THE UNLOCKED DOOR OF MENTAL HEALTH
An ugly incident shines a light on an ongoing national disaster
The terrible story related in the video above doesn't surprise me. Not because it's a typical New York City summer tragedy. But because the women who pushed the two Mexican tourists onto the tracks is a "neighbor." Ebony Butts has been terrorizing my Brooklyn neighborhood since the spring. She has defecated on the steps of, at least, two local residences and inside a business. She has masturbated in the street in front of a little girl. She has regularly destroyed flowers in people's yards and screamed at passing pedestrians. Over the weekend NYPD detained her for pulling her pants down in the middle of a busy street. And yet Ebony was back out on the streets the other night and at a lower Manhattan subway station where she pushed two tourists onto the tracks. Ebony has a long rap sheet with the most serious offense striking an unsuspecting woman in the face a few years ago. The NYC sheriff's office has had an outstanding warrant to bring her before a judge for over a month. My family and I have monitored her movements, fearful that she'd suddenly lash out at one of us or a neighbor. She's been a ticking clock all summer. This attack could have been avoided if she'd been institutionalized and given the treatment she desperately needs. Instead two women traveling from Mexico were injured and it could have been worse. It made the local news. But the deeper story is an inadequate mental health system in this city, state, and country that is destroying the quality of life in every major city I've lived in or traveled to even before the pandemic. Interconnected with homelessness and drug addiction, our collective mental health emergency is a systemic disaster. It should be a nation priority that both parties need to be addressing. So far it isn’t in the national discourse of the Presidential election, though its an issue in localities from coast to coast. I am crossing my fingers that Ebony finally gets help. Yet I would not be shocked if I saw her walking down a Brooklyn street next week. The revolving door we call "the mental health system" needs a lock.