the hazards of peeing outside at Key West’s homeless shelter and other nasty local and national crime scenes

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Jerry Weinstock, M.D., Psychiatry, retired, sometimes :-), replied to yesterday’s select droppings from the great speckled bird of Paradise, at goodmorningkeywest.com post at goodmorningkeywest.com:

SLOAN: will read all of yours in detail tonight. .
I have no negative reaction to anything in the text
just scanning it—-except when I was engaged in treatment with a patient
number one was to really understand the configuration of problems and issues
that he or she was enmeshed in —give insight -but first trust must be engendered.
Treatment was complex but objectives were determined by the patient-not me.
Relief -not curative was the goal usually —no one can be exonerated completely from
any horror but even thro understanding something strangling could be lessened
and free up an individuals potential , talents , blocked traits , help with some self esteem-
identity clarified —-all in the process -different for each person —washing away all guilt
not possible or all responsibility out of the question.- Increase Quality of life -not easy.but possible.

Your relationship with Kari sounds like it has many facets and parameters..(interesting.)
SLOAN__have a pleasant evening——Jerry

I replied:

Morning, Jerry -

My living situation now limits my ability to do much online after I publish in each morning. More about my living situation in a moment.

I agree with your brief summary of “psychotherapy”. Unfortunately, it can get expensive and take a very long time. The angels have a much faster approach, but it also is much different, and typically the angels want something, or a lot, in return, the details of which vary with each person they help.

The fellow who lets me keep my belongings in his apartment is an a very bad way, due to alcoholism and physical injuries resulting from a crash on his bicycle some months ago, which were resolving for a while, but in the past month have been going the other way, and he’s in constant, acute pain now, and this morning I told him I think he needs to be in a hospital, and he said he has been thinking the same thing, but wants to think about it some more. He has Medicaid and Magellan insurance coverage. He will go into the DTs in the hospital. He will stop smoking cigarettes in the hospital. I told him it might be a good thing, ultimately, if he goes into the hospital. But then, he has a urinary tract difficulty, too, which limits the urine he can discharge to only a little bit each time he pees. He’s having to get up and pee about every half hour. He’s a smart fellow, reads a lot, says he’s presenting classical symptoms of prostate cancer.

When he asked me this morning how I was doing, I said not as badly as he is doing, but worse than I was doing yesterday. I got kicked out of KOTS before 5 a.m. this morning, for a week, because I went outside the back door of the dorm, where I never see anyone, and peed in the tall grass growing beside the dorm. The night monitor saw me on the surveillance video and apprehended me about the time I was done peeing. Said that meant I was kicked out for seven days, it’s in the rules, which he said I agreed I understood when I signed the client’s agreement.

I met him in the office, he showed me the rules, which state just what he told me. I said that was the first time I’d seen that document, and that’s a severe punishment for peeing outside, since I have no place else to sleep at night and the KW west cops won’t let me sleep outside at night, and they might jail me for doing it. He said that was the rule. Did I think it was okay to pee on KOTS property, outside?

I said no, but did he want to know why I did it?

Okay, why?

Because the floors in the bathrooms (which also contain the showers and a little sink) are filthy and I didn’t want to track that filth into the dorm where I and many other men were sleeping.

The bathrooms are cleaned every morning, the monitor said.

I said, I know that, but by nighttime they are filthy.

The bathrooms are cleaned every morning, the monitor said again.

And by night they are filthy, I said again.

I said, I’d lived on the street longer than he probably could imagine.

The monitor said he had lived on the street.

I said, so you peed outside, and when you had to poop, and no bathroom was available, you pooped outside.

Do I think that’s right?, the monitor asked.

I said, a homeless person has a legal right to do it, if the city does not provide a place for a homeless person to do it. That’s been decided by the courts. You heard of the Pottinger case, yes?

Actually, no, I’m not a legal person, the monitor said.

I’m a lawyer, I said. You work at KOTS and never heard of the Pottinger case. Let me tell you about it.

The Pottinger case ruled that homeless people have the right to sleep, pee, poop and cook food outside, if the City of Miami did not offer alternatives. A U.S. District Court decided that case, and that court took all say over homeless issues away from Miami. That court still makes all decisions about Miami’s homeless issues.

That same U.S. District Court has jurisdiction over Key West, and I told the city I would put in into that court, if it did not stop using its police to prevent homeless people from sleeping outside at night, and the city believed me, and that’s how KOTS came into being in 2004.

Pottinger and I are the reason KOTS were built, the reason you have this job.

The monitor said I had to leave.

Now, at this early hour?

Yes.

He said I could take it up with Mike (Tolbert).

I said I was leaving.

Mike is the KOTS manager, and is a friend of mine.

Right before I woke up to pee, which happens before dawn every day, I came out of a longish dream, the last segment of which was a departure from the earlier part of the dream. In the last segment, I was turning to meet and talk with two men.

I understood as I left KOTS this morning, that the last segment of the dream was about what I just described above, and I also understood the angels wanted it to go down just as it went down, otherwise they would have warned me in the dream not to get up and pee outside, but to use the bathroom.

