LSJ has an artical about the planned psychiatric hospital to be built on the site of Eastern HS. The depiction looks pretty nice, a modern sleek mainly brick building. There was also a depiction of the garden walkway with two arches from the old school building. What is done is done so I guess I would have to say that U of M is putting forth an impressive plan for a high-quality building and grounds replacing our historic building. There is also money for the surgical center across Pennsylvania, but no drawings of the project were posted.
Side comment, but I'm talking a class with the East Lansing police and they mentioned that, it is very easy for the police to grab someone behaving in an erratic way (or threatening suicide or something), take them to Sparrow, and then the police fill out a form that compels them to submit to a psychiatric evaluation. Sounded like they do that all the time. But 90% of the time, immediately after the evaluation, Sparrow releases them. They said the individual almost has to say "you're right, I do need help, please help me" for Sparrow to keep them. If they say anything else, including lying with "I don't know what the police are talking about, I feel fine", Sparrow will just let them go.
(They do have to be sober for the evaluation, so Sparrow will keep them until they sober up, first, if that's happening.)
And it did sound to me like part of the issue might be that Sparrow doesn't really want them there either. I don't know if a larger facility will change that.
They did also say that the number of mental health related calls has surged over the last five years. They offered no explanation for that fact, though I personally wondered about marijuana. (They did mention one case study of a guy they regularly interacted with in downtown East Lansing, apparently he loved it when the police got called on him, and by his own telling, this guy suffered from marijuana-induced psychosis.)
I think I know who you may know the guy talking the police are talking about, some days he is kind of mild some days and some days he would be aggressive calling me names etc. I think that although some people should not use cannabis or relay on it for mental health issues, as a long-time consumer of cannabis, I think one would have to ingest a huge amount of cannabis to trigger a psychotic episode most people fall asleep after too much. More likely this man is also has been consuming alcohol and maybe something else. He does say he loves being in downtown EL with all the young people, who are generous. He once hugged me and called me a great man! There are some of the street folks who just sit and do nothing much except for some mild soliciting by 7-11 and on Grand River, some who do make a mess and act up. All things being equal I would say the students do much more damage and cause more trouble than the street people, I hope the hospital will have room for some of them too, they need to learn how to behave and get over their entitlement issues. Everyone needs a place to sit down even close their eyes, it we could all just follow the rules of manners and how to behave in a public place that would solve a lot of these problems. if you can follow the rules than welcome! I guess one has to learn the rules first.
We do need to somehow handle this better. Actually did a ride-along with an officer last night. Mentioned that the night before, someone had been throwing rocks at the 7-11.
"Why was he throwing rocks?"
"Mental health issues. We know this guy, we see him a lot."
Well, to be stupidly obvious, if the guy is regularly having serious mental health issues on the street, we're failing somehow.
I agree that we are failing our community if we have mentally ill people going around vandalizing and breaking windows so often, they know the guy. I would probably know him to if I saw him. I noticed the back door of Detroit Wings has been smashed the other day. Here at my building, there is new huge graffiti on our building in the alley behind Pinball Pete's which has more damage and graffiti broken glass and litter every day. I think it might be a good idea to have some sort of mental health program or center where EL could take people who are in crisis and take it out on our businesses and landscapes. Seems like that alone would be a crime, put those guys in a mental health confinement, get them help and off the streets.
We are slightly far afield, but I can certainly understand why EL wants to hire two more police officers dedicated to the downtown. Also on my Friday night ride-along, there were three fights in about an hour (Dave's Hot Chicken, outside the 7-11, and the Charles Street Parking Garage). We didn't personally go to any of them because we were busy with other stuff. But to put that another way, EL usually has 3-4 officers on patrol (even on a Friday evening), and there were three fights downtown in about an hour, plus whatever might happen in the whole rest of the city. Yeah, you need more people.
Just for your curiosity, the calls we did respond to:
1. Minor car accident on the interstate, actually in Lansing's territory, but they were busy. But even being a very minor accident, still took a fair amount of police time.
2. Dead deer blocking a lane on the north edge of the city.
3. [We then headed toward the Charles Street fight, but we were about as far away as we could be at that point.]
4. Responded to a home where the mother called 911 because her teenage son was destroying stuff inside the home and threatening family members. That was interesting because she got angry at the officers (two cars responded to this) because they would not arrest her son. I think she just wanted a break. But he hadn't really committed a crime, or not much of one. In the end he took a Lyft to to go be with another family member.
5. What began as a traffic stop for no insurance (my officer ran the plate), turned into quite an affair because a man in the vehicle had an arrest warrant for failing to pay child support. So I got to watch the prisoner intake process at the county jail. But this one thing took an hour of one officer's time (and we had four officers on the stop, one from Meridian Township, before we actually put the arrested man in our car).
I guess this is not on the subject [EL development], but anyway one way we could calm things down is cut down on over-serving alcohol at all the bars, and maybe not selling to visibly intoxicated people at stores. As a bartender in Mass. you are held personally reasonable for serving alcohol. Drunks like to fight!
Comments
(They do have to be sober for the evaluation, so Sparrow will keep them until they sober up, first, if that's happening.)
And it did sound to me like part of the issue might be that Sparrow doesn't really want them there either. I don't know if a larger facility will change that.
"Why was he throwing rocks?"
"Mental health issues. We know this guy, we see him a lot."
Well, to be stupidly obvious, if the guy is regularly having serious mental health issues on the street, we're failing somehow.
Just for your curiosity, the calls we did respond to:
1. Minor car accident on the interstate, actually in Lansing's territory, but they were busy. But even being a very minor accident, still took a fair amount of police time.
2. Dead deer blocking a lane on the north edge of the city.
3. [We then headed toward the Charles Street fight, but we were about as far away as we could be at that point.]
4. Responded to a home where the mother called 911 because her teenage son was destroying stuff inside the home and threatening family members. That was interesting because she got angry at the officers (two cars responded to this) because they would not arrest her son. I think she just wanted a break. But he hadn't really committed a crime, or not much of one. In the end he took a Lyft to to go be with another family member.
5. What began as a traffic stop for no insurance (my officer ran the plate), turned into quite an affair because a man in the vehicle had an arrest warrant for failing to pay child support. So I got to watch the prisoner intake process at the county jail. But this one thing took an hour of one officer's time (and we had four officers on the stop, one from Meridian Township, before we actually put the arrested man in our car).