and will do nothing. We need protests in the streets. Only plunging the country into an uprising has made any change happen in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

Second, reforms do nothing. The only way to stop police from murdering people and getting away with it is to stop the police. We need to defund police, not reform them. We need to get police off the streets, and we need alternatives to policing. Not reformed, better, less brutal police. Not going to happen. Finally, people are actually demanding a real change that will solve the problem: Defund the police.

Minneapolis and Los Angeles are already taking steps in the direction of cutting police budgets and shifting to police alternatives. Police unions that stand in the way of change—full of white supremacists and defending police violence (and working hand in hand with mental health agencies around the country—are now being challenged.

Now, at this point you may ask, But what will we do about crime without police? The answer, as many people have been discussing for decades (and Alex Vitale writes in his free e-book The End of Policing), is that we fund community-controlled prevention and response programs, we end mass incarceration, we end the war on drugs, and we end immigration detention. Near where I live, Richmond, California reduced its murder rate with such community programs, and there are many, many examples of other effective ways to do it. Defunding the police and building community responses is real, it can work, and it is available to us.

What You Must Do

Here is where the mental health organizations and advocates come in.

Now is the time for all of us to join our voices to demand change. Stop talking in vague terms. Let’s get specific. Defund the police. Because if you ask us, we should know already what works. We have the programs, we have the ideas, we have the skills, and we have the tools. We have been doing this work already – providing non-police alternatives to mental health crises. It’s called the “recovery movement,” it’s called the mad movement, it’s been the rallying cry of psychiatric survivors since Judi Chamberlin wrote On Our Own. Now is the time for us to demand that police be replaced—replaced, not added onto— with real community mental health responses.

Clearly, as people are taking to the streets, all this means that your organization needs, right now, to go on record calling for defunding the police. You need personally to go on record calling for defunding the police. Defund and replace with funding for community organizations that provide real alternatives to the police.

And we can start that process by ending so-called police wellness checks (“welfare checks,” “safety checks”).

And if you think it’s just the police, it’s not. This violence is woven into the entire mental health system wherever it relies on police. If you are a therapist or social worker, right now, go to your email auto-signature at the bottom of every email you send out, and where you wrote “If this is an emergency, call 911,” delete it. Go right now to your voicemail greeting that says, “If this is an emergency, hang up and dial 911.” Delete it, too.

You are sending police to beat and kill people with these messages.

If you want to dismantle systemic racism and use your White privilege for change, stop reinforcing police mental-health response in every email and voice message you send out. (And stop listening to your lawyers, who tell you that you have to do this to protect yourself. From what are you protecting yourself – compared with the people who could get assaulted or murdered by police when they call 911 because you told them to?)

Stop fooling yourself. If you are a mental health professional, if you work for a mental health organization, then you and your organization need, right now, to come out for a ban on police so-called wellness or safety checks.

We need to end police wellness checks now. Police have no role to play in mental health. They kill people who did not need to die. Black and brown people especially. And if you work as part of this system, or represent mental health as an advocate, and you don’t make a clear line against sending police to deal with mental health crises, then, yes, you are part of systemic violence and you are helping to get people murdered.

Of course, we need to send some help sometimes when we are worried about people. This is not a false choice between sending police and doing nothing. If you think someone needs a “wellness check,” then OK, send someone other than the police! Send community members. Send clergy. Send neighbors. Send people who have been through emotional crises ourselves — “peer counselors” and workers. Send therapists. Send mediators. Send domestic-violence advocates. Send trained community-response workers with conflict-resolution skills. Yes, call the local county hotline; yes, have a dispatcher handle it; yes, have it be community-funded, with paid people ready to be sent out to help.

Just don’t send police. Ever.

Another thing you need to do: Make a stand to end police wellness checks. Make that phone call, post on social media, start a petition and share it, write an open letter to your boss, email your friends and co-workers, write to the media, meet with your local politician and congressperson. Right now. Now, when we have this unprecedented momentum for change in the U.S. and the world. Because George Floyd was murdered on camera and people are protesting.

Calls for mental health advocates and organizations to support the Movement for Black Lives may not have gained much support, and mental health advocates have been mostly silent on ending the war on drugs and mass incarceration. Maybe the time has come for that, too. Maybe mental health advocates can wake up to making systemic change in a brutally capitalist and authoritarian society that is driving people crazy every day. Maybe now is the time.

But can we at least join together at this crucial time to do the most obvious thing on police violence? Can we at least do the thing that hundreds of thousands of people around the world are demand in the streets, right now?

Can we at least join together in a united voice as the mental-health advocacy community, to call for an end to police so-called “wellness checks?” For an end to police responding to community health and mental health calls?

Can we at least be part of the movement to defund the police? Can we join calls to stop putting money and resources into police responding to mental health crises? Can we join the movement to instead put resources into community-controlled alternatives?

Right now.

 

Thanks to Faith Rhyne for helping to inspire this essay.

 

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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63 COMMENTS

  2. Thanks Will.
    Police have no business to do death checks. That is what many “wellness checks” “became”.
    Always a good reason they say.
    A woman being hysterical. A woman with a knife. She attacked me (yet no wounds)

    they all seem to have “rights”, but the vulnerable in distress end up dead, mostly the young.
    Many on Psych drugs, the other “wellness service”.

    It’s a scary thought to have “mental health services” to do “wellness checks”. Especially in Canada. There are no “advocates” in Canada. They are hired by the same people that employ shrinks.

    Every country should have a completely different system apart from ANY “mental illness” services. The fact is, many people in distress have no family or the family has no clue what to do and the first thing that comes to mind for them is 911.
    Every country should have a completely different system apart from ANY “mental illness” services. It cannot be done because psychiatry wants the control. They are the depot center for what the cop dragged in.

    Guaranteed a proposal in Canada for any “peer systems” to send out crisis units are ONLY for ultimately being shipped to psych. It could easily be done, the funds could easily be directed to people with lived experience. It can never happen in Canada.

    I have seen families of a dead person be blamed for calling 911. People say, what did you expect if your son was holding a knife. It is beyond sad.

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  3. I do believe this is the most radical article I’ve ever read on this website and I heartily approve. It comes very close to my own stance that we need to completely abolish the Carceral State including police, prisons, and psychiatry. Very well written, Will! Thank you!

    I used to joke that my donations were going to pay for Moderator Steve. Please feel free to earmark my contributions for more pieces like this!

