DUMPSTER FOR THE MENTALLY ILL
Fred Grimm
Published Sunday, September 30, 2001Our dumpster for the mentally ill
There was no place for John Beraglia.Big and loud and disheveled and irrational and tempestuous and frightening, John Beraglia lived as a kind of perpetual trespasser, even behind bars. After scores of police interventions, after countless diversions to crisis stabilization units for treatment of his bursts of madness, after stays in mental hospitals and clinics and a stint in prison, there was no place for him.
After walking away from so many mental health programs, after abandoning government-funded assisted living facilities, after another string of probation violations, after living on the streets, there was no place for him.
After suffering a serious brain injury in a state that offers few public health treatments for that particular trauma, there was no place for him.
After 124 arrests, there was no place for John Beraglia. No place but jail.
Jail, of course, ought not be a repository for the mentally ill. The manifestations of a serious brain injury add to the community's discomfort with his death. It is disconcerting enough for an inmate on suicide watch to die of what the North Broward Detention Center reported was suicide. It becomes much more bothersome when several inmates say they saw deputies beat the resisting Beraglia into submission.
Beraglia died Sept. 16, apparently of head injuries sustained at the jail. Investigators, prodded by the reporting of The Herald's Charles Savage, are trying to determine if the facts match the jail's initial report that he had died after he ``struck his head against the corner of his cell when medical personnel attempted to intervene.''
Whether Beraglia committed suicide in some kind of head-banging frenzy or whether deputies were so outraged by one of the inmate's frequent outbursts that they beat him to death has yet to be sorted out. But the other question will still linger. Why was someone so obviously afflicted by mental illness tossed into the county jail?
Because we simply have no place else but jail for someone like Beraglia.
Technically, Beraglia, 41, was being held on a probation violation, a special mental health court probation growing out of an assault case, an altercation with a county bus driver.
``During the course of this case, he had been in the state hospital, in several crisis stabilization units, in jail,'' said Doug Brawley, chief of the misdemeanor division at the Broward Public Defender's Office.
Perhaps if this had been a first or second or third or fourth or fifth offense, Beraglia simply would have been shipped over to a CSU for a few days and, once stabilized, assigned to some outpatient treatment.
WILD APPEARANCE
But his rap sheet numbered well over 100 arrests -- for trespassing and petty theft and disorderly conduct and fighting and all manner of intemperate behavior. And his outbursts were magnified by his physical appearance. He was muscular and barrel-chested and over 300 pounds, with an unkempt beard and long hair.
``He was wild and crazy-looking. There was no other way to put it,'' Brawley said. ``He was loud and bossy. His hair stuck out in all directions. On the streets, he was a magnet. People looked at him. And he wasn't an introvert.''
He would readily talk to strangers. And those spontaneous conversations could escalate into trouble. It was a manifestation of his mental disorder, probably caused by a serious head injury in a motorcycle accident when he was 16. His problems were aggravated by alcohol and drugs.
And, Brawley said, there was a certain personality trait that made him a regular customer at the public defender's office over the past 20 years. ``He was a free spirit, a rebel. He just didn't like the treatment options out there and didn't participate in them.''
There's something odd about demanding rational behavior from those whose condition, by definition, involves irrational behavior. But most mental health patients, once stabilized, give it a go. Not Big John. He walked away from one program after another and wandered the streets of Fort Lauderdale or Hollywood or Pompano Beach.
FEW ALTERNATIVES
Finally, it came down to the usual paradox in dealing with the mentally ill. His family or his doctors or his friends or his lawyer or his judge couldn't simply pull him off the streets and ship him off to an institution in anticipation of another frightening episode.
The mentally ill can be restrained and treated only when they demonstrate an immediate danger to themselves or others.
Once stabilized, unless Beraglia had committed some truly awful crime, he would have to be freed.
If he had murdered someone, there might have been some real treatment options. But his rap sheet was mostly petty stuff. There was no place for John Beraglia but the County Jail.
``I liked him,'' Brawley said. Big John, his client for more than a decade, would sometimes call just to sing a song. ``He wasn't evil. He wasn't real compliant, and he could be hard to control in any setting. But . . . I'll miss him.
``There was no place for him, '' Brawley said.