Quick release of ‘howling man’ shows flaws in mental health care

Last week’s column on “the howling man” in the Bayview attracted lots of interest and has kicked off an important debate in the city.

The man, known as Johnny, is clearly mentally ill and is terrorizing residents on Kirkwood Avenue. He bellows terrible racial and homophobic slurs in the wee hours and has threatened neighbors with violence.

Resident Paul Helder has taken the lead, canvassing neighbors, translating for those who speak Spanish and contacting Bayview police Capt. Raj Vaswani. It seems to have had an effect.

Helder says he called 911 when Johnny acted out last week, and officers showed up so promptly that he was still on the phone when they arrived. Helder said an officer told him, “The captain said to make this a priority.”

The patrol took Johnny away on a “5150,” which is an involuntary mental health detention for someone who is “a danger to himself or others.” Those confined under 5150 can be held for as much as 72 hours.

So good outcome, right?

“A day later he was back, ranting and raving,” Helder said.

Clearly there’s a flaw in the system, says Geoffrey Wilson, president of the Physicians Organizing Committee in San Francisco. He says that the beds are “the most expensive to maintain” and that Director of Public Health Barbara Garcia has elected to channel the money to other uses, like housing.

The result is a steep decline in the number of beds for deeply disturbed psychiatric patients. “At S.F. General, they have gone from 88 psych beds to 19 in the last two years,” he said. “St. Luke’s Hospital shut down 32 psych beds and in 2009 another 20 were closed at the (California Pacific Medical Center) Davies Campus.”

So, when San Franciscans say that it seems as if there are more severely disturbed individuals on the streets, it isn’t our imagination. More than 100 psych beds have been eliminated. Sources at San Francisco General say they simply release disturbed patients when there are no beds.

“That is absolutely the reason you’ve seen an increase in the last five or six years,” Wilson said. “The patients suffer and the community suffers.”

RV kaboom: SoMa’s San Francisco Design Center is where discerning interior decorators go to purchase fine furnishings. If they can find parking.

It seems the streets around the high-end center have become an RV campground. The recreational vehicles appear to be occupied by people who would be homeless if they were not living in the campers.

On some days as many as 12 or 13 RVs fill the parking spaces around the showplace, which is between 15th and Townsend streets. It’s become quite a cause: A petition being circulated to prohibit parking has more than 670 signatures.

Martha Thompson, president of the center, says it would like to find a place for the campers “where they can get some help and services and be out of our area.”

She says that would give customers room to park and “not to be scared by an RV blowing up, which happened three or four weeks ago.”

Thompson says the guess is the explosion was caused by a “Breaking Bad”-style rolling meth lab, but that is only supposition.

Thompson says Potrero Hill activist Tony Kelly has located a lot that could be used for parking. It’s just a few blocks away from the center, but when you are talking exploding RVs, a few blocks can be significant.

Peskin watch: Three interesting votes new Supervisor Aaron Peskin has already made:

•30 Van Ness: Voted yes. Peskin led the vote to reopen the bidding for 30 Van Ness, a city-owned building that is ripe for development, because he felt the bid of $80 million was too low. That makes sense in a hot real estate market. But some, like Tim Colen of the Housing Action Coalition, worry that “we are looking at the top of the market” and a higher bid may not be available. If Peskin is right, it’s a coup. If not, well, it could be a harbinger of lower rents and prices.

•Rolling bike stops: Voted no. Supervisor John Avalos’ measure would make it a low priority to enforce full halts by bike riders at stop signs. That’s fine, except that the measure is basically pointless. Rolling stops are already low priority, so Peskin didn’t back his fellow progressive. “He has a low tolerance for feel-good legislation,” says an insider.

•Warriors arena: Abstained. During his campaign, Peskin told me he would bet “a year’s salary” the Warriors would end up in Mission Bay. But by keeping his name off an official vote he keeps his options open to change sides if this goes south.

Annals of crime, eagle-eye division: From the Richmond District we have the story of the clerk who accepted a $50 bill, but then suspected it might be a fake. The manager called officers who checked the bill and found, according to Capt. Simon Silverman, the following suspicious clues: The bill was “the wrong texture, wrong color, no watermark and the words ‘FAKE FAKE FAKE written on the front ... and COUNTERFEIT” on the back. So yes, it was probably counterfeit.