Passage of AB 1421 brings hope to tens of thousands of people. The coalition supporting its passage over these past few years was extraordinary and included ...

FAMILY MEMBERS "My mother has been showing signs of the illness schizophrenia for seven years or more. It tears me up inside everyday that when I look into my mother's eyes, they aren't hers anymore. She is removed from all that she once knew about the world. She has turned into a recluse and produces accusations of espionage everyday. ... My life would be so completely wonderful if that bill becomes a reality. I could have my mother back in some form or another."
- Name withheld, as author is only 16, letter to TAC

JUDGES "These persons wander the streets hungry, homeless, and without hope. They cycle through our hospitals and are released with no assured after-care or plan to meet their human needs -- and, all too often in my experience, wind up in our jails and prisons, not because they are criminals but because there simply is no place for them in our society."
- Judge Harold Shabo, letter to the Governor, Sept. 2002

LAW ENFORCEMENT "It is society's job to help those who cannot help themselves. Nobody knows this better than law enforcement officers. And nobody knows more than we do the dangers of facing down a person who has had a psychotic break, who is not rational, who may believe we are aliens or that we mean them harm."
- California police chiefs Bernard K. Melekian and Joseph Santoro, June 2002

LEGISLATORS "I hated this bill when it was first introduced four years ago," said local state Sen. Martha Escutia, D-Norwalk, chairwoman of the powerful [judiciary] committee [that passed the bill]. "But, now I am confident that the due process protections are there at every step of the way to protect their rights."
- Whittier News, Aug. 14, 2002

EDITORIAL BOARDS "Based on New York's "Kendra's Law," AB 1421 achieves a delicate balance between a society's responsibility to protect the safety of its citizens and an individual's right to absolute freedom."
- San Francisco Chronicle, July 31, 2002

EDITORIAL BOARDS Imagine a train wreck that scatters passengers across the landscape. Paramedics arrive and begin loading the injured onto stretchers. But when anyone screams out in pain, "No! Don't touch me!" the medics nod compassionately and leave that person sprawled amid the rocks and cactuses. A similar scene has been unfolding on the urban landscape for the last 40 years. People with severe mental illness, tossed from state hospitals, have landed on public sidewalks and in wretched urban encampments. And no one helps them because they say they don't want help.
- Los Angeles Times, April 14, 2002

RESEARCHERS "We concluded that outpatient commitment can help an individual adhere to a beneficial regimen of psychiatric treatment, and may also influence the mental health service system by getting case managers more invested in outreach, in mobilizing resources and in leveraging more services on behalf of a patient."
- Los Angeles Times, Jeff Swanson, May 1, 2001

PARENTS "If people overwhelmed by severe mental illness, like Abrams [who killed the author's 4-year-old daughter], were instead placed in mandated community treatment, they could get well enough to knowingly exercise and enjoy their civil rights. Meanwhile, our right to live in a safe and secure society would be protected."
- Los Angeles Times, Cindy Soto, Jan. 27, 2001

SIBLINGS "My parents lived in sorrow and fear for their youngest child. They died without being able to get her the help she needs. Even the late Assemblyman Frank Lanterman realized, after observing the unintended effects of the legislation he sponsored, that this law had come to 'prevent those who need care from receiving it.'"
- Los Angeles Times, Norah Schumacher, June 11, 2000

ACTIVISTS "Had my sister-in-law been provided treatment under the criteria and structure proposed in AB 1800, the cost to the state might have been $20,000. Instead, expenses for her trial and restricted hospitalization are close to $2 million."
- Los Angeles Times, Carla Jacobs, July 13, 2002