When everyone concerned in a case, parents, spouse, police, know the subject needs serious mental health care, right now, there ought to somewhere to send them.
There isn't. We have cases of subjects spending the weekend handcuffed to a bed in the emergency room. Until the subject actually does something bad, law enforcement cannot do anything, even in those unfortunate cases where everyone agrees that the subject is going to do something really bad in the immediate future.
We ought to have one mental health facility (aka the booby hatch) centrally located (Concord) open 24-7 with a few open beds. The 24-7 is important, the mentally ill seldom blow their tops during normal business hours.
This won't deal with all cases, but doing something about the worst cases has got to be helpful.
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