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"Witnessing a crime while mentally ill
Or, the other kind of don’t-snitch mentality,
A legacy of State “help”
Getting involved with the State of Oklahoma’s mental health system teaches you several things. First, as far as police are concerned, you are automatically prejudged to be unable either to tell the truth or report reality. So no one has any obligation or incentive to investigate your story. That conveniently saves the police a lot of foot and paperwork.
Second, the State has predefined you as likely to be “dangerous” in any violent or threatening situation. That is how it trains police. Third, any mental health professionals upon whom the police and prosecutor depend are trained to emphasize that you are likely to be dangerous, just to be on the conservative side of “public safety”. You found that out in Mental Health Court, where mental health evaluators prostitute their opinions to justify committing you to their care, and even your public defender won’t bother to vigorously represent you.
So if you happen to be in the vicinity of a violent crime and report it, guess who gets to be the prime suspect. Especially if someone with a malicious bone to pick denounces you as the one likely to have done it. How handy that is for the police, and the criminal, who can easily be the one accusing you. It’s a win-win for them. The police don’t have to work so hard clearing the case, and the criminal gets away with it.
And even if you aren’t the one charged with the crime, you automatically have no credibility in court. You found that out in Mental Health Court, too. A lawyer whose opinions are paid for by the hour, with a client who has the most to gain from it, will tear you to shreds on the stand. “But aren’t you taking medication for a mental illness?”, or “But weren’t you committed to a mental institution on this date?” If you are telling the truth and accurately reporting what you heard and saw, it won’t matter to anyone. Maybe not even to the victim, who might easily be led to believe you did it.
So if you witness a violent crime while mentally ill, what, besides your sense of civic duty, is your incentive to report it or give witness about it in court? When you stand a good chance of suffering as badly as, if not worse than, the victim of the crime. Are you willing to pay that price to do the right thing, when the guilty will likely go free, and you may be crucified in their place?
Who is going to stand up and dispute that reality? The state and local authorities who have predefined and judged you as “dangerous to self or others”, upon any mere or false allegation of threatening behavior? Fan-tastic.
When they treat white people with mental illness this way, it’s not hard to imagine how they have treated black people, now and in the past. Do police and prosecutors really wonder where don’t-snitch distrust comes from without ever bothering to look at themselves, or are they just satisfied with their own superior attitudes and assumptions? Too lazy and conceited to go back and investigate what they wouldn’t before. "
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