The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | June 5, 2021 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous

Say hello to Everton Brown, a man from Baltimore, Maryland, seen here in a YouTube video from 2010, protesting at the White House, claiming that he was being targeted for harassment by the FBI.

Brown was not targeted by the FBI. He was crazy.

And what do we know about crazy people, boys and girls? We can leave it to professionals to provide a clinical diagnosis — paranoid schizophrenia, most likely — but when someone organizes their entire life around the delusional belief that they are a victim of persecution, nothing prevents citizens from concluding this person is crazy:

Everton Brown believed that drones were following him. He thought the FBI was breaking into his house to feed his dog and worried the authorities were tampering with his computer.
That’s according to records kept by Baltimore County police, whom Brown called more than 100 times over the past 24 years. Neighbors, too, called police to the Woodlawn neighborhood. They say Brown harassed them and yelled from his porch through a bullhorn.
Despite decades of encounters with local authorities, Brown’s actions continued until they had tragic consequences. Last Saturday morning, police say, Brown, 56, set fire to his home, then shot and killed three neighbors. . . .
Authorities say Brown killed three people: Ismael Quintanilla, 41, Sara Alacote, 37, and Sagar Ghimire, 24. County police officers shot and killed Brown.
Little is publicly known about Brown. He was licensed as a commercial driver in Maryland until 2019 and had owned his home in the Parkview Crossing town house community since 1996, public records show.
County police say Brown had “numerous” contacts with law enforcement, including with the department’s crisis team. Three peace orders had been filed against him since 2008, they said.
The police department did not answer questions from The Baltimore Sun about whether the officers ever took Brown to a hospital for an emergency psychiatric evaluation or how many times he interacted with the crisis team, citing state laws about the confidentiality of health records.

See how this works? The law apparently does nothing to protect you from crazy people, but “the confidentiality of health records” does prevent you from finding out how many times this kook got turned loose.

Would you be surprised to learn that the Maryland legislature this year rejected a bill that would have established clear guidelines for determining if a crazy person is actually dangerous?

Critics of the current law say it often stops people who don’t recognize they are ill from getting timely treatment. Others say making involuntary treatment easier could lead to unnecessary and traumatizing hospitalizations and infringe on patients’ autonomy.
Maryland Del. Nic Kipke, an Anne Arundel County Republican, introduced the unsuccessful 2021 bill. He said current state law offers no guidance on what “danger” means, so it is often interpreted to require overt threats or acts of violence or self-harm.
Under his bill, Kipke said, if Brown’s actions before the shooting showed he was deteriorating mentally, that could have provided a basis for hospitalization.
The bill followed a recommendation from the mental health commission chaired by Rutherford, the lieutenant governor. In a 2020 report, the group said Maryland should “develop a clear and unambiguous standard for determining when individuals in crisis pose a danger to themselves and others.”

See? Making it easier to lock up these kooks would infringe on their autonomy — as if the autonomy of crazy people is a “civil right.”

Video of the May 8 incident where Brown died in a gun battle with cops:

 

This is the price you pay for the “autonomy” of crazy people — three innocent people killed after years of neighbors complaining about the disturbing behavior of this dangerous kook. Think about the cost, not only in terms of the lives of the people Everton Brown killed, but in the time and money expended to send police out to encounter him, and to dispatch the fire department to extinguish the fire Brown set. Think about all the paperwork that had to be filled out afterwards — a complete waste of time and money that could have been saved by locking up this dangerous kook, the way we locked up kooks back in the Good Old Days.

“When I said that the mentally ill should be in institutions, public universities weren’t the kind of institutions I had in mind.”
Robert Stacy McCain, Dec. 20, 2012

That blast from the past came to mind this morning when Instapundit called attention to the latest symptom of Ivy League insanity:

‘The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind:’
A psychiatrist lecturing at Yale’s Child Study Center
spoke about ‘unloading a revolver into the head
of any white person that got in my way.’

This story involves a psychiatrist who is a danger to herself and others. Imagine if a white person had publicly fantasized about “unloading a revolver into the head” of black people — they’d be raided by the FBI and an ATF task force quicker than you can say “hate crime.” Gosh, if only Yale University had hired Everton Brown as a lecturer . . .

 

Can you tell me the difference between Everton Brown’s delusional rants and the ranting of Dr. Aruna Khilanani at Yale University?

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

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