Mentally Ill Are Not Criminals

Mentally Ill Are Not Criminals

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly laments the "deinstituionalization of people
who have mental-health problems [and] don't take their medication." (TOM LIDDY,
"RIPPER WARNING," New York Post, October 9, 2007) The police do not respect the
privacy rights of persons accused of mental illness. They show their prejudice
toward such persons slurring all persons accused of these business diseases.
This man's medical history is public, yet police myopia focuses on the
symptoms of the problem.
It is often psychiatric medication that is the cause of violence, drugs
that people are forced to take. If the police want to eliminate violence caused
by psychiatric drugs it must scrutinize the the drug industry and the psychiatry
industry.
Psychiatry is the largest and most dangerous taxpayer funded boondoggle in
the history of man. They make up illnesses and force people to ingest "curing"
chemicals which exacerbate the problem. For what other illness do police powers
enforce diagnoses? Do police force people with rashes or broken legs to get
treatment? The arbitrary business of personal opinions masquerading as
scientific discipline needs to be exposed.

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

RIPPER WARNING
New York Post
By TOM LIDDY

October 9, 2007 -- A relative of the psycho slasher who staged a bloody rampage
on the East Side said last night he warned cops hours before the attack that the
suspect was sick and needed to be hospitalized.

Alexander Flowers said he last saw his nephew, Lee Coleman, 38, acting strangely
in Co-op City about 4 a.m. Saturday, some seven hours before the bloodshed.

Three hours later, he said, he said he got on the phone to Co-op City security
and to police in the 45th Precinct to alert them that Coleman was sick and
should be hospitalized.

He said two uniformed officers came to his house at around 8 a.m., and two hours
later, two detectives showed up.

All four officers, he said, told them they couldn't help.

"They said he [Coleman] wasn't a child or a senior citizen. [A detective] told
me he couldn't take a report because of that fact," Flowers said. "They should
have listened to me and taken heed of what I was saying. If they had responded
in ample time . . . it could have been prevented. They didn't respond."

Officials at Co-op City could not be reached.

Police would not say whether officers any interviewed Flowers before the
knifing. They said only they got a missing-person's report about Coleman at
10:45 a.m.

Coleman's brother, Craig, who lives in Atlanta, said that in the hours before
the attack, Lee had been babbling about "demons."

"He kept telling me the demons were trying to get him, to kill him, to hurt
him," Craig said. "He kept talking to me as if I could understand him. He kept
saying, 'Don't you feel me? I'm trying to give you telepathy.' I knew he was
having a breakdown."

He said Coleman hung up on him and turned off his phone.

Cops said Coleman snapped at around 11 a.m. Saturday, when he stole four knives
from a restaurant near East 35th Street and Second Avenue, slashed an employee,
and then hacked away at a psychologist walking her dog.

Amarjit Singh, the restaurant worker, and Susan Barron, 67, were in serious
condition at Bellevue Hospital, but both were improving yesterday.

Coleman was shot by off-duty cop Gregory Chin, who had been eating at a nearby
diner.

"I'm just so glad he didn't kill her," Flowers said. "I don't think [Coleman]
could live with himself if he did that."

Sources said Coleman quit taking his medication because it was too expensive.

"This is a problem the Police Department has faced for many years," said Police
Commissioner Ray Kelly. "There has been a huge deinstitutionalization of people
who have mental-health problems. They've been shifted to medication. What
happens when people don't take their medication is they act out and it falls on
the Police Department to address the problem."

Additional reporting by Leonardo Blair

tom.liddy@nypost.com