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  5. The threat of police presence is more than enough “mental health assistance” to make anyone go crazy.

    Thank you for this firm call to simple, honest, direct action and a concise list of exactly where white people & mental health professionals can start doing the minimum. Will do.

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  6. I had a police officer come to a group I ran as a guest speaker. He ended up interviewing us instead. He had deep concerns about police doing the wellness checks and crisis calls because they were trained to attack anything that looks like aggression with actual aggression. He wanted to find a better way. I arranged a meeting at his request between Survivors, Community Mental Health, Victim Services, Police and Medical. It was hijacked by the head of Mental Health. He shared our histories as reasons we shouldn’t be heard. I wish I had of been more educated, or rich, or famous. Or not from Canada. I wasn’t even off meds yet. I didn’t know how, only that I must. Just stumbling forward. Afterward the person helping me was cut from services at Mental Health cold turkey. The police officer never spoke with us again. It was the kind of silence that tells you there was a memo you missed because it was about you. 
     
    I am relieved to read a piece that pushes the professionals and advocates to act instead of guilting the already vulnerable, alone, and in danger into rising up. I speak up and someone calls for a wellness check. That’s the end of it. It is time for colleagues to confront colleagues. Power against power. You guys fight it out. That way when we do rise up it isn’t such a blood bath.  

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    • I have had a chance to discuss with few police officers at some conferences and different settings I’ve been in. Every single one I have spoke with says they don’t want to be in the business of mental health, or being a taxi to the hospital, or trying to defuse domestic violence.

      Now, at the time I didn’t also talk to them about abolishing police unions…

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      • My neighbor has been mentally ill since he moved in 8 years ago. 4 years ago he started using Meth, which has exacerbated his mental illness. His moods range from crying secondary despondent, helplessness and hopelessness to angry rage. He disturbs my peace at all hours of the day and night, screaming and moaning and groaning, which affects my job performance, either due to lack of sleep or disturbance when I’m working from home. Drug addicts, hookers and the homeless are a staple, and sometimes he allows them to live in vehicles in his driveway or behind his garage. I’m just curious as to what my options are, as I believe I have rights too.

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  7. Here’s an article, listing how many Native Americans are killed by the police, and most of the cases involve “wellness checks”

    https://inthesetimes.com/features/native_american_police_killings_native_lives_matter.html

    And sadly, there’s absolutely no talk about how treatment with psychiatric drugs cause, after an initial period where “symptoms” are suppressed, more relapsing, more disability, loss of life expectancy, and than I think one can add paranoia against someone expressing that such treatment doesn’t work, with then the erroneous idea as if more of it is needed and should be forced, or we’re all in danger.

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  8. Will,
    People in distress are more likely to die than someone that is committing a crime. And even if they don’t get shot, they wind up handcuffed and dehumanized in a psych jail, all for their own “mental health”.

    I have seen cops being so combative, baiting people and the famous move by cops is this: “STOP RESISTING”

    They yell it over and over again while wrestling a person on the ground, punching with low blows. The person is moving their arms trying to do what they say plus protecting their head, so the “STOP RESISTING” is supposed to make it appear as if the victim is in fact resisting.

    I want to be protected from criminals, but do I want that at the expense of a vulnerable person being shot?

    Hear Hear to protestests.

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  9. Thanks Will and Faith,

    As usual this is a very well written Article.

    I remember (reading) from your own experience Will, that you were incarcerated as a ‘seriously unwell’ person until the insurance money ran out, and then you were “released”.

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  10. Sadly psychiatrists are already planning on setting up their own police. My guess is if you end the current police system, “mental health” will take over completely as far as those already labeled are concerned. 🙁

    Defund psychiatry. Its propaganda is behind police hatred and fear of the “mentally ill.”

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    • Of course it is propaganda. Not sure if covertly, but I have noticed how quiet one segment of the system has been.
      But then, people really don’t like winding up dead or damaged, nor defined. I think they might have to put something in the water to maintain control. Shh, don’t repeat this.

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    • Hey there anomie, we need you to give us some constructive strategies not just doompost “No, that won’t work.” You may have decided the world is hopeless and the psychiatric system wins, a lot of us disagree.

      There is already a huge movement out there with responses to the “Here is why we can’t #defund the police” objections. Let’s be part of that conversation rather than recycle talking points of the people against the BLM movement.

      Defund the police doesn’t mean “Let’s be single focused on one narrow interpretation of a demand while we abandon all other commitments to everything else we believe in so our demand just gets coopted even if we win it.” Give us some credit here we’re not stupid.

      The point is there is a global uprising right now, an uprising that is basically saying, if you look closely, “give us mental health alternatives to the police.” Now is the time we can make huge gains such as getting police out of mental health and lining up our movement with Black leadership pushing for fundamental change – but this can happen only IF mental health leadership can start adding their voice to this conversation. Do you realize that if we could make End Police Welfare Checks we could possibly get media coverage for survivor stories, for forced treatment stories and for our critique of force, and get our perspective into the broader BLM conversation in a way we haven’t ever been visible? Yes we need a broader strategy that’s why I have been urging us to endorse the policy proposals of the Movement for Black Lives.

      Right now I am convinced that if mental health leadership and organizations joined our voices together and started getting media attention to End Police Welfare Checks Now we could not only save lives but we could open up possibilities to end coercion in mental health in a way I have not seen in my entire life.

      Getting people out of the state hospitals led them to the prisons and homelessness because there were no resources to follow up. I get that and talk about it all the time. It was still the correct demand at the time — and part of broader demands never single issue — just the broader movement didn’t have enough power to push the broader needs so the liberals took it and ran with it. I feel strongly that if we want to protect mental health we need a comprehensive alternative to the neoliberal capitalist democracy-by-puchasing-votes system that gives power to the for-profit medical system in the first place. That’s actually pretty obvious to a LOT of young people these days (hello Bernie Sanders campaign) but the boomer leadership of the mental health movement (sorry folks but it’s true) is scared to connect the dots and update their politics to be more multi issue and systemic. We need to break the power of a society run by a 1% stock market driven elite controlling both the Republican and Democratic parties. To do that we need a movement in the streets. And that’s what we’ve got right now so let’s be part of it.

