Maryland is taking a prudent approach to psychiatric care
I was dismayed reading your front-page article "Psychiatric hospitals stand almost empty" (March 14).
Your assumptions that persistent and severely disabled mental patients can always be best served in the community shows a biased position in favor of shifting public money from psychiatric hospitals to community programs, regardless of patients' clinical needs.
You don't comparethe costs in state hospitals with the ones for similar programs in private hospitals. If you did, you would realize how good and efficient state hospitals are.
When you compare hospitals with costs per patient in community programs, you don't specify the costs of the latter. I have never seen this figure, especially when we add all the costs in the community programs, including emergency rooms, medical care, transportation, court cases and police interventions that may become necessary. Mind you, I am not speaking of the much more important human costs -- unnecessary suffering and risks for patients and citizens in our communities.
You could use the same data in your article to praise instead of criticize the state and the Maryland and its Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The state is doing a very good job for these most vulnerable citizens. It has substantially decreased the number of patients in our hospitals in an orderly, clinically sound fashion without new construction. It had been deinstitutionalizing carefully its psychiatric patients, respecting their connections to their communities and respecting the needs of these communities.
I was witness to the public hearings the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene when it was considering closing one of its three metropolitan hospitals. It was a touching example of the democratic process at work and of a great deal of respect for the patients, their families, their caring professionals and the citizens of Maryland.
Dr. Marcio V. Pinheiro, Sykesville
The writer is a staff psychiatrist at the Springfield Hospital Center.
Housekeeping is in order if Klan wants to clean litter
In comparing First Amendment rights of the NAACP and the Ku Klux Klan, Ray Jenkins, in his Opinion Commentary article, "Constitution applies to the Klan, too" (March 15), neglected to acknowledge a significant point: The Klan's goals are to foment hate, prejudice, discrimination and violence against anyone different from its members.
Hate groups should not be allowed to promote their bigotry and fear under the guise of good citizenship.
The Klan represents the antithesis of everything our country stands for and has fought to preserve. The Klan infringes on my and others' constitutional rights with its "white power" slogans and crimes.
If the KKK wishes to clean up litter, it should look at its own twisted perceptions that have littered our nation for generations.
I withdrew my membership from the American Civil Liberties Union when I read about its representation of the Klan. I don't want to be part of an organization that is helping to perpetuate racism and violence against people of any background. I'd rather donate my hard-earned funds to groups working toward real justice and community improvements.
Gaile Herling, Baltimore
Money for Marriott is corporate welfare
Here we go again. The Marriott Corp. threatened to move its headquarters out of Maryland unless we fork over about $40 million in hard-earned tax revenue. Our state leaders quickly acquiesced. Is this why I pay taxes?
Your editorial "Keep Marriott in Maryland" (March 12) gushes over the jobs "saved" and how wonderful it is that Bill Marriott will now be a booster for Maryland, suddenly a much better place for business than was Virginia just a few weeks ago. If the state [and Montgomery County] paid me $40 million for not skipping town, I'd jump up an down and wave the Maryland flag every day, too.
What's to prevent Marriott from threatening this again in the future? What's to stop other businesses in the state from issuing their own ultimatums now that they see how easy it is?
The bidding wars between states to woo and keep business is shameful and wasteful of tax dollars that should be spent on services people really need. For example, I'd bet we could prevent a lot of drug-related crime if we had $40 million worth of new drug treatment slots suddenly available.
The problem is clearly too big for any one state to solve. Instead of encouraging corporate welfare, The Sun should call for a federal solution before our public coffers are completely turned over to greedy corporations.
Dan Jerrems, Eldersburg
McLean's suit against police frivolous, clogs system
Apparently, Jacqueline McClean has nothing better to do than further clog the bloated Baltimore court system, with what is apparently the most frivolous lawsuit ever filed ("Judge allows lawsuit by McLean against police to go forward," March 11). This, despite the unwarranted leniency she received after her crimes were brought to public attention.
David Allen, Baltimore
Getting day in city court is tough when you're a juror
I just finished a stint of jury duty in Baltimore City -- where I am called every 14 months -- as an alternate in a drug case. What a grueling experience.
The first day, several hundred of us were herded into the jury room by 8: 15 a.m. and lined up to receive our $10 payment for the day. (Wake up, Baltimore. Parking is $14 per day).
When were were finally called, the first 300 prospective jurors were taken through the voir dire process, in which the judge qualifies the jurors. This process took several hours while each prospective juror tried any way possible to get out of being selected.
After I was selected as an alternate, I was expected to be in court early the next day. In my case, jurors sat in a small, dark room, with no phone until 3 p.m., when we were finally called for our trial. We heard one witness, and the judge called it a day. We were expected to return the next two days for a similar experience. Of these several days, we as jurors spent a total of about four hours in court.
Considering the lost wages by members of the jury, the fees for the attorneys and court costs, my guess is that the trial cost many thousands of dollars. Guilty or not, I would have rather required the defendant to go to drug rehabilitation, where he may have a better chance.
If more consideration and respect were given to jurors, people would not be making up every excuse imaginable to get out of jury duty, and they would want to do their civic duty.
The voir dire process would be cut in half, creating more time for the cases and moving the system along.
There has to be a better way.
Ann Costlow, Baltimore
Better policies are key to reviving communities
Michael Olesker's column "Drug culture, indifference poison a city neighborhood" (March 4) misses one important point and calls our attention to another.
A commitment to restore declining communities needs to begin "on the ground," with neighborhood residents organizing themselves to reclaim and revitalize their neighborhoods.
This work is marked by small victories, such as the demolition of a troubling grocery store, and requires collaboration among a community-based organization like the Park Reist Corridor Coalition, city and state government, partners in the Hot Spots program and others.
We agree, however, that if we see only the neighborhood level activity and limit our sights to the small victories, we miss the larger point. We believe that authentic revitalization of distressed older neighborhoods, urban and suburban, depends on regional solutions. Disinvestment is due in part to market forces and in larger part to public policies in housing, taxation, land use and transportation, which have fostered (even subsidized) flight from cities.
Only by examining and redirecting the public policies and investments that have driven much of the decline of older communities over the past 50 years can we create the climate of stability and equity in which all the "on the ground" efforts can truly and permanently transform those communities.
Ava Lias-Booker, Alfred W. Barry III, Baltimore
The writers are, respectively, president of the Citizens Planning and Housing Association and chairman of the CPHA committee on the region.
To our readers
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Pub Date: 3/22/99