The county mobile crisis teams do great work, but the Oct. 16 article about plans for a statewide crisis line ignored a yawning gap that will persist, despite an improved call system. Police will continue to respond first and alone, both to mental health calls where there are safety considerations and also to numerous calls where the mental health aspect is unknown until the first officer arrives. This will always be a sizable number of calls. Here is why: The Minneapolis Police Department alone handles more than twice the annual number of adult crisis calls than does Hennepin County's mobile teams — a fact hidden in the article's stats. County mobile crisis teams will remain unable to assist police in a timely manner, or at all, because they aren't embedded (a systems problem) and have limited capacity. The new funding intended to bring county teams up to capacity in 2017 doesn't even consider increased demand created by better diversion from law enforcement — an effect of an improved call system.
Clearly, we need mental-health professionals who are permanently assigned to handle calls involving the police, readily available because they're embedded with the police, and more effective because they are positioned to provide the highest level of collaboration between providers and police. Embedded mental health coresponders fill the yawning gap that has been too easily ignored, and without them, a significant portion of mobile mental crisis response in Minnesota will continue to be provided by police officers with 40 hours of training.
Kathy Czech, Minneapolis
2016 CAMPAIGN
Social conservative's base assumptions are flawed
Shame on you, Dr. Steve Calvin, for giving readers the false impression that U.S. law does not impose limits on abortion based on gestational age ("What's a voter like me to do? The social conservative," Oct. 16, part of the "What's a voter like me to do?" series that has appeared in Opinion Exchange over the past month). Calvin stated, "The U.S. joins only China, North Korea and Canada in effectively having no gestational age limits on abortion." From the Guttmacher Institute, Oct. 1, 2016: "The circumstances under which later abortions are permitted vary from state to state [in the U.S.] Forty-three states prohibit some abortions after a certain point in pregnancy. Twenty-four states permit later abortions necessary to preserve the life or health of the woman." Like the U.S., Australia has some states and territories that do not have gestational age limits on abortion. Many countries permit late abortions on socioeconomic grounds, including rape and severe fetal impairment.
Sara Langer, Minneapolis
• • •
Among the many wildly inaccurate statements and opinions expressed as facts in Calvin's commentary were "Nixon's … impeachment" and "our 42nd president" getting a free pass on his immorality.
Richard Nixon was not impeached (resigning before the House of Representatives voted on the Articles of Impeachment). Bill Clinton was (by the House), but was acquitted in the subsequent trial conducted by the Senate.
Robert W. Carlson, Plymouth
• • •
Calvin states that he will be casting a write-in vote for U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio in this year's presidential election. He should know that if he casts such a vote, it likely won't be counted.
In national, state and county races, Minnesota counts write-in votes for candidates who have formally applied for status as write-in candidates. Unless Rubio applies for such status by Nov. 1 (to the best of my knowledge, he has not), Calvin's vote will be discarded, along with write-in votes for everyone from Sen. Bernie Sanders to Mickey Mouse.
Ben Gildner, Austin
RULE OF LAW
False equivalence and a peculiar urge to blame baby boomers
D.J. Tice (Oct. 16) is correct to be concerned about threats to the rule of law during this contentious election. However, his commitment to "both sides do it" only serves to normalize the toxicity of Donald Trump. Trump threatens to use the power of the presidency to jail a political opponent. Hillary Clinton has a list of ideological attributes that she would use in choosing Supreme Court nominees. Tice acknowledges that Trump's threat is extreme, and that Clinton is not the only one to want to advance a particular agenda in the SCOTUS process — gee, do you think, 200-plus days into congressional Republicans' refusal to consider the Merrick Garland nomination for purely partisan reasons? — but he still conflates the two. With Trump now spreading distrust and anger toward the integrity of the election process, it is time to call his words out as a unique and unprecedented danger to democracy. Trump's extremity stands alone.
Mary Katherine Mahoney, Long Lake
• • •
There seems to be a trend lately to blame much of what's wrong with America on the baby boomer generation. Tice makes this amazing generalization: "The '60s generation's careless disdain for sundry traditional standards and boundaries, it's signature blend of moral vanity and moral squalor, and it's insatiable taste for the apocalyptic have become the ethos of the age."
Apparently the counterculture of those times is now responsible for Trump and Clinton.
Really? The counterculture I remember stood for freedom, women's rights, equality for all, brotherhood and sisterhood, love, and seeking a strong spiritual base to our lives.
That's the antithesis of Donald Trump. I'm not really sure where Clinton is on that spectrum, because she seems to change depending on what audience she's talking to. It's fairly clear, though, that both Donald and Hillary were busy elsewhere and missed the counterculture.
Yes, that was a messy era, as are most times of great cultural change, but, no, you can't blame this year's vacuum of strong and moral leadership on the hippies. It should be noted that the greatest spokesperson of that generation just won the Nobel Prize.