      That mental health organizations are basically on the sidelines except for “shows of support” and reading lists is outrageous. WMRLC and Icarus / Fireweed have been really good on this, but head on over to NAMI and you’ve got “hey let’s do so more trainings” and you even have a “if you call the police here is what you should do – not the police, you – so you don’t get killed.” The more survivor and mad movement oriented groups are not much better I am very sad to report. Yes NAMI has zero on their website no surprise, but I hate to say it and I don’t want to single any organization out and leave out others – but some of the leading orgs have zero and are not doing any real organizing for real demands. An organization I found that does have something on their homepage, well, here is what one of our leading organizations thinks is appropriate – nice words

      We support the struggle … by African Americans and other people of color. We will work to heal … traumas from the power imbalances common to all marginalized people. We will not passively watch as oppression and discrimination destroy lives. We will join together to pursue systemic change so that our common humanity is recognized, economic equality and social justice are realized, and we all can live in peace without fear and with hope and joy.”

      Sorry, that’s bullsh*t.

      “Systemic change?’ Really? What “systemic change” exactly? I have an idea for systemic change you can get behind – how about End Police Welfare Checks Now. That would actually really make an impact.

      Not passively watch? Sure you are marching in the streets and maybe you donated /personally/ but what bout using your power as an organization, your leadership, and actually do something substantial?

      If you have a vision of the “recovery model” that you thinks includes police doing welfare checks (killing people routinely, then covering it up), then you have lost all moral authority to be an activist in this movement, much less a leader.

      Mental Health organizations could have a real impact, right now — maybe //directly// save lives of people who would be murdered by police and then covered up by police — if they’d drop the bs words and actually take a common sense stand: “No Police Wellness Checks.”

      Maybe some of us on this comment thread should stop barking at the choir and instead send some emails and make some phone calls to get our mental health leadership and organizations behind actually doing something – now when the movement is strong – and come out against police welfare checks, gather endorsers and sign-ons and make a coalition, and do some press releases.

      Or maybe they need to double check with their donors first?

      It’s amazing to me how many BLM emails I get around #defund the police that if you read them they are endorsing peer and community controlled non-coercive mental health as alternatives MUCH more strongly that mental health organizations. The leadership of the BLM movement is not stupid they know pills aren’t the answer (they’re also skeptical of being hijacked by ant-meds fanatics, but that’s another story. I spent a lot of time working locally in Portland and hey, guess what, the mad survivor movement actually has a lot to learn from community organizations instead of just yelling at people about how bad pills and labels are. I was on the Board of the Mental Health Association of Portland because of the excellent anti-police violence work they did, and what it got me was harassment from other mad movement so called leaders who didn’t like the disease model language some of the other Board members and the Association’s projects. Ideological purity is the sign of fanaticism people, you might think about that).

      What is deeply wrong is how there is little visibility of any mental health leadership joining these demands. It reminds me of how the War on Drugs and prison abolition movements have been addressing mental health issues much much better than the so-called mental health organizations, for decades. I spoke about this at an Alternatives keynote. Freedom Center really was doing things differently by connecting these issues, and Portland Hearing Voices as well (just speaking from my own experience here, there are lots of awesome people doing awesome work out there I’m overlooking I’m sure, but you get my basic point). I see this as just doing what the survivor movement was doing from the beginning being deeply connected to the broader civil rights, gay liberation, and women’s movements. I’m glad to see the WMRLC carrying things forward and Icarus/Fireweed is too, as well as other organizations and individuals, but the problem looks to me like the donors / grant signers are gatekeeping common sense connect-the-dots because they are themselves not on board with actual real change in society – many of the leading organizations get state county federal contracts, and, well, you can’t fund a movement with money from the system you are building a movement against, it doesn’t work. The other problem is the Szaszian libertarian wing (full disclosure: I love Szasz but also hate him) and the single issue people who never get challenged on their broader politics (ban electroshock, stop forced drugging, promote Open Dialogue, but no Medicare for All or a living wage, as if mental health stops at psychiatry when the whole society is what drives you crazy, read some R.D. Laing people. Etc.)

      Instead, I keep getting emails from mental health organizations with nice words with no real substance asking for more money.

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      • “….what it got me was harassment from other mad movement so called leaders who didn’t like the disease model language some of the other Board members and the Association’s projects. Ideological purity is the sign of fanaticism people, you might think about that).”

        Ideological purity is exactly what the “disease” or “illness” model is about.

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      • Anomie

        Thanks for reaching out. You said:

        “We don’t need “mental health” alternatives. We need to end police brutality, end the war on drugs AND the wars overseas, end gentrification and provide affordable housing, provide anti-bias education in the classrooms and to adults, end capitalism and bring in Universal Basic Income, end the war on drugs, end food deserts, start worker-owned coops, break up the big banks, provide free holistic healthcare, etc.”

        Of course you have highlighted many particular forms of oppression that this system of capitalism engenders. And ending capitalism is the ultimate solution to these problems. NO AMOUNT of so-called reforms will bring about the changes we need.

        Under capitalism, when some reforms are actually put into place after some sort of social upheaval, the System inevitably eats away at these reforms, creates alternative forms of oppression, and co-opts most of the leaders into selling out the struggle.

        This does NOT mean we shouldn’t fight for radical reforms. We must do so without any illusions about what we are up against, and with a clear vision that full Revolution beyond capitalism is our goal.

        When we do fight for reforms, including ending psychiatry and all forms of psychiatric oppression, we must ALWAYS link that struggle to the need to end capitalism. Because any type of reform we accomplish will only eventually be eaten up and twisted upside down by the System.

        Fighting for radical reforms can become a process for educating new activists about how the System works and what it will take to actually bring about full Revolutionary change.

        You said: “…Mental Health professionals are the police.”

        Yes, many (not all) do, unfortunately function in this role in our society. There are a small percentage who do not function in this manner because they are in conflict with the Medical Model’s approach to providing support. People need to search for those who they can trust.

        But the Medical Model and its’ Disease/Drug Based approach is clearly dominant with billions of dollars and major institutions controlling the educational system and society’s narrative on the source (and solution) to major psychological distress.

        Richard

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  11. Yes. NAMI is behind the police brutality toward the “mentally ill.”

    Doesn’t require much brain power to see how convincing armed enforcers that others are monsters will lead to more shootings and brutality of these people. But NAMI wants to make the world’s largest omelet and are more than happy to break countless numbers of eggs to achieve this end.

    I avoid all things “mental health” now. If I know someone works for “mental health” I will cross over to the other side of the street to avoid them if I can. They think they’re kind when they lock you up and destroy you with drugs, shocks and other random brain damage.

