Nurse administrator at the Committee for the Upliftment of the Mentally Ill, Joy Crooks, says removing mentally ill people from the streets is not the solution for preventing incidents like the one that led to the death of a policeman yesterday.
The policeman died after being hit on the head with a stone by a man of unsound mind in Linstead, St Catherine.
His attacker was later shot and killed by the police.
Ms Crooks says removing the mentally ill from the streets presents other challenges.
“When you take them off the streets - where are you going to put them? When you put somebody into a facility, you must have the means and tools to facilitate the kind of treatment - it’s not just removing them from the streets and placing them somewhere else- there is so much more to it moving forward,” she said.
She also said that greater effort should have been made to intervene when the mentally ill man became violent.
She added that the team dispatched to respond to the stone-throwing incident should have included personnel who could have diffused the situation.
“If he does have a mental issue - a mental help support team should have determined the source of his problem. When tehe community service team responded - there needed to be someone you had expertise in this area. They would determine what should be done with that person,” Crooks said.
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