This June, 13 police officers completed a 3-day training program designed to teach them how to teach and train their fellow colleagues in dealing with people with mental issues.  The goal is to have them return to their departments and set up training programs to defuse and help the person, rather than to use force and arrest.

Officers are taught how to recognize that the person is mentally ill and to use non-threatening mannerisms, rather than arrest and control techniques.  Try to present a calm situation, not a chaotic one.  Avoid sirens, lights and threats.  Speak softly; reassuring them they will not be hurt.

The person most likely is frightened.  One must listen to them speak and reassure them, using eye contact and show a friendly approach, one on one, not a group of officers. “It’s an area where we need much more work”, states J. LaFazia, District Court Chief.

Richard Crino designed the program after seeing officers unsure of what to do when handling mentally ill people.  The program is in the second year.  Three deaths of emotionally disturbed men in 2008 helped move this program forward.  Thirty-five officers from various departments have been trained, 25 certified to train others.  A $30,000 grant from the Department of Mental Health and Retardation was used to develop, set standards and certify trainers.

“It’s another tool that will help the police to do their job better,” says Lt. Robin Winslow, Coventry police.

Since many of our homeless people have mental and emotional issues, this may prevent their arrest and losing their possessions they have stashed away or at shelters.  Also it could save them from starting over again after release.

By Andrew Spooner

A star in the night sky burns
They say one person can make a difference
With God’s help you can…
A flower opens in the morning
They say people are like flowers
With God’s help you can…
A whale makes a big splash
They say good character rises to the top
With God’s help you can…
An eagle can see great distances
They say we should write our goals
With God’s help you can…
A wolf is persistent
They say persistence provides
With God’s help you can…
A man is in the likeness of God
They say mankind is the most noble
With God’s help you are.

By JoAnn Dyes

Diana Freeman, a petite blonde woman with compassion bigger than she is, came into the shelter system in November of 2009.

Attending a speak out began her involvement with RIHAP Speakers Bureau-Voices of the Homeless, while she was vice chair and Secretary.

She is active with the winter shelter service at Mathewson Church 2009-2010 season.

Diana has been working since March 2010 to facilitate a respite care facility.

Storming the State House to replace NOP funding and Hate Crimes against the homeless, both actions were successful.

You may have seen her on TV as part of the Nothing Campaign for the food bank of RI. You might see her around registering people to vote.

Her speaking engagements are to students, facility, professional people and religious groups, while she does outreach and advocacy with her peers.

In the immediate future she hopes to offer ballroom dance classes to anyone on Street Sights, RICH and Speaker Bureau, as a thank you for allowing her to be part of all they do.

But we want to thank her for being and doing everything she does. You are a light in the dark.

“Ciia, keep your eyes on me”, he urged. Unlike my previous journeys above the sky in ships, I was floating freely. My Zzolan form enshrouded within his. He said nothing for above all things, and from now on, I needed to observe and listen. Soon my home world was overtaken by the brightness of its sun: other planets joining its glowing aura — we were gaining speed. “We are traveling to Kye-terra”, he said. I knew of that world. We had never visited it as it was beyond the range of our starships. The clouds below us gave way to a beautiful scene of rocky steppes, and to the south and east, an endless sea of sandy plains and dunes. This world had no seas, only strangely beautiful ochre colored deserts and flat basins that seem to have no end. Unlike other desert worlds I knew about this planet had no life forms: no cacti, nor any kind of insect. When we landed we saw that the ground was dry, wind-scoured valleys were littered with billions of round stones of every size — perennial winds had sculpted them in-situ. Hidden in a quaint serpentine valley my father had once built a small dwelling for a special daughter’s Quest. He gave me a small leather pouch, and asked me to keep it in my pocket.

“Keep this with you at all times. I will be with you, in the shelter, but you will not be able to see or hear me.”

“What will happen to me?”

“This world will show you its harshness, at first as a whimper, later, as rage.”

“Is this world alive so it can hate me?”