    They deny the humanity of their “compassion” objects. Zero empathy because of this denial. All our suffering is written off as fake just like we’re “fake people” in their eyes–without real thoughts or feelings. Only walking brain diseases.

    Delusional and dangerous. Lacking insight into their own motivations.

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  12. This article shows a distinct lack of understanding of the way that these ‘welfare checks’ are used to enable human rights violations by mental health services.

    Neither police or mental health services are going to give ground with their loophole that enables the use of torture.

    I have explained what was done to me over a long period of time now. The documents I have show a use of euphemisms to conceal what is known to be methods of torture. Any competent mental health worker would recognise the ‘code’.

    “chemically restrain” = ‘spike’ with benzos”.

    Knife for self protection = plant items for police to lawfully detain. Any old knife will do.

    “welfare check by police” = induce “acute stress reaction” in target and obtain “lawful sanction” to conceal the use of known torture methods [see the two DO NOTS of acute stress reaction]. I assume the reason these methods can not be employed in Gunantanamo is precisely because it is known to constitute torture. The physical assault (‘spiking’) is what takes this method into the arena of ‘hard torture’. Though by concealing the evidence of this offence one can use any claim by the victim as evidence of their mental illness, claims that one has been ‘spked’ being the most common delusion treated by psychiatry. Clever when you think about it, drug someone for speaking the truth.

    Yes your correct about police aggriavating the situation, but thats the very reason a Community Nurse calls them to a scene, they are his personal thugs used to ‘rough up’ his potential meal ticket, I mean ‘client’. How else would a filthy ‘verballer’ get someone who would exercise their right to silence to speak? A few belts to the leg with a stick or pepper spray in the eyes from a few inches away, they usually talk.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUOoRiI8HVU

    Ready to talk to Doctor now? “Do you like that?” Police filming on their own cameras the abuses, for what reason? Like the photos from Abu Ghraib?

    Conceal evidence of the ‘spiking’. ‘verbal’ anything the target says to create the ‘reasonable grounds’ for referral to a psychiatrist, and you can have them dribbling in a cell within the hour due to a need to ensure they don’t get angry and retaliate for being kidnapped. No National Standard as to what constitutes a “chemical restraint” so you can literally take them to within an inch of their life (or further if you have the stomach for it).

    And you want to take the money off these people who have found means to torture, maim and kill and with a little ‘trick cycling’ call it medicine?

    Good luck with that.

    Yes, police are liars, but they have nothing on the ‘verballing’ skills of most mental health workers. There are the Courts holding police lying in check. What stops a mental health worker from filling out fraudulent Forms? Certainly not our Chief Psychiatrist who writes that the Community Nurse has the ability to time travel to make “observations” and can read minds. This of course means he would never ‘suspect on reasonable grounds’ that a citizen was actually kidnapped rather than that eupemism he prefers of ‘referred’. Conspire to stupefy and commit an indictable offence namely kidnapping becomes referral and detention if you tamper with the documented proof you provide to the Mental Health Law Centre. And not a soul would dare stand up for the reasons given above, in a State where you can be snatched out of your bed by police and force drugged within the hour for complaining about their ‘service’,
    or speaking the truth.

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    • What I can say is that the people who planned to obtain a police referral to mental health services in my instance (my ‘wife’ and a private clinic psychologist) discussed the possibility of police shooting me as a result of the need to plant a knife on me to make everything appear lawful. Due diligence I believe this is called. And of course as a result of the ‘prepared one earlier’ plan, police would have been within their rights given I was in posession of a knife. They weren’t aware it was a ‘plant’, or ‘throw down’. So maybe the deaths mentioned above have more to them than just police notching their guns? Were there ‘set ups’ among them too? Because I’ve been surprised by the number of people aware of the methods I speak of. Even websites dicussing how to ‘set up a loved one for mental health services’ appearing on the internet. And the $200 for the psychologists ‘councelling’ good value if your on the right side of the equation. Unfortunately that wasn’t me but ……. next time maybe.

      But could we blame the police if they had shot me? (and let me add, that this is possibly a preferred option when one considers the ‘career’ of mental patient) I mean these people plotting and scheming to obtain or procure their services when they didn’t actually have the right to (as a result of the ‘protections’ of the Mental Health Act, which are ignored for convenience by State authorities. Dereliction of duty by the Minister goes a long way to enabling these human rights abuses). Though i’m sure their intentions were good (much like the nite club rapist, in their mind it’s simply a matter of coercing until they realise how good it is for them. And well, with the ability to ‘spike’ yoir ‘clients’ then informed consent is neither here nor there). I did after all refuse to pay money to a psychologist I obviously didn’t need to speak to. The psychiatrist who interrogated me recognising that my decision to leave a situation where I was being repeatedly assaulted might not constitute a mental illness. See, told you I was right. Shame I, and my family, had to be fuking destroyed for it

      And what I did notice was the ‘just doing my job’ attitude of police. This was bread and butter for them. The Community Nurse needs someone bashed into talking, we can arrange that. Gives the young guys some practice at ‘take downs’ and obviously the person concerned is of little to no value, we know that because a doctor has taken the time to label them.

      And well, if I only had the time to explain how police reacted to me having the documented proof of the ‘set up’. I can only begin to imagine the problems faced by someone who has been wrongly convicted of aserious offence, when police actively engage with criminals to conceal evidence of those offences. Total disregard for the law, by refusing to take documented proof of serious offences, threats and intimidation of witnesses, and even a Member of Parliament putting his head in his hands and exclaiming “I have to work with police” (I assume even when he knows they are acting as criminals).

      When you hire thugs to do your dirty work, they usually figure out that the reason you hired them is because your afraid. They will of course then learn fairly quickly to exploit that fear, and increase their share of the ‘takings’. This is just human nature.

      I’ve also heard it said that the best predictor of future behvaious is the past (history). Theres a long list of black people who have been killed by police, and nothing has changed. And nothing is going to change this time either. Rinse, lather and then repeat. I say this as someone who has been tortured and kidnapped, and then had my community turn their backs on me even when I could prove that.

      Advocates? No, I think the term is Hypocrites.

      “Police in Minneapolis, Minnesota who knew they were being filmed tortured George Floyd, a Black man, to death for no reason while other officers stood around watching.”

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      • Oh there was a reason.

        1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

        The question is, did they have “lawful sanction” to do this, and if the answer is yes, then it does not constitute torture. Hence the reason to plant a knife on someone before you torture them as a police officer. Exploit the loophole, and tamper with the evidence. And of course in my country access to legal representation can be denied if the criminals are also public officers. The corruption watchdog is useful in this regard.

