NY Safe Act: gun law gives Office of Mental Health power to see the future [wink]

Children 11 years old automatically placed in the gun registry, all people admitted to inpatient psych hospitals and all people DISCHARGED from psych hospitals, all their names in the registry AUTOMATICALLY…sorry but it is NOT in fascist Germany. Is it the Office of Mental Health (OMH)? We must act against this outrage, but keep reading.

According to testimony of a Mr. Wolkenbreit, counsel to the New York State Conference of Local Mental Hygiene Directors, Inc. and other mental health providers and civil libertarians at a state Assembly committee hearing  about the mental health provisions of the NY SAFE Act (watch the video at the end of this post):

1) Everybody already admitted, even before the passing of the Safe Act, and everybody admitted to a psych hospital after its passing have been placed in the gun registry, AND at DISCHARGE TOO:

“the state took the position that ALL persons admitted to a state psychiatric hospital met the criteria of 9.46 simply by virtue of their admission...”

“based on POTENTIAL risk standards, hospital administration or counsel have RECOMMENDED or REQUIRED that ALL persons admitted with mental illness diagnosis  be reported…”

“because of amount of reports [received], DCJS is forced to accept them as VALID.”

“OMH wants reporting on discharge and admission…[this is] beyond the scope or reasonable or useful”. Mr. Stein

2) names of  all CHILDREN 11 YEARS OLD and up are been put in the registry automatically, and the absurd reason to include their names:

“OMH is requiring ALL mental health hospitals to report admissions of ALL 11 years old children or older…”

“because it is possible that a 16 years old be admitted to the military with parental consent and be discharged at 16 years old and apply for a gun permit“

Based on that ‘reasoning’, it is impossible not to sense  paranoia in the attitude of OMH’s administrators who ordered these procedures. They are now engaged in predicting the future: let’s ‘convict’ 11 years old kids NOW since surely they (boys and girls) will be enrolled in the army and surely will come out as  ‘terrorists’. Geez!

3) I mentioned in this blog, when the gun law was passed, that the gun law is NOT  a mandate to gun sellers to do a background check. A Mr. Stein (lawyer, I think) came to a similar conclusion during the hearing:

” Safe Act looks like a mandate but it isn’t…it is not an ‘authorization’ nor a ‘mandate’…[because it doesn’t have] mandate language like 33.13″

“it is NOT a mandate because it doesn’t have a ‘must’, [there are] no penalties.”

3) And, as I have been saying ALL along in this blog, Ms. Haroules of the NY Civil Liberties Union said that these laws:

“protect the providers, not the recipients.”

She also said, paraphrasing, that the way in which this gun law was passed, without input from consumers, made a mockery of the legislative process and the system. I said that too before.

That is in a nut shell what transpired in that hearing. In my view, this ought to be in the mainstream media. OMH has, once again, betrayed the people it is mandated to protect.

The political consequences of all this hanky panky with the gun law is hard to ignore. It is like a virus running across the US: dossiers being made of every citizen, classified in this or that category, all by a nation gripped by paranoia.

I have left out comments about stigma and repression and other problems, mostly because I’m focusing here on the political aspect of the issue: the power of the government to control our lives and the police state. I have mentioned all this in other posts. So…

We shall overcome, it will take time, but we shall overcome.

The only way to bring OMH to ‘task’ is by consumers regaining their collective voice and marching in front of OMH with their denunciations: CLEAN THAT REGISTRY! TAKE ALL THOSE NAME OUT!

That’s what the Citywide Mental Health Project is planning to do.The Tea Party and gun lovers had their rally this past weekend in Albany against this registry and law. Over a thousand people attended. WHAT ABOUT US?!

If you are interested in helping us organize a rally in front of OMH, contact us at:

citywidementalhealthproject@live.com

Links:

[2] http://www.nysenate.gov/committee/mental-health-and-developmental-disabilities

[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSae–ouoGE

Madness at OMH: Thousands of mentally ill New Yorkers listed [illegally] in SAFE Act registry

Wow! This is ‘snafu’ in all its glory.

One thing at play here: The seemingly ‘purposely’ releasing of private information about, apparently, ALL people committed voluntarily or not in our psych hospitals. I expect that there will be an investigation into this seemingly wide-spread contagion of forgetfulness about patients privacy rights. This is serious, though.

RELEASING THE LIST OF PSYCHIATRIC IN-PATIENTS

If this doesn’t have ‘conspiracy’ written all over it, its definition must be reviewed.

a) “More than nine out of ten reports so far have come from hospitals or state psychiatric centers — including hundreds [how many hundreds?]of reports filed in a single day in late April by state psychiatric hospitals. [“hundreds’ “in a single day” is too much for it to be a ‘mistake’.]

b) “Yet some reports, testified Wolkenbreit, are being filed by someone other than the mental health provider seeing the patient, and many appear to be computer generated, based on existing patient files.[If only mental health providers can file, who violated the rule and why?]

c) “Benjamin Rosen, a spokesperson for the state Office of Mental Health, acknowledged in an email statement that this spring many [how many is “many”?] psychiatric patients [not in-patients included?] were automatically referred [by who?]to county officials.” 

d) “From March 16, 2013 to May 6, 2013, while OMH was building a reporting portal for state psychiatric hospitals [hmm], reports were initiated [from where and by whom?] based on admissions to state psychiatric hospitals [all people admitted from March 16 to May 6? From All psych hospitals?], although mental health professionals had the ability to prevent reports from being forwarded for those persons who did not meet NY SAFE Act criteria,” said Rosen,…[who are they who did not prevent the reports from being forwarded?]

e) “In many cases [again, how many?] mental health providers listed on the documents, when contacted by community services directors for review, either said that they had not filed the reports… according to Wolkenbreit.” 

So, WHO filed the reports and why? Is the DCS or OMH investigating these ‘false’ reports of people “who did not meet the Safe Act criteria”? Did the psych hospitals receive orders from anyone, in the hospitals or by someone in OMH, to file the reports en mass? What are the chances that all those people working at state psych hospitals could have, at unison almost, made the same mistake of breaking a privacy law they ought to know by heart? How come other institutions, private, did not commit the ‘mistake’?

Did the Department of Community Services forwarded ALL of the names in the report to the NYPD?

“Of the 6,000 reports that have been filed, 11 have been acted upon,” testified Jed Wolkenbreit, counsel to the New York State Conference of Local Mental Hygiene Directors, Inc., citing figures from the state Office of Mental Health.

What does “acted upon” means? That 11 were forwarded to the NYPD or to the Department of Criminal Justice? How many, if any, were sent to the NYPD or to the DCJ?

This is a debacle. This is beyond stigma and violations to HIPPA. Evidently HIPPA is there to protect privacy. It’s PRIVACY and rights that are at stake here.

I’m sure that the NYPD is happy if this ‘error’ provided them with info about who is in mental treatment. The surveillance state has being feverish at work trying to compile a data base of EVERYBODY officially diagnosed as mentally ill. Sure, it’s to ‘protect’ you from yourself and others.

With stigma or without it, our police wants to have a dossier of everyone whom it considers a threat to the establishment, a ‘potential terrorist’. It’s our collective liberty what is at stake here. We, as people with disabilities, are just ONE of the many groups being labeled for ‘security’ purposes.

Everyone ought to stand by us in this debacle. It will happen to you next.

Comment by Lourdes C.

Source: http://www.thenewyorkworld.com/2013/06/03/safe-act-registry/#comment-327403