Friday, November 16, 2012

SF Mental Health Board: No Tasers for SFPD

On Wednesday, November 14, 2012, The San Francisco Mental Health Board passed a resolution urging the San Francisco Police Commission and San Francisco Police Department to oppose the adoption of electroshock weapons, or Tasers, for SFPD Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) officers. See the video on YouTube at this link http://youtu.be/5br06cJ3QBw In public comment, 99-1/2 percent strongly opposed Tasers in cops hands. Mesha Irizarry, of Idriss Stelly Foundation, wrote the proposal with final edits by MHB secretary, David Elliot Lewis.



Mesha Irizarry's only child, Idriss Stelly, an college honor student, was killed in a hail of 46 bullets during a mental health crisis in 2002. He suffered from bipolar disorder.

People on the video make reference to the Memphis Crisis Intervention Program. My schizophrenic brother, Larry Neal, was secretly arrested for 18 days and murdered in Memphis, Tennessee in 2003, but care is given to censor the story about Larry Neal's murder by his government. Therefore, the San Francisco Mental Health Board may not know about the many police shootings and jail deaths that happen in Memphis to mentally ill people. The latest such killing happened in summer 2012 to Christian Freeman, a 19-year-old schizophrenic youth, whose story is included in an article in this blog called "Don't Become 'Nazi America.'" See an excerpt below:


MPD continues to kill the mentally ill. The most recent of nine people killed by Memphis police so far in 2012 was Christian Freeman, 19, a paranoid schizophrenic. He was shot to death on June 12 about 1:40a.m. behind FedEx Forum near Fourth and Beale. Police claim Freeman charged at two officers with a knife and they shot him to death. That was Freeman's second encounter with police. He spent a month in a mental health ward after allegedly yelling and making obscene gestures at police officers in April 2012. Freeman's uncle in Texas, Todd Jones, said police should have tried to incapacitate and restrain Freeman rather than shooting him. Memphis Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) is used as a model for intervention services regarding arrests of mentally ill people, but Memphis police do not use it. If his mother tries to sue the police department, will she become a gangstalking target, too? See the article at the "MEMPHIS POLICE BODY COUNT" link
http://freespeakblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/memphis-police-body-count.html
My letters to the Memphis CIT were not answered, so I put it on public view at this link http://www.nowpublic.com/health/letter-memphis-cit-mary-neal
Can the Memphis CIT Explain the Wrongful Death of Larry Neal?
Date: 3/24/2008 7:26:26 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: mneal000@... (Mary Neal)
To: cit@..., rdupont@...
CC: mfitzpatrick@..., iolmisha@... (mentor)

Randolph T. Dupont, PhD

University of Memphis
School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Memphis, TN 38152-3330

Re: Secret Arrest and Wrongful Death of Larry Neal and Subsequent Cover-up


I have read with interest how police departments all over the country are modeling their police departments after the Memphis CIT model. I suppose it may be partly to protect this image that my family is the only American family in the 21st Century to have a member secretly arrested and returned to his family as a corpse with no explanation, apology, excuse, arrest records, inquest, or investigation. At least, I certainly hope this is an uncommon tragedy and denial of due process of law.


See
http://wrongfuldeathoflarryneal,

The Memphis CIT has never explained how Larry Neal, a life-long mentally ill heart patient, could be secretly arrested in mid-July 2003, incarcerated for 18 days while his family and social worker looked for him as a missing person while Shelby County Jail repeatedly and falsely denied having him incarcerated, until he died of a fatal heart attack.


The Memphis CIT has never explained why The (Johnny) Cochran Firm, which was managed by Julian Bolton, Esq., 20+year Shelby County Commissioner and past Chairman, would then contract with my family to act as our wrongful death attorneys against Shelby County Jail, withholding from my family information about Bolton's position with our intended defendant, the jail where Larry died.


The Memphis CIT has never explained why Shelby County Jail neglected to send the Department of Justice an inmate fatality report regarding Larry Neal's death, when the jail was already under suit by the USA for previous violations of inmates' civil rights, and was required to send such inmate fatality reports under the terms of its Agreement with the USA.


Larry's family believes that his death was actually a euthanasia followed by an elaborate cover-up between The Cochran Firm and others to keep his wrongful death case out of court. Interested parties have also managed to keep his death and his family's quest for justice out of mainstream media, which likely would have led to investigation and closure for his family.


For years, I have written to

Shelby County Government officials,
the U.S. Justice Department,
Tennessee representatives,
including the governor,
United States Senators and Congressmen,
mental health organizations,
civil rights organizations,
and civic leaders about Larry's death,
the denial of any investigation and accountability.

No one has come forward with any investigation or reports to date -- over four years after Larry's death. At this point, the shroud of secrecy seems impenetrable to the point that Larry's family would be skeptical of any reports that ensued from an investigation.


We have sued The Cochran Firm twice to recover damages for tricking my family while under contract as Larry's wrongful death attorneys (secret conflict of interest, fraud, malpractice),
and we are hopeful of getting answers during discovery of our present suit in USDC, Northern District of Gerogia. On our first attempt to sue The Cochran Firm, we served the suit to the firm's advertised Atlanta office, the law office that conducted our initial client intake interview the day Larry died.

Strangely, this law office which was widely advertised as The Cochran Firm's Atlanta office on television, MARTA, Internet, Bell phone books, etc., had our suit dismissed in May 2006 by claiming it is no part of The Cochran Firm. Larry's family certainly hopes that nothing so fantastic will happen in our pending USDC case against this law firm.


CIT is a good idea, and I hope it benefits mentally ill citizens in the Memphis area and around the country. However, when there is a failure in the system, as evidenced by Larry Neal's secret incarceration and wrongful death, that failure should not be covered up at the expense of justice.

 

Sincerely
/s/
Mary Neal
Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill 


My comment at YouTube that was prevented at the video about the SF Board of Mental Health's resolution:

Why does the video on SF Board of Mental Health praise Memphis Crisis Intervention (CIT) program? Don't they know about the continuous police shootings of mentally ill people in Memphis and the murder of Larry Neal while under 18 days of secret arrest? See http://dogjusticeformentallyill.blogspot.com/2012/11/sf-mental-health-board-no-tasers-for.html . That is why it is important to expose police violence on PressTV, Lawless America, and my book Cochran Firm Fraud. Hiding deaths reduces security. 

DOG JUSTICE IS NEEDED FOR
AMERICA'S MENTALLY ILL CITIZENS

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