Last week, coroner Géhane Kamel asked a very relevant question during the public inquiry into the death of police officer Maureen Breau, killed by a repeat violent offender released many times in the name of the principle of non-criminal responsibility.
She asked what is the point of the Quebec Mental Disorders Examination Commission (CETM) imposing conditions on patients if they often suffer no consequences if they do not respect said conditions.1.
The CETM is this administrative tribunal which decides the fate of citizens who have been judged not criminally responsible for their actions due to mental health disorders.
The murderer of policewoman Breau, Isaac Brouillard Lessard, was accustomed to arrests for violent acts2. He had even attacked his psychiatrist twice. Before killing policewoman Breau, he had beaten the face of his concierge. It wasn’t enough for him to be interned.
All this, even though he had been sent back to society by the CETM. This commission can impose conditions of release, for example that of not using drugs. The murderer of Mme Breau consumed it abundantly in defiance of his conditions, which amplified his delusions and his violence…
But Brouillard Lessard was not closely monitored by the health system which, as everyone knows, is already overloaded.
I emphasize this: in the building he lived in, everyone was afraid of Brouillard Lessard.
Coroner Kamel asked this question about the usefulness of CETM on Tuesday. But by a terrible irony of fate (or a sinister sense of timing), Fabio Puglisi, a man with a profile similar to that of Brouillard Lessard, is said to have murdered two people (including his mother) in addition to massacring a third with a knife.
Fabio Puglisi had also passed through the imperfect CETM filter in the past twice. I quote The Press3 : “In 2020, the Commission for the Examination of Mental Disorders (CETM) was also responsible for evaluating the mental state of Mr. Puglisi, who was then accused of having sold a false painting by Riopelle on the site Kijiji. “The accused, due to his mental state, no longer represents a significant risk to public safety,” the organization concluded at that time. Mr. Puglisi, who had been hospitalized for a month “following an attack on a motorist on the highway in a paranoid delusional experience” in 2011, presented “notable” progress, notably because he was “ good company”. “He is taking the medication as prescribed. Moreover, he realizes that he is much better by taking his medication,” we read in the decision. »
A week before the two murders last Thursday, Puglisi had, it seems, attacked a passerby whom he did not know from Eve or Adam, in the middle of the street in Vaudreuil-Dorion, near the building where he is suspected of having killed his mother and a neighbor4.
PHOTO CHRISTINNE MUSCHI, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
The Vaudreuil-Dorion building where Fabio Puglisi lived and where he is suspected of a double murder last Thursday.
I emphasize this, again: in the building he lived in, Puglisi was scary. People refused to get in 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 keep people who hear voices in their heads, who think they are Christ or who sincerely believe that the neighbor wants to kill them. I’m not saying we should lock up anyone with a mental illness.
But 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, Fabio Puglisi had attacked a motorist in 2011 during a paranoid delirium and this condition had justified his being declared not criminally responsible.
Two weeks ago, he was accused of attacking an unknown woman in the street for no reason.
He was arrested and released. And poof, a week later, Puglisi was charged with a double murder.
Why isn’t there a red flag in these individuals’ records, precisely in the name of the principle that past violence is a good predictor of future violence? Why was Fabio Puglisi not detained for evaluation as soon as he was arrested for attacking an unknown woman in the street, given his violent past? Why this excessive laxity?
This type of disastrous scenario is repeated regularly in Quebec and Coroner Kamel is in the process of tracing its contours in a public inquiry into the death of an SQ police officer.
The scenario goes as follows: the CETM releases blindly even when a patient does not respect conditions that are inapplicable in any case by overwhelmed social workers, the police completely ignore5 that an accused of violent acts has already been declared not criminally responsible and, poof, said violent patient and repeat offender ends up killing his father, his mother, his neighbor or complete strangers.
And I’m not even focusing on this other blind spot in the medical-judicial system: the patient who has never been declared not criminally responsible, but who exhibits worrying behavior which is the subject of denunciation by those close to him. …
What do the police say?
The police say: sorry, we can’t do anything, he didn’t… do anything.
And the next day (or the day after that), the police arrested for murder the man who was said to be going crazy.
He killed with a knife6with iron bars7.
This is a serious problem: the medical-judicial system which decides to release violent patients in the name of the laudable principle of non-criminal responsibility is blind, deaf and mute regarding violent repeat offenders.8. The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing and even if it did, you know, the patient has the right to confidentiality of his file.9…
At the heart of this system, a CETM which has no statistics on the number of its released “clients” who end up killing others later. As always in this province, compiling statistics is too complicated a task for our institutions.
We must therefore resolve to compile anecdotes by hand. Here are the names of some people shot or injured by violent patients who should never have been outside a psychiatric hospital in recent years in Quebec: 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 any.
I know it’s crazy to have to say it, but I say it anyway: it’s wonderful, respect for the rights of violent repeat offenders or people who have threatening behavior dictated by imaginary friends…
But the neighborhood and those around these people also have the right to live without fear of being stabbed, shot or run over by a car by someone who should be in a psychiatric hospital.
1. Read the article “Death of police officer Maureen Breau: a psychiatrist who had already followed Brouillard Lessard testifies at the coroner’s inquest”
2. Consult the Radio-Canada article “Death of Maureen Breau: did Isaac Brouillard Lessard represent a danger? »
3. Read the article “Knife attack in Vaudreuil-Dorion: suspect accused of second-degree murder”
4. Consult the TVA Nouvelles article “Double murder in Vaudreuil-Dorion: the suspect accused of an attack on a complete stranger less than a week ago”
5. Consult the article of Duty ““Non-existent” communication between hospitals and police on mental health cases”
6. Check out the article by The Express “Jean-Luc was a time bomb”
7. Read the article “Homicide in Quebec: Kim Lebel’s parents denounce a “hay skewer” system”
8. Read the column “The open-air psychiatric hospital (2)”
9. Read the column “The open-air psychiatric hospital”