That was not the first time I had gotten up in the dark and gone out the back door of the dorm and peed and then gone back inside and crawled back on the sleeping pad and tried to get some more sleep. For the same reason each time, the floors in the bathrooms were filthy, and I didn’t want to track that filth into the dorm and take off my shoes with that filth on them, and set them beside the sleeping mat.

I also had peed outside a few times outside the KOTS fence, on the sheriff’s property, at after dark, out of sight from anyone else, for the very same reason. The only time I went into the bathrooms was to shower and to poop. I would have preferred to shower and poop outside, if there had been outside showers.

Internally, I was a mess for a while after that this morning.

I found the McDonald’s on North Roosevelt Blvd was open when I got there. So I went in and ordered two breakfast burritos, cost $2.25 plus tax. Then, I had to poop, but the men’s bathroom was being cleaned, because some asshole had gone into there and vomited all over everywhere, and they would not let men use the women’s bathroom.

After that mess got taken care of, I was able to use the bathroom, after a man in front of me got to use it, who was having a real emergency. Then, I left and pedaled toward town, and decided to head to Mallory Pier, maybe I could lie down there and get a little more sleep.

That didn’t turn out to feel comfy to try to do, and then another urge to poop arrived. My bowel is not regular, which makes being homeless even more interesting. The public bathrooms on Mallory Pier were still locked tight, so I pedaled toward Key West Bight, hoping Schooner Wharf was open for its “breakfast club”, the one rule of which is, “No solid food”. No, not open.

So, I pedaled toward Harpoon Harry’s, hoping it was open. Yes, they open at 6:30 a.m. Thankfully, I have a longstanding relationship with the owner and his wait staff and busers, so I was able to use their bathroom, even though I felt guilty about not sitting down for breakfast, but I was still full from McDonald’s. But for Harpoon Harry’s, I would have sought bushes somewhere to relieve myself, and I would not have felt a twitch of guilt.

From Harpoon Harry’s. I pedaled out to White Street Pier, where I laid down on my towel and used my daypack for a pillow, and was able to catch a quick nap, but no dream telling me how to proceed. Somewhat refreshed, and now considerably more settled down inside, emotionally, mentally and in my soul, I pedaled to my friend’s place, to get my laptop and charger, so I could write up today’s fun report.

That’s when he and I discussed him going to the hospital.

Heading from his place to Sippin’ Internet Cafe, where I am now, using their Wi-Fi, drinking a V-8 juice I bought from them, I understood that I need to move straight into all of this, and not try a reverse and call my friend Todd German and ask him if I can come back and stay with him for a week in his home on Cudjoe Key, until KOTS will take me back.

What do I know? Maybe I will get treated by KWPD to a month in the county jail. I never did anything like that before. Might round out my homeless experiences, as being put in jail is something most homeless people around here have experienced. So, why not me, too?

This is no joke, Jerry. But it would put a serious crimp in my doing what I can to keep Kari from going nuts in the jail, because, me in jail, she and I don’t get to visit or talk on the telephone. Then, all we have is letters.

Not staying at KOTS at night will probably kill my visiting Kari on the mornings her unit allows visitation. Afternoon and evening visitation will be easier for me to do. If she is free from JIP class, I can see her around 3 p.m. this afternoon. I imagine she will freak out learning I can’t stay at KOTS. I freaked out when I heard it this morning, but I did not make a commotion about it.

If KOTS clients all did what I did, that would be a real problem. The rule is fair, despite the filth in the bathrooms at night. But the 7 days away penalty is punitive, not a wrist slap, I told the monitor this morning.

I will call Mike Tolbert after a while and tell him what happened and to read today’s post at goodmorningkeywest.com.

Just another fun day in the angels’ harnesses, they never run out of new rides in their amusement park.

Sloan

In the main part of the dream I described to Jerry, there was something about a horse I had bet on, or perhaps me, winning the Belmont Stakes, which is the 2nd of the races in the Triple Crown.

Perhaps that foretold the 2 men in the last part of that dream, and the ride out of KOTS this morning. Perhaps it foretold an update in last Friday’s Key West the Newspaper (thebluepaper.com), and an article on today’s Key West Citizen (keysnews.com).

The blue paper article and reader comments:

**BREAKING NEWS UPDATE**: Cop Involved in In-Custody Death of Charles Eimers Arrested Last Night For Assault

The Citizen article, my interjected comments in bold italics:

Matthew Murphy

Thursday, June 25, 2015
Policeman cleared in Taser case
BY GWEN FILOSA Citizen Staff
gfilosa@keysnews.com

A Key West police officer did nothing wrong when he used a stun gun to stop Matthew Murphy from fighting on Duval Street in 2011, the Citizen Review Board decided this week, as a federal lawsuit over the case continues.

The Taser blast knocked Murphy, then 27, to the ground, where he struck his head on a concrete wall and then the sidewalk. He never recovered from his injuries and remains in a coma to this day.

It’s not the police department’s fault, the Citizen Review Board (CRB) concluded Monday.

