Last week, coroner Géhane Kamel asked a very pertinent question during the public inquest into the death of police officer Maureen Breau. She was killed by a repeat violent offender who was released multiple times in the name of the principle of non-criminal accountability.
Posted at 7:00 p.m.
She questioned what sense there is in the fact that the Quebec Commission for the Study of Mental Disorders (CETM) imposes conditions on patients when there are often no consequences for failing to comply with these conditions1.
The CETM is this administrative court that decides the fate of citizens who have been declared not criminally responsible due to mental disorders.
Officer Breau's killer, Isaac Brouillard Lessard, was used to being arrested for violent acts2. He had even attacked his psychiatrist twice. Before he killed policewoman Breau, he had punched his concierge in the face. It wasn't enough for him to be interned.
And all this despite the fact that he had been sent back into society by the CETM. This commission can set conditions for release, such as refraining from drug use. Ms. Breau's murderer consumed it copiously despite his conditions, which increased his delusions and violence…
But Brouillard Lessard was not closely monitored by the health system, which, as everyone knows, is already overwhelmed.
I want to emphasize this: in the building where he lived, everyone was afraid of Brouillard Lessard.
Coroner Kamel asked this question about the benefits of CETM on Tuesday. But through a terrible irony of fate (or an uncanny sense of timing), Fabio Puglisi, a man with a profile similar to Brouillard Lessard, is said to have murdered two people (including his mother) in addition to massacring a third. . stabbing.
Fabio Puglisi had also gone through the imperfect CETM filter twice in the past. I quote La Presse3: “In 2020, the Commission for the Study of Mental Disorders (CETM) was also responsible for assessing the mental state of Mr. Puglisi, who was then accused of selling a fake Riopelle bar on the Kijiji website.” “Due to his mental state, the defendant no longer poses a significant threat to public safety,” the organization concluded at the time. Mr. Puglisi, who was hospitalized for a month in 2011 “in a paranoid delusion after attacking a motorist on the highway,” made “remarkable” progress, particularly because he was “in good company.” “He is taking the medication as prescribed. He also notices that he is feeling much better by taking his medication,” the decision states. »
A week before the two murders last Thursday, Puglisi had apparently attacked a passerby, whom he knew neither from Eve nor from Adam, in the middle of the street in Vaudreuil-Dorion, near the building where he is suspected of killing him have mother and a neighbor4.
PHOTO CHRISTINNE MUSCHI, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVE
The Vaudreuil-Dorion building where Fabio Puglisi lived and where he is suspected of a double murder last Thursday.
I'll stress this again: Puglisi was scary in the building where he lived. People refused to get on the elevator with him.
I know very well that psychiatry is not physics, that it is not an exact science. I know very well that prison is not the place to detain people who hear voices in their heads who believe they are Christ or who sincerely believe that the neighbor wants to kill them. I'm not saying we should lock up everyone with a mental illness.
However, if you talk to psychiatrists who have minimal knowledge of the dynamics of violence, they will tell you this: The best predictor of future violence is past violence.
However, in 2011, Fabio Puglisi attacked a driver during a state of paranoid delirium and this condition justified his release.
Two weeks ago he was accused of attacking an unknown woman on the street for no reason.
He was arrested and released. And a week later, Puglisi was charged with double murder.
Why is there no red flag in these people's records, especially in the name of the principle that past violence is a good predictor of future violence? Given his violent past, why wasn't Fabio Puglisi detained for investigation immediately after his arrest for attacking an unknown woman on the street? Why this excessive laxity?
Such a catastrophic scenario repeats itself regularly in Quebec, and coroner Kamel is in the process of tracing its outlines as part of a public inquiry into the death of an SQ police officer.
The scenario goes like this: the CETM blindly discharges even if a patient does not comply with conditions that cannot be enforced by overwhelmed social workers anyway, the police are completely unaware5 that a person accused of violent acts is already criminally innocent was explained and, stupid, said the violent and repeat offender, ended up killing his father, his mother, his neighbor or complete strangers.
And I'm not even focusing on that other blind spot in the medical-legal system: the patient who has never been found criminally innocent, but who exhibits troubling behavior that is denounced by his family. …
What do the police say?
Police say sorry, we can't do anything, he didn't… do anything.
And the next day (or the day after) the police arrested the man who had supposedly gone crazy for murder.
He killed with a knife6, with an iron rod7.
This is a serious problem: the medical-judicial system that decides on the release of violent patients in the name of the laudable principle of non-criminal accountability is blind, deaf and mute to violent repeat offenders8. The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing, and even if it did, the patient has the right to confidentiality of his file9…
At the heart of this system is a CETM that has no statistics on the number of its released “customers” who later kill others. As always in this province, compiling statistics is too complicated a task for our institutions.
We must therefore decide to compile anecdotes by hand. Here are the names of some of the people who were shot or injured by violent patients in Quebec in recent years and who should never have left a psychiatric hospital: James Jardin, Chantal Cyr, Annie Baillargeon, Gérard Lalonde, Suzanne Desjardins, Huiping Ding, Chong Soon Yuen, André Lemieux, Mohamed Belhaj, Alex Lévis-Crevier, Jacques Côté, Maureen Breau…
Let me know if I forget anything.
I know it's crazy to have to say this, but I'll say it anyway: it's wonderful to have respect for the rights of violent repeat offenders or people whose threatening behavior is dictated by imaginary friends…
But the neighborhood and the people around these people also have the right to live without fear of being stabbed, shot, or hit by a car by someone who should be treated in a psychiatric hospital.
1. Read the article “Death of Policewoman Maureen Breau: A psychiatrist who previously prosecuted Brouillard Lessard testifies at forensic examination.” 2. Read the Radio-Canada article “Death of Maureen Breau: Confirms Isaac Brouillard Lessard poses a danger?” » 3. Read the article “Knife attack in Vaudreuil-Dorion: the suspect is charged with second-degree murder” 4. Read the article by TVA Nouvelles “Double murder in Vaudreuil-Dorion: the suspect is charged with an attack on an unknown person charged a week ago” 5. Read the article in Le Devoir “”Non-existent” communication between hospitals and the police in mental illness cases” 6. Read the article in L'Express “Jean-Luc, es was a time bomb” 7. Read the article “Murder in Quebec: Kim Lebel's parents denounce a 'haystack' system” 8. Read the column “The open-air psychiatric hospital (2)” 9. Read the column “The open-air psychiatric hospital Heaven”