After a quiet time he brought me to a high plateau where he pointed out a distant mountain where a telltale wisp of turbulence hung like a borealis. “It is beginning,” he said. I turned to him, but he vanished. The dreaded storm came swiftly just as my father had said, first as a tiny breeze, followed by stronger gusts. The shelter was strong, built with the round stones that littered the landscape. My window to the world was a very narrow slit in a north-facing wall: a lookout. Soon hot sand began to shoot through it. I sealed the windows with wet sand and pebbles. The storm retained the same intensity for another week, but my food and water supplies were running low. Father said there would be more water under the shelter, in a glass cylinder — but prospects of my going out safely grew bleaker by the hour. I had edible roots at the ready, in a storage box. By the third night the steady winds began to intensify.

The small stones soon imploded like gunshot and could not be re-packed. I thought of using larger stones, but it was clear that venturing outside would be impossible, but even the fierceness of these latest bouts were bearable, that was until the next morning. The dark clouds blocked out all hope of stillness; the storm blew with the ferocity of that which my father had alluded, hammering away at the shelterís walls, which began to weaken. I hunkered next to the root box. “Father, show yourself? This is enough.” The storm kept roaring and soon the walls caved in. The full force of the storm bore down on me. Sand grains and stones were pelting me from every side. The root box and all its contents went flying every which way. Then, when all seemed lost, I remembered the small pouch: it contained a ceremonial pebble, not mine but my mother’s. Those were normally kept by the family of the candidate.

Surprisingly it was my mother’s clear stone: representing her final attainment: Empathy. “Why was I given this?” I thought. As a child I had held it often in my hands, and knew every crevice on its tiny surface, aside from its great significance I knew it had no magical properties, or any power to save me. “Why this stone?” I thought. Then all went black.

To be continued…

By Jenifer Bleecker

The time for change isn’t tomorrow,
Not the next month or the next year,
But the today is the time we follow,
And to set aside our fear.

The world is changing very fast,
And the time is not stopping,
But the beauty of the world should last,
So we have to do everything.

Poverty and hunger is a major problem
And education to us is a must,
But we must promote gender, equality
And empower women so we wouldn’t turn to dust.

The increasing of child mortality
Is beginning to start an alarm,
And the risk of our mother’s pregnancy
Is more crucial than just getting harmed.

HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
Are killing most of our people, if not all;
But we must prevent the causes
That set us down to fall.

We shouldn’t care just for ourselves,
But to care for the environment
And all the problems will be solved.
If we should join, join to develop
A Global Partnership for the Development
For, THE TIME FOR CHANGE.

Roger Bryant was up in years.  He had been a heavy smoker.  He also had cancer.  Due to the cancer, he had a lung removed and had to give up smoking.  Later, he had half of his other lung removed.  Cancer returned again.  There was nothing they could do for him this time.

Roger was also in prison in R.I. at the ACI.  It costs $38,000 a year to keep a person in prison.

Some inmates, like Roger, require hospitalization.  Being a prisoner, that requires a Correctional Officer (CO) to be at his bedside every hour of the day to prevent his escaping while he is chained to the bed in a hospital.  Of course, that is overtime pay, 24 hours a day.

But RI has a loophole.  It is called Medical Parole.  It is found in RI General Laws 13-8.1-4, “Permanently physically incapacitated”.  The illness with “a reasonable degree of medical certainty will result in death within six months,” can be granted Medical Parole.  So, by granting someone who is dying a parole, they can shift responsibility from the Department of Corrections to the Medical Departments, saving them the medical bills plus the overtime.

Roger was paroled to a hospital under terms of General Law 13-8-16.  “Upon the terms and conditions that the board may see fit in its discretion to prescribe and the acceptance of the permit by the prisoner shall constitute an agreement on —the prisoner to abide by and conform…”

I met Roger back in prison 7 ½ months later.

“Roger, what happened?  I thought you made medical parole!”

“I did. But I got violated.”

“Violated?  What did you do?”

“It’s not what I did.  It’s what I didn’t do!”

“So what didn’t you do?”  I expected he did not take his medication or gave the staff a hard time.

“I didn’t die within the six months.”

He wasn’t kidding.  I saw his papers.