        As one would expect in a National Socialist totalitarian State there needs to be a mechanism to ensure that the interests of the State, and NOT the individual is served. We speak of valuing a rule of law, but need a method to subvert that rule of law. In some ways its the double think spoken of by Eric Blair. We watch as Mr Floyd is being choked, and yet would accept that his calls of “I can’t breathe” was as a result of COVID if the State wishes to impose that reality on us. Sure we might break a bit of crockery, but nothing is going to change. I say this from experience as someone who had fraudulent documents provided to my lawyers manufacturing a ‘preferred truth’, that everyone in my community has decided they will go along with. They look, realise the truth, and then wish they hadn’t looked. We are torturing citizens and unintentionally negatively outcoming them. Challenge the authorities? I think not.

        Deng once said “conceal your strengths, and bide your time”. This is what the authorities will do in this situation. Leaders will be identified and when the time is right……..they will be treated for their mental illness. The ‘strength’ being the ability to use the mechanism of the State to identify ‘dissenters’ and remove their human and civil rights, not necessarily beat them into submission and make martyrs of them. How many fingers do you see Winston?

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  13. There are two inter related points I would like to make and then I will say no more.

    1. There has been marches in support of Mr Floyd and BLM here in my State. Many of those people have what is called a COVIDsafe app on their phones. They can and are being tracked with their consent. Could that information be used to charge them with offences under the Emergency Provisions currently in place?

    That would be a breach of the Privacy Act and agreement that was made when consent was given right? So you find yourself charged, what then? Get a lawyer? When they say your privacy is protected what they don’t tell you is that there has never been a sucessful conviction of ANYONE who breached your right to privacy. You only assume that because the protections are there that your protected, your not. The acquiescence in failing to bring action when a breach is known about and identified is used, and you only find out when it’s too late. Awww ya got me. And here was me thinking that my personal medical records couldn’t be distributed without my consent. Especially given that they were provided in such a way as to seriously mislead people into false beliefs about me. I call it fraud and slander, the Clinical Director in his authorisation of the documents to be sent to lawyers calls it “editing”. This despite legislation that lawyers are to be provided unredacted documents to protect the human rights of “patients”. Problem if they are given evidence/proof of torture and kidnappings by said mental health workers though right?

    2. There is an offence in our Criminal Code s.336 Procuring the Apprehension or detention of a person not suffering from a Mental Illness, penalty three years prison. This crime was included in the code to stop mental health workers using police to do kidnappings and later claim they received a referral from police. So in my situtaion I can prove I did not have a mental illness, and was ‘procured’ by ‘spiking’ me and then planting items for police to create the appearance of lawfulness.

    Problem is that this section of the Criminal Code has NEVER been used. Why would that be? Because you have to ask the people who kidnapped you to enforce the law? Because the intention of passing the legislation was to deceive people into the false belief they were protected from rogue mental health professionals who may simply wish to snatch anyone from their home for no other reason that a doctor wants them delivered to a hospital for ‘treatment’? Which coincidentally can be done without their consent now they have been brought under the provisions of the Mental Health Act?

    The laws are fairly well constructed, it is providing the people who have a duty to ensure accountability with the means to be derelict in their duty that the problem lies. A Chief Psychiatrist who doesn’t know what a burden of proof is (suspect on reasonable grounds) can hardly provide “expert legal advice” to the Minister. Once you change suspect on reasonable grounds to suspect on grounds we believe to be reasonable then the mandatory reporting section of the watchdog legislation is useless, you simply never suspect and therefore never report suspected misconduct. If however the ‘criteria’ for reporting contained in the Act are met, then not reporting becomes misconduct and you go to prison. Once again though, it’s like reporting acts of torture by police to police, they simply drop you at an Emergency Dept for an unintended negative outcome (hotshot) round here.

    Sure, lets see that the ‘scapegoat’ officer is convicted and gets to share some time with people he was responsible for putting away (coz it’s all about breakin off sausage, don’t ya feel sorry for the poor little ……. See Cypress Hill, Pigs). But lets not forget that there are others further up the food chain enabling these abuses, and concealing their involvement in that vile conduct. I’ve personally witnessed them washing the ‘blood from their hands’.

    I can’t help but think about why the French revolution suceeded, open the cages and arm the inmates.

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  14. “Let’s be clear. The police have no role to play in responding to mental health crises. None. The idea that a person in emotional crisis needs a person in a uniform carrying a gun, club, handcuffs, taser, and pepper spray—someone who is trained to kill— to show up to “help” them is absolutely insane. Orwellian. Madness.”

    The sane are insane.

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  15. Will

    Thank you for this great blog.

    “Defund” and “Dismantle” the police are definitely important demands that could lead to some positive changes in the U.S. that will ultimately save innocent lives.

    HOWEVER, we must clearly recognize that we live in a class based capitalist society, and even significant reforms made to policing in American will not end all forms of violence to working class and dispossessed people in this country and around the world.

    Capitalism (by its very nature) leads to the violence of poverty, climate destruction, sexism ,racism, and inter imperialist type wars. These facts of political life will also ultimately lead oppressed people to confront the ruling classes enforcement of such and oppressive “order” of life in our society. Some sort of police force or military force in society BY NECESSITY will inevitably be sent out to brutally suppress uprisings against this oppressive “order” of things.

    So to Will and others, when we raise demands such as “Defund” or Dismantle” the police, we must also link these struggles to the need for humanity to rid itself of a profit based capitalist system.

    Richard

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    • Richard I think I basically agree with you, are you reading the Movement for Black Lives policy agenda or the 8 to Abolition response to the 8 Can’t Wait reform agenda? https://www.8toabolition.com/

      I’m a Bernie Sanders supporter and have been making the connections between our corrupt capitalist economy at the heart of our failed healthcare system pretty consistently.

      Where we may disagree is I think coalition work is imperative and you may not get leading mental health organizations on board right at this moment for a comprehensive repudiation of a profit based society I do think we can make headway with a End Police Welfare Checks demand. Movements work and make change through demands and coalitions. I would disagree with anyone who needs ideological or political purity before we can start asking for change.

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  16. Will, thank you for this extremely important article!