“Mr. Murphy made a series of bad decisions which caused him to be Tasered,” said Arthur Dennison, a member of the Citizen Review Board. “Bad decisions often cause bad consequences.”

Murphy, who is white, was walking along Duval with his pregnant girlfriend, who is black, on April 16, 2011, when a white couple began taunting them with racial slurs.

The slurs came from the white woman, her boyfriend, the white man, tried to talk Murphy down, said his girlfriend was drunk, just keep moving, let it go, and Murphy hit the white man.

Officer Mark Siracuse responded to a call of a fistfight, later saying he stopped Murphy from punching Jason Moffet a second time.

Murphy’s family is suing the city and Siracuse in federal court, saying Murphy didn’t know a police officer was behind him when Siracuse “came up from behind Murphy quietly without warning,” according to the suit that has only just started, said attorney Robert Cintron, who advises the CRB.

Moffet, in a videotaped interview with a local news outlet, has agreed that the officer never identified himself and that Murphy had no idea what was coming.

But in a 4-2 vote led by Dennison on Monday, the volunteer CRB sided with police and put to rest a complaint by Murphy’s girlfriend Marie Annulysse that Officer Mark Siracuse used excessive force and did not announce his presence before deploying the Taser.

Murphy chose to walk about Duval Street at 3:40 a.m., Dennison added, and also chose to remove his shirt and punch a man.

Siracuse said he identified himself as police before being forced to use his stun gun to stop Murphy. Both the police and the State Attorney’s Office cleared Siracuse of any wrongdoing in separate investigations.

“Officer Siracuse acted correctly,” Dennison said, joined by CRB members Michael Behrend, Kathleen Ford and Hayward Magby in the vote.

Meaning, these 4 CRB members, and the KWPD, believed Siracuse identified himself to Murphy before using his taser? Or meaning, it didn’t matter to those 4 CRB members and KWPD whether or not Siracuse identified himself to Murphy?

Siding against the police officer would send a message to the community, Dennison said, and could cause officers to second guess themselves in emergency situations.

“Then crime and violence will rise in the city,” Dennison said.

Annulysse, who is raising Murphy’s toddler son in Key West, filed a complaint with the CRB last summer, saying she hadn’t known of the police review process before then.

Dissenting were board members Tom Milone and Joe Pais. Each argued that there is plenty of evidence showing Siracuse approached Murphy from behind and — without warning — used his stun gun on an unsuspecting Murphy.

“None of the witnesses said they heard Officer Siracuse announce his presence or give any type of a warning,” Milone said, adding that the Taser gun’s video footage backs that up. “The commands should have been uttered before the Taser was employed.”

That doesn’t matter, Ford said.

“We keep getting stuck on the resistance,” Ford said. “I don’t think he did resist. The officer wasn’t obligated to announce himself if he’s walking in on an act of active violence. He was there to protect the citizen who was being attacked. He took the judgment call.”

So, Ford, you sided with Siracuse, even though the weight of the evidence was that Siracuse lied about identifying himself to Murphy? What kind of precedence does lying police officers set?

Murphy’s brain injury was directly caused by Siracuse’s actions, Pais said, reminding the panel that Murphy was vomiting blood after he dropped to the ground.

Well, that’s a bit of a stretch for me. I don’t see how Siracuse could have anticipated this disaster, and, come on, Pais. Murphy did attack the racist woman’s boyfriend, who had not uttered racist remarks, had he? And who was trying to talk Murphy down, wasn’t he?

“The Taser was used without announcement,” Pais said. “There was no threat to the officer or anyone else at the scene at that moment.”

Police maintain that Siracuse identified himself and appropriately used his stun gun when Murphy resisted his commands to stand down.

“The video doesn’t show what happened before it starts,” said Sgt. Joe Tripp, the internal affairs division chief. “It’s very easy to say, ‘Stop. Police,” in less than one second.”

Well, that’s true, Sgt. Tripp, but you have the man Murphy attacked saying Siracuse blindsided Murphy without saying anything. So, no matter what eye witnesses say, a police officer’s statement of what happened is all IA needs to exonerate that police officer, is how this comes across to me. I wonder how the blue paper will deal with this CRB ruling. The blue paper broke the case, and but for the blue paper, the CRB and Key West never would have heard of Matthew Murphy. The Citizen article should have given the blue paper credit. If the blue paper reports the CRB ruling, I hope it will also report what Naja and Arnaud Girard told me, which was Matthew Murphy had a premonition, if he went with his girlfriend to Duval Street, he would have trouble with the police, and he put her off, but finally he agreed to go to Duval Street, and he had trouble with the police - after he did not let it go and walk away, and attacked the racist woman’s boyfriend.

Siracuse, like other officers facing complaints in the past, didn’t appear at the CRB meetings.

gfilosa@keysnews.com

Then was this national fun waiting for me in my Facebook account this morning:

John W. Gilmer shared Occupy Democrats‘s photo.

Yesterday at 8:35am ·

Occupy Democrats

This cannot be stressed enough.

Image by Occupy Democrats.

sloanbashinsky@outlook.com