Section 13-8.1-4k:  “A release may be revoked for violation of conditions otherwise applicable to parole.”  Medical Parole stipulates you die within 6 months!

He didn’t.  Moral of the story:  On medical parole, DIE, or go to prison!

By Francisco Luis Gonzalez

Is “homelessness” the right term to use for being without a place to live?  Perhaps it should be “shelterlessness”, or “bedlessness” or “rooflessness”. Having no home implies a loss greater than a mere place to live. But let’s not tinker with the word, because, after all, it is the right word —it just needs to be understood: sometimes words, out of common usage, lose the poignancy of meaning. What is a home then? Is it the place where one feels safe, reflects on the memories of the past, and grieves its loss when it is lost?  But for many, such a home never existed; it cannot be lost because it was never found.  One can have a place to live and yet be internally homeless. Many search all their lives for the “dream”—while others grieve its loss when it was theirs for a short season: a happy childhood marred by tragedy or altered by a multitude of other factors which destroyed its hope.

A home then can be a tent, a cardboard box, or the inside of a culvert.  What is needed is to feel safe, to have the liberty to dream, and to be surrounded by friends (sometimes friends are closer than family). Ending homelessness may be commonly associated with acquiring houses or apartments, but it really has to do with healing the emotional wounds that somehow, in the downward spiral of society, poverty and materialism afflict us. Take a lesson from the birds. They build comfortable nests, but if there is too much human interference they will abandon them! A home is much more than a place to ruffle feathers­—home is where our dreams are.

The hearing sought information on RIPTA’s plan to close the $3.7 million deficit for FY 2011, higher fare that started on September 1st, from $1.75 to $2.

FY 2011 is the beginning of the downward spiral. RIPTA is preparing a five-year projection of slowly decreasing services.

Many Rhode Islanders who attended the meeting, expressed their concerns. “What’s going to happen if they take my route away? I won’t be able to get to work. Then how am I going to pay my rent and bills? What am I going to do then?” stated one concerned citizen. “The fare increase is one thing. But to take some of the routes away is another. They will leave people out in the dark.”

Summary of Proposed Changes:

• First year: Seven lower performing routes eliminated.
• Second year: System shut-down at 9:00pm, Route segment and headway reductions.
• Third year: 10 weekend routes and all Park n’ Ride services eliminated.
• Fourth year: All holiday service and 10 routes eliminated.
• Fifth year: Frequency reductions on 17 urban routes.

By Jim Goulet

Lift up your heart
To the grateful sky
Love the earth, do your part
Let your imagination fly…
Ponder on ways to save all life
Which radiate from the coral seas
To the rain-forest light
From the greed of termite-people, please
Do your part
People who care not of dying animals on their knees
Meanwhile in the rainforest, the bulldozer knocks down trees
To all caring people I ask you please,
To do your part.

The new law allows and helps a person who pleads no contest or guilty to a crime to be able to tell future employers or landlords that they have never been convicted.

Expunged records are taken from public view, giving people the change to start over and get on their feet once again, without having to worry about their record getting in the way.

Many who get out of prison are homeless, having lost everything going into prison. Now having a record makes thing that much harder.

There are some cases that won’t be able to be expunged:

1) Violent crimes (murder, sexual, kidnapping, etc)

2) Cases that are open now (a person who’s guilty of a felony must wait 10 years after completing their sentences, 5 years for a misdemeanor);

3) Prior convictions (only cases of first-time offenders are eligible for expungement)

But there is some confusion as to whom the law applies. Because of those legal standards, judges use a wide variety of discretion in deciding who will get an expungement. The judge only needs to be satisfied with the person’s rehabilitation and seems to have a “good moral character” and that expungement is “consistent with the public interest.” Court spokesman Craig N. Berke said the new law appeared to be prospective and a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office acknowledges that a law is not usually retroactive “without specific language making it retroactive.”

Groups like the criminal defense lobby, prisoner advocates and the minority community argued to pass this bill because of a criminal record hinders people from getting jobs and in some cases, getting housing. That is why the passing of this bill was high priority.