    I have been terrified by discussion by media people and politicians who think it’s a good solution to replace police with “mental health professionals,” given the oppressive and even violent ways that the latter have treated people who are suffering. And Will, I agree that NONPATHOLOGIZING, NONCOERCIVE approaches are needed, but how do you think, in a practical way, anything can be done to make sure that groups calling themselves “mental health advocates” and such but that are Big Pharma-funded and focus on labeling don’t increase their access to and power over those who are suffering? What steps can be taken to make sure that the compassionate groups and individuals are the ones who are called when someone is frightened and/or menacing?

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    • “I have been terrified by discussion by media people and politicians who think it’s a good solution to replace police with “mental health professionals,” given the oppressive and even violent ways that the latter have treated people who are suffering.”

      Don’t ever visit my State then Ms Caplan. When the UN stated that our Mental Health Laws were a violation of human rights and that the treatments may constitute torture, our politicians took the opportunity to invalidate that statement by rewriting our MH Laws and effectively ‘marrying’ mental health services and police. We now have a ‘mental health professional’ stationed at every single police station in the State. Which means that police can now subject citizens to acts of torture and then hand them over to mental health to be labelled, drugged and ‘processed’. And all of this can occur before you even get to speak to a psychiatrist, so we can’t even blame them.

      I can see why they were trying to shift the responsibility for drug issues to mental health (its what they do best, cause drug issues), though to do so they needed to ignore the fact that these abuses could occur. The presumtion of ‘good faith’ will, I have no doubt, result in some ‘they did WHAT?’ moments some time down the track.

      The ability to drug suspects without their knowedge before interrogations a definite advantage for the police to extract valuable information (chemical restraints all part of the service due to no National Standards). Combined with the ability to lie and the use of ‘coercive measures’ against suspects I do hope we will jnot be hearing that police are lacking the powers they need to resolve crime in our community any time soon.

      This and our “wild” (or decentralised) Euthanaisia Act should give all the powers required for cleaning up our streets, and create the illusion that it is medicine.

      I did write and ask our Minister for Health about how the ‘protections’ of his Act could possibly work given that hospitals are distributing frauduent documents to conceal their criminal conduct, and that the people who have a duty to protect the community are derelict in their duty, though he considers anyone who doesn’t suit his false narrative mentally ill and in need of treatment. Shame he doesn’t understand what due dilligence before making such slanderous statements is, he might check the proof of what im saying. How powerful he must feel signing off on acts of torture and unintended negative outcomes.

      What we now have is a system where police simply hand any and all evidence of their corruption over to mental health services for silencing (it really is very easy). I personally witnessed this when I presented them with the documented proof that I was ‘spiked’ with benzos and then tortured and kidnapped under the guise of the provisions of the Mental Health Act. Don’t like that truth so they call mental health services and request that I be picked up for ‘treatment’ for my “hallucinations”. Though are they really hallucinations when the documents prove I was ‘spiked’? Inconvenient truths handed off for forced drugging is not a good look. Though it is highly effective.

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    • Paula I of course agree with you 100%. The point is not the /demand/ it’s the /movement./

      By having a clear End Police Welfare Checks we are lining up with the most powerful protest movement this country has seen since the Civil Rights movement. That will massively strengthen our position around the broader demedicalization agenda you and I share.

      If you look closely at say the https://www.8toabolition.com/ demands you will see that noncoercive mental health is embedded in the sensibility of BLM. It is sadly /not/ because of the mad movement but most because of community groups and activists just thinking things through from their own perspective. People know the service nonprofit bureaucracy is corrupt. People don’t want more privatized for profit medicine. People don’t want mental health lockup. These are common sense understandings now being discussed in the BLM movement and among supporters like DSA around the country.

      The way we counter the power of Pharma and big professional mental health industries, hospitals, and the insurance system is through a /movement/. We need to be part of this movement. Right now it’s in the streets. The demands dovetail with exactly the concerns you raise, but we are not building bridges. Ending Police Welfare Checks is an obvious bridging move politically and helps build the broader coalition of BLM support. Mental health organizations with integrity, leadership with integrity, is looking for a way to channel that support that meets the challenge and urgency of the moment.

      The #defiund movement has a lot of critics from their left. Yes it can be co-oopted. In a sense that is exactly what you are raising, and I agree- these co-optation forces, especially when the Democratic Party gets hold, are strong. But this coversation is already happening and people are already anticipating what happens if #defund starts to hit cooptation. One fear of course is that you #defund the police but you fail to fund communities. We saw this with deinstitutionalization in mental health. Yeah the state hospitals were defunded alright – then the money went into the prison system and there was no real support for the community (and what support there was was just the hospital-in-the-community), and so you fuel mass incarceration and homelessness. I get it.

      The conversations about “how do we get our demands to actually be meaningful instead of coopted – how do we get to the roots of the problem” are conversations happening all over the BLM and allies communities. Those are the conversations we need to be part of.

      I don’t need people to be socialists or anarchists or anti-capitalists, but I do need people to realize that the entire society is driving people crazy and the engine is a for-profit inequality monster that is out of control. Bernie Sanders’ agenda isn’t socialist or anarchist or anti-capitalist. He himself is a democratic socialist, but his agenda is actually a mild form of FDR reformed capitalism social democracy. It just seems radical because the US is such a backwards and barbaric society (I say this as someone who loves the US and is proud of how awesome our country is). Bernie was bringing together a broad gathering of people who had enough of a shared understanding of the roots. That’s what we need.

      Joining the #defund movement by calling for an End To Welfare Checks gets us part of a broader conversation and movement that starts to resurrect the roots of the mad movement in the civil rights gay rights womens movement era, where we should be. #Defund and ending welfare checks by police is just like any demand – but it’s the demand we need right now.

      I did just learn that San Francisco Mayor Breed’s plan would essentially (if it does what it claims) end police welfare checks. I think the movement needs to think long and hard about why that demand is getting met in San Francisco in the context of Black anti-police brutality protests, not mental health advocacy. It shows us where the real change and leadership is coming from – it’s not within our movement it’s in a broader social change movement. The sooner we start to be actively part of that broader movement the faster we will actually get to a society free of psychiatric violence, a society that doesn’t drive people crazy.

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      • Broader movements get freedom and leave the patients behind. Gay rights didn’t come back to help the rest of us out of the DSM. It isn’t a doompost. I agree, we must act with and act now. Please don’t assume that hopelessness expressed in the comment section equals not acting in the real world. Maybe this space to vent more safely is how we keep going outside of here. Plus we aren’t all American. And we don’t all have the safety of credentials. Or enough privilege to hide during storms. OR even a community of like minded people to work with. I’m the only HVN facilitator in my whole province. So it doesn’t really apply universally. Maybe this is a doom post after all. I don’t care anymore. I’m tired of the assumptions of who is acting and who isn’t based solely on a few anonymous words.

