Jerome Sherman must have read my blog yesterday because his background piece on Andre Thomas is featured in this morning's Post-Gazette. Or perhaps I am prescient.
I am dissatisfied. The article lays out Mr. Thomas' woes and troubles fairly objectively along with his efforts to turn things around. But anyone who thinks that attending church a few times and talking with the church pastor about communication and church attendance is the groundwork for an intervention …. sigh. What are people thinking? You can't pray away mental illness. Prayer and a faith community can be a good part of a support system, but at what point will someone in his support system put some accountability on Mr. Thomas for his own actions?
Mr. Sherman cannot access Mr. Thomas' records as far as any MH treatments or D&A treatments so we'll never know. And none of that, as I've said all along, justifies police brutality. The police should have used the necessary force to subdue him and that's it. Kicking someone is never part of that equation.
This is going to turn into the poor would-be Christian black man against the big bad police state. What a horrendous way to diminish the life of Andre Thomas. Too bad we can't scrutinize his life a bit more as a human being who needed help against the underfunded mental health system (and maybe the big bad insurance industry but I'm just speculating that he didn't have health insurance as he was self-employed). That might actually help people.
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