Transients Proving Hard To Convict

Two transients with a penchant for petty crime are posing a law-enforcement dilemma to prosecutors and police.

Though the two frequently have been caught breaking the law, courts have found them mentally incompetent to stand trial.

And since the men apparently aren’t violent or a danger to themselves, they can’t be involuntarily committed to a mental institution.

City prosecutors have asked police to stop arresting the two because there’s no way to convict them. Judges have ruled that both men are so mentally ill they are incapable of assisting in their own defense.

“We really can’t charge them,” said city attorney Londi Lindell. “A prosecutor, in good faith, can’t file a complaint when there’s no way there’s going to be a conviction.”

But police will continue arresting the men if they’re caught breaking the law, because that’s what police are supposed to do, said Capt. Brent Beden, acting precinct commander for King County.

“It’s not the prosecutor’s job to decide if (criminals) should be arrested,” Beden said.

The two men, one in his 30s and the other in his 40s or 50s, both have lengthy rap sheets for mostly minor crimes, such as stealing merchandise from stores and refusing to quit panhandling on private property.

There doesn’t seem to be any mental health agency that will take the men, Beden said. Both have been evaluated, he added, “and the mental health professionals think they’re goofy, but they’re not dangerous.”

Eleanor Owen, executive director of Washington Advocates for the Mentally Ill, said the case points to a serious loophole in the state’s involuntary commitment laws.

Changes are needed to see that those who need help get it, Owen said.

Under current law, agencies are able to bounce mentally ill people from one agency to another without providing proper treatment, Owen said.

She proposes a change that would give mental health professionals more power to order the involuntary commitment of those who need treatment, whether or not they’re dangerous.