        I am a bit tired of always coming back to US politics. As if the USA is the standard we all should strive for.

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        • O.O. “Gay rights didn’t come back to help the rest of us out of the DSM.”

          I’m adapting something said by Desmond Tutu regarding the ANC “They stopped the gravy train long enough to get off” (rather than on).

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        • Bonnie called this America-centrism.

          White liberals who support capitalism and psychiatry can only confuse the issues and mislead people.

          Apparently abolitionists will need to approach BLM and warn them about this sort of opportunism, and to not to be sucked in to any “mental health movement.” And that the only solution is to ABOLISH PSYCHIATRY.

          When we talk here about “defunding” it should be made clear that we are talking about psychiatry itself.

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        • IMHO, current times are both far more perilous, and safe and hopeful, than most folks believe. We are ALL being controlled and manipulated by dark and powerful forces that only a few of us see at all clearly. The media is NOT our friend. Trump is correct, in that FAKE NEWS is far more pervasive than YOU realize. That’s the nature of our Globalist oppressors.

          Marx himself was a co-opted puppet of the Globalist Capitalists, – their very well-CONTROLLED OPPOSITION. Radical freedom struggles to speak and be heard.

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          • They sure as heck don’t care about black mental patients…. Ask yourself why BLM will NEVER call for more black psychiatrists, and mental health workers. Mental illness is far more stigmatized in the black community than in the white. NAMI is probaly 90 -95% white. WHY?….

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  17. I am so deeply proud of Will Hall. Normally, I’d write paragraphs in response. But I’m almost speechless now. As someone who has been twice the victim of police physical violence, once due to an error of the police (mistaking me for someone else simply because we shared the same first name) and another time when, after my mother died, a psychiatrist-friend called the police for a “wellness check” on me, I am too emotional now to coherently outline my own work to realize several of Hall’s calls to action. But I couldn’t agree with him more: we don’t need alternative interventions as ADJUNCTS to police responses to community mental health crises. We need a wholly different model. And, as Hall points out, this is only one area of systemic violence and bigotry we need to expunge. Of course, with the recent Supreme Court ruling in favor of qualified immunity, we have an uphill battle on our hands.

    Thanks for taking such a brave, bold stand, Will Hall. I wish I could give you a hug.

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    • “Under the doctrine of qualified immunity, government officials performing discretionary functions are immune from suit unless the plaintiff shows the official violated “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.””

      And with the ability to have police assist in retrieving documented proof of such violations and then turn a blind eye while mental health services have a ‘qualified immunity’ unintended negative outcome?

      I mean tell me that the Community Nurse didn’t know that ‘spiking’ someone with benzodiazepines was a criminal offence? That the training he received in not “procuring the apprehension or detenition of a person not suffering from a mental illness, penalty 3 years prison” didn’t apply to him?

      I have clearly demonstrated the violations, and what do police do? Fail to perform their duty while the hospital ‘fuking destroys’ the victim. And of course when the Minister ‘intervenes’ and has legal representatives assist in concealment of the use of torture and kidnapping, and is derelict in her duty to report under mandatory legislation, can we ignore the MISCONDUCT?

      We can do anything with fraud and uttering, especially when the legal fraternity is so corrupted that they side with the criminals rather than their ‘clients’.

      This issue of taking what one knows to be false and using it for defence is as vile as the original criminal conduct. Police refuse to act despite the proof that I was not anyones “patient”, though they continue to utter that falsehood to maintain their concealment of the use of known torture methods. They take qualified immunity to mean total immunity, and in some repects they’re right to. Who does one turn to when the State is the criminals? When they are killing anyone who makes a valid complaint regarding the use of torture? Certainly not police who simply make referral to mental health services for ‘treatment’ with a strong correlation to negative outcomes.

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  19. Thanks for the dialogue everyone, wish I had more availability to continue to dialogue here at Mad In America.

    I hope people can pressure mental health leadership to start sign ons, petitions, coalition building and pressure media campaigns to end police welfare checks, and join forces with the Black Lives Matter leadership around the US and world.

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    • Will. DUDE! Do what I’ve done. I am VERY WELL KNOWN to the local, County, and State police and law enforcement community. I OFTEN speak face-to-face with cops. Yes, I’ve had a few very minor “incidents” over the years with them. It’s called “pushback”, and each time STRENGTHENS ME.

      Talk is cheap. The WALK is the WORK. Talk is just high-falutin gossip….

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  20. Thanks, Will. I agree that this is a moment for solidarity. Human rights, includes re-imagining resourcing communities, not the current structured inequality and violence. We must listen to activists in BLM without assuming that white psych survivor vision for de-funding police and investing in communities matches the visions of black survivors of systemic racism. Abuse of power and corruption are the space we all occupy, and it takes a toll differently according to where we’re located, what we look like, what we’ve experienced and learned.

    The 1% are skilled in marketing and spinning messages that infiltrate legislation and “non-profit” organizations to easily co-opt vigilant movements. Redistributing power and opportunities requires listening without assuming we know what’s “best.” Noel Hunter’s blog also resonates with me and speaks clearly to our current opportunity for moving towards justice and away from the violence of a carceral state.

    Current alternatives to incarceration, whether probation, parole, or involuntary “treatment” maintain violent systems that perpetuate harm. Investing in non-police coercive workers can easily look like non-uniformed drug delivery agents of control, much as ACT teams, behavioral health and drug courts maintain institutional control outside walls yet still segregated from full participation in the community and informed choices.

    The language of “wellness checks” originates in messages from folks who hold concern for checking and controlling, not those of us who might be “checked.” What choices look like will emerge if we listen, reflect, and amplify without assuming we know. It is time to participate in co-constructing.

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  21. Yes, I do realise that. In fact, if you look carefully at the actual function of the various Mental Health Acts, there raison detre is precisely that, to provide “lawful sanction” to perform what would otherwise be called torture against people who now have the status of “patient”.

    The methods used at Guantanamo Bay were ‘enhanced coercive’ and did not constitute torture. This is crucial in understanding what is and isn’t being permitted by our respective governments. Mock executions and threats of pack rape are coercive, or may constitute ‘soft torture’ at best.
    If Tyrannies torture by making it legal, then I live in a tyranny. Our Mental Health Act, combined with ‘police welfare checks’ enables the use of known ‘hard torture’ methods, as I believe I have shown for some time now.

