An embattled public official will resort to a few quick — but increasingly ineffective — techniques to distract the public from official incompetence, mistakes, abuses, and injuries inflicted on ordinary citizens. One is to demonize anyone who questions official conduct, including courageous and honest public officials. The second is to produce — right from a hat — a study that proves everything is Well and Wonderful.
In Milwaukee County, where the administrator of the Behavioral Health Division presides over a world of abuses, errors, mistakes, and immoral utilitarian policies, they’re trying both defensive tactics to shield government employees and officials. Defenders of the status quo are busy trying to censure the honest politician who revealed Milwaukee County’s abusive and incompetent mental health practices, and now they’ve offered their own study that purports show Milwaukee is performing above national standards.
It’s not an independent study, it’s their own study, that shows these supposed strengths. After federal and state watchdogs listed failure after failure at Milwaukee County’s Mental Health Complex, the people who are accused of incompetency contend that they’re performing above the national average.
But here’s the truth about conduct at the county’s complex, conduct that’s a threat to patients, but also to political ambitions:
Patient advocates and sexual assault treatment professionals said the incidence of sex between patients reported by the county administrators seemed surprisingly low.
The Journal Sentinel reported this month that it had obtained a letter from Milwaukee County Supervisor Lynne De Bruin saying the county’s top mental health administrator, John Chianelli, intentionally housed female patients with men known to be dangerous “because the presence of women reduces the likelihood of the men being violent.”
A federal inspection report on the complex found 11 of 17 patients whose records were reviewed had inappropriate sexual contact during the last half of 2009. One 22-year-old patient from that group became pregnant and another patient was charged with two counts of felony sexual assault.
Disability Rights Wisconsin, which is conducting its own investigation, found that five patients from that same group had been sexually assaulted. A report from the rights group in May found a disturbing lack of concern by hospital administrators over the amount of inappropriate sex among patients.
I wrote that the techniques of blame-casting on honest politicians, and of suddenly producing self-created and exonerating studies, now prove ineffective. I well understand the purpose of these techniques: to create uncertainty, and to make an issue of clear abuse and incompetency seem like a complex, complicated debate between two sides on equal footing.
These techniques would have been more effective when there was no easy way to rebut them. When only a few newspapers and television stations controlled the news, before talk radio, the web, blogs, online newspaper comments, etc., politicians and bureaucrats would have had a much better chance of containing criticism, using these two techniques.
Not now, and it’s evidence of how out-of-step with these new media politicians are that they rely on yesterday’s deceptions to combat today’s truth.
Concerning my small town of Whitewater, I’ve pointed out that wherever and whenever people are able to express themselves freely, they express concerns that politicians ignore. In an unrestricted format, the cheery lies and happy deceptions of career bureaucrats and long-serving incumbents meet — as they would not so often in an earlier era — the truth of residents’ views.
I’ve posted about Chianelli’s policy, and the tragedy that is conduct at the MHC, before. See, A Milwaukee County Bureaucrat’s Immoral Utilitarianism, Update: A Milwaukee County Bureaucrat’s Immoral Utilitarianism, Update 2, Update 3, Update 4, Update 5, Update 6, Update 7, Update 8, Update 9, Update 10, and Update 11