Good idea.
Worked all day yesterday on making sure a guardianship I had put together on an emergency basis for a mentally ill man was honored by health care, such that we could get a bed for him somewhere for some help, and after a lot of arguing, bitching and threats to can the guardianship if the state would not help the parents enforce their legal authority to prevent him from running (basically, get the cops to make sure he stays put while we waited for a bed and transportation to be arranged) and make the state deal with it. I was running up against the state’s position of no involuntary commitment if there is a guardianship, a mentally ill man who will say the right thing in one moment, but then run off, to go commit some more crimes (he is currently facing a felony, and multiple misdemeanors for acts committed while he was off his meds) and get further down in a hole, while drunk and off his meds, but police who don’t want to do anything as they are tired of him and he hadn’t really hurt anyone, yet. My point was if the parents cannot get assistance from the state to enforce their legal authority to make sure he makes it to doctor prescribed treatment that the guardian agrees with, then why should the parents spend money to do all that? If the only way to get police assistance is to have it be part of an involuntary commitment process (one of which briefly started up yesterday before they realized there was a guardianship) then I guess even though it would seem better for the parents/guardians to be in place to arrange some help for the man, in the long run it is not if they cannot get the authority of law to enforce the plan. So therefore, may as well let the State deal with it, and then the cops can be required to be involved. After some conversations with the prosecutor’s office, the officers were convinced to stay. I was feeling pretty ACAB after that. Like why should I have to tattle on the cops to the prosecutors to get some help for these people? These cops know this guy, and know they would be dealing with him pretty soon again anyway. So why not just station a couple of guys there for a few hours to make sure he doesn’t run off in his hospital garb down to the willows down by the river and create a dangerous chase situation and instead make sure that he gets to his treatment? Too proactive or something? There is a legal order of guardianship providing authority.
But got a nice little easy spin around on my gravel bike, on the roads down by the river, looking at the sun go down and feeling the air currents as things cooled down, and that helped calm me down. Bikes are a good thing. Outside, water, the smell of earth, and evening light is nice too.