    Look away though, blowing the whistle in a tyranny usually has some negative outcomes that are without the ability to prove intent dealt with in ways that are considered unintentional.

    If one makes torture legal, is it then torture? The loophole is in the “inherent in or incidental to lawful sanction”. In my State all that needs to be done is to provide police with the lawful sanction (eg plant a knife and cannabis and the target is now in breach of s 68 e of the Criminal Code, and lawful sanction applies). They can now place their knee on your neck and apply pressure to stop you resisting arrest, and when you become unconscious can apply pressure to stop you from passively resisting arrest.

    Combine this with the ability of a Community Nurse to administer drugs without the knowledge of the target, and then hand their ‘patient’ back to police for interrogation? Who then hand them back once they have the information/confession they require so that the target gets treated for the mental illness they are about to get diagnosed with by a real doctor, who will also write a prescription for the ‘spiking’.

    And all this can be concealed with fraudulent documents sent to the lawyer of the target. (though I’m certain they never thought I was going to figure out that they did that. The concealment of such serious offences for the time being being overlooked by our police who find dereliction of duty highly effective).

    What has interested me has been that my government has been open in criticizing other third world governments for the exact same conduct they are engaging in here. By ensuring no right to remedy and that the authorities do cover ups while doctor has an unintended negative outcome we van appear to be meeting our obligations we ratified under International Law. Dead men tell no tales, and even our Attorney General can’t tell me how I make a complaint regarding torture (that is a right under the Convention). I believe this is because no one ever makes it to that point, police simply drop them at the Emergency Dept and make them “patients” and the problem literally disappears for the reasons set out above.

    Anyhow Will, I’m with you in the defund police thing. They aren’t policing by consent anymore (but by force and terror) and like making torture legal, they are no longer police, but a 1% Security Company. We need to recognise that just because they have the badge, doesn’t mean they are what they say they are. We here recognise that calling drugs medicine is a trick of the light.

    “They will take their oaths as a cover”

    If you have difficulty understanding what i’m saying, feel free to contact me. I understand that me publishing (and educataing) public officers in the use of torture methods may be a problem. And as is known I have been traumatised by what I have been subjected to, and I am not a good communicator. Public interest? Not according to the people who are torturing citizens. But I’d call that a conflict of interest.

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  22. This is a plan for disaster, built upon threadbare and romanticized appropriations of genuine Black liberation struggles, and has the same tired old ring echoed by most white liberal romanticism.

    Yes “wellness checks” are an issue and must be opposed. But this is not separate from the need to oppose ALL psychiatry, and all capitalism for that matter.. To pretend that a grand alliance of psychiatric victims/survivors and “mental health” workers should lead the way is simplistic and absurd.

    The only way people will ever unite to march against psychiatry in effective numbers is to educate people that Psychiatry is not a legitimate field of medicine and Psychiatry is a tool of social control I.e., psychiatry IS the police.

    We don’t need opportunistic slogans based on limited “reforms.”

    As I and Anomie, and maybe others have mentioned, a grassroots anti-psychiatry survivors movement now exists and is growing steadily. Our goal is to “make psychiatry history.” As abolitionists we recognize that “reform” of psychiatry is a contradiction in terms, as it is designed to oppress and repress us. We have two primary demands:

    ⦁ An end to all forced psychiatric procedures and “treatments,” including but not limited to incarceration, solitary confinement, physical restraints, drugging, and electroshock.

    ⦁ An end to all state support for psychiatry, including but not limited to the use of psychiatric testimony in legal proceedings; psychiatric screenings in schools, prisons, and workplaces; licensing; and the use of public monies to support psychiatric programs or research.

    As can be seen, the last demand is essentially saying
    DEFUND PSYCHIATRY.

    At this stage of history and with the current level of anti-psychiatry consciousness among survivors, to demand anything less would represents a sellout.

    We don’t want to appropriate the Black struggle, but to help advance it by exposing how — just as the initial role of the police was catching escaped slaves — psychiatry and the entire eugenics movement has been and continues to be an enforcement tool for white supremacy and capitalist exploitation.

    “Mental health workers” who support the above demands should make their positions clear, or else get off the bus.

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    • Abolish psychiatry – it is a eugenics movement that should have been outlawed after WW2.

      “When the T-4 Euthanasia Program commenced, Eberl was a willing participant. On 1 February 1940, at 29 years old, Eberl became the medical director of the killing facility at Brandenburg. In autumn 1941 he assumed the same position at Bernburg Euthanasia Centre. Despite not being formally ordered to take part, psychiatrists such as Eberl were at the center of each stage of justifying, planning and carrying out the mass murder of those with mental disorders, and constituted the connection to the later annihilation of Jews and other “undesirables” in the Holocaust.”

      “He was very ambitious. It was said that he ordered more transports than could be “processed” in the camp. That meant that trains had to wait outside the camp because the occupants of the previous transport had not yet all been killed. At the time it was very hot and as a result of the long wait inside the transport trains in the intense heat many people died. At that time whole mountains of bodies lay on the platform. Then Hauptsturmführer Christian Wirth came to Treblinka and kicked up a terrific row. And then one day Dr. Eberl was no longer there..”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irmfried_Eberl

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    • “….To pretend that a grand alliance of psychiatric victims/survivors and “mental health” workers should lead the way is simplistic and absurd.” (OH)

      ” it’s also dangerous because the psychiatric hegemony is not being challenged and ended.”(anomie)

      “ALL SURVIVORS should assert — and plan to exercise — our right as an oppressed class to self-determination.”

      It’s important that not only survivors are made aware of the hoax of psychiatry. Survivors became survivors because no one warned them.

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  23. << imagines the day when children watch the 1034th rerun of Frazier and ask "daddy, what's a psychiatrist?" and the reply is "son, there was a time when people thought it was a good idea to empower a privileged white male with the ability to select people based mainly on the color of their skin for what they called 'treatment'. They made lots of money but in the end the people we call taxpayers decided that loading their pockets with money for damaging perfectly functional human beings in what were experiments that went very wrong at a certain point was a bad use of their dollars. So we sacked the lot of them, threw most of them into prison and fed the rest to cane toads and made a reality tv show out of it. You remember Steve Irwin and his saying 'Croaky'? Well that's where that saying came from."

    We must have hopes, wishes, dreams 🙂

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