whiterock said:
Aliceinbubbleland said:
quash said:
RD2WINAGNBEAR86 said:
cms186 said:
RD2WINAGNBEAR86 said:
cms186 said:
For a group of people claiming to be Pro-Life, you sure seem to approve of people being killed for the slightest thing, Neely, ok, he might have deserved to have been in Jail for previous crimes, but i thought you guys believed in freedom of speech? surely you shouldnt get to kill someone and walk away Scott free just because the person you killed was mouthing off on a subway?
For a guy that hates guns, you sure seem to have no trouble with someone threatening a citizen with an AR-15.
Neely was arrested 42 times. He should not have been on the streets. He is now in a better place. Not here. Everybody wins. Citizens are safer and I'm sure Neely's family will win the Ghetto Lotto!
That's where you are wrong, but surely there's at least one level between "not having a problem" with someone doing something and being fine with that guy being gunned down in the street?
Can we not say yeah, these 2 people shouldn't have been doing what they were doing, but maybe they didn't deserve to be executed for doing it?
If you are an individual that threatens someone else's life, you should fully expect that you might very possibly lose your life. Plain and simple. This also applies to the mentally unstable. Treat people respectfully and obey the law, chances are you will be just fine. Civilization 101.
The criminal justice system should not be the gateway to mental health care. Civilization 101 ought to have sorted that man out before he died like that.
Quash, you make some of the most sensible posts in this forum.
It's a point that resonates with the progressive mind, for sure. But when we take the elevator back down to mainstreet, we are faced with the reality that the reason we have so many Jordan Neelys out on the sidwalks descending ever further into drug addled madness is precisely because of that sentiment. We can draw a straight line to the date when the homeless problem started, to the Carter Admin reforms that basically disgorged the ambulatory mentally ill out onto the streets. That was an effort to deal with a real problem: Is taking someone off the street and into a mental facility and keeping them there against their will not an infringement on their right of liberty? Well, yes, (so let's save a lot of money and close down the govt. mental wards and spend it on "the poor"....the crazies don't vote. The poor do!) Fast forward 40 years, we are now seeing the very social contract we form to protect us from crime being used to create a safe space not for ordinary people to live their lives with a modicum of assurance they can safely walk to work, but for the criminally insane to spiral down into the inferno at whatever rate their bodies can sustain. But at least there is one obvious winner in that darwinian dynamic - the best among us who rarely ever have to dodge the splattering of grey water from the gutters of society. They can dab their lips with linen napkins and know they better people for having cared sufficiently for the humanity of the oppressed.
Leaving a person on the streets to commit serial crime just because they are crazy is bad for the crazy and the sane. It leaves a tattered wake of victims who pay taxes precisely to prevent being faced with irrational threats to the life and property every day. If we are not going to comb the streets with psychiatric police to scoop up everyone with a mental problem (like, you know, those who eagerly vote for either Trump or Biden), then can we not at least arrest the crazy when they actually do violate criminal statute and divert them off into treatment programs?
I mean, I know that sounds little like (gasp) making the criminal justice system the gateway to mental care, but the alternative in use at the moment is neither criminal justice nor mental care, leaving the crazy to self-destruct at their own rate regardless of the collateral damage to ordinary people who should not have to witness much less role-play in the madness.
So, when you two gods get done with your virtue posturing, how about a little help down here?
Bull*****
I am quite familiar with Main Street. I have prosecuted, and chosen when not to prosecute, people who were arrested during a psychotic break. I have participated in forced medication hearings.
Two things you don't get right while dabbing your linen.
First, mental illness is a disease. Not every criminal is mentally ill but some are. Using drugs is not always a sign of mental illness but it can be part of self medication.
Second, we need far more resources directed at the problem of mental illness BEFORE arrest. And, as Tony Timpa's family will tell you, a little more directed to the time LEO shows up. My county sent mentally ill defendants to Austin State Hospital. Some of the forced medication hearings were to get the defendant on a stable glide path so that ASH could do the most good in the shortest time. Unfortunately, the backlog at ASH was such that many defendants would time out: they would have back time sufficient for their charges before an opening at ASH.
So yes, people, even mentally ill ones, are given their constitutionally protected rights and put back on the streets with their illness intact. If you encounter one I hope you find a better way to deal with them (these ways exist) than to kill them.
“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” (The Law, p.6) Frederic Bastiat