“Unit 29, you’ve got a streaker at the Holiday Inn Restaurant,” the voice crackled over the police radio in my squad car. “I’m out,” I responded, since I was already turning into the parking lot for my morning coffee break.
It was Easter Sunday, 1975. The Holiday Inn Restaurant was one of the more popular breakfast restaurants in town. In my mind, I pictured all the church ladies fresh from sunrise services wearing their fine Easter bonnets as a naked man ran streaking through the restaurant. They must have been shocked!
As soon as I burst into the lobby, I was met by a bevy of excited ladies just as I had imagined them, frantically pointing down the hall toward the back of the hotel. “Room 238!” one of them shouted at me.
I ran back out to my squad car and raced around to the back of the spread out hotel. Entering through the back door, I saw him halfway down the hall. A naked middle-aged man was standing calmly facing a door and pressing on the door frame with his right thumb.
As I approached, he turned and said to me, “This elevator is slow.” Then he looked up above the door, as if to check the elevator floor indicator. He was standing in front of the janitor’s supply closet.
“Room 238?” I asked. “That’s right,” he replied. I told him, “It’s down this way. Follow me,” and I turned to head back out to the squad car, careful to keep an eye on him. He obediently followed.
Just before we got to the exit door, he stopped and said, “No, I think it’s back this way.” I turned to face him and said, “Just for the record, you are under arrest for disorderly conduct.”
He puffed up like an blowfish. “You can’t arrest me! I’m the President of the United States!” He clearly believed what he was saying.
This was no ordinary streaker. I leaned closer to him and whispered, “I know, Mr. President. I have the presidential limousine outside waiting for you.”
“Quite right!” he said, responding to being called “Mr. President” by standing tall and proud.
He followed me out to the squad car and started to get in. I stopped him and said, “Mr. President, don’t forget the Presidential Bracelets.” He looked at the handcuffs I had and dutifully held his wrists out to be cuffed.
As we drove to the police station for book in, he explained that some communist spies had drugged him that morning and caused him to take off his clothes. When we got to the jail, I led him to a cell. As I closed the door behind him, he realized that I was one of the communist spies. Until that point, he had been totally compliant and peaceful. The closing of the cell door set him off. But by then, he was safely locked in a cell.
Meanwhile, the manager of the Ramada Inn next to the Holiday Inn had phoned to report finding a pile of clothes in a hallway. An officer was bringing them to the station. Sure enough, it was the President’s clothes with his wallet and identification in a pants pocket. In the wallet, I also found the business card of a psychiatrist in a neighboring state.
I phoned the psychiatrist and told him what had happened. He confirmed that The President was his patient. He had been on medication for paranoid schizophrenia for five years, but as is common in such cases, he had begun to think he no longer needed treatment. Once he quit taking his pills, he lapsed into a psychotic episode. If he got back onto his medication, he would recover and resume his former life.
I learned from his psychiatrist that The President was a very successful consulting petroleum geologist based in Houston. I had found other papers with his clothes indicating he was on his way to Midland, Texas, to consult with an oil company. He had stopped in Kerrville where I was a cop to spend the night.
I learned that paranoid schizophrenics are seldom violent unless they feel threatened. Instinctively, I had played the situation correctly and had gained his trust and cooperation.
With the information gained from the psychiatrist, I drew up an affidavit for commitment to the Kerrville State Hospital. (Note to today’s cops: we did not have a legal advisor and had to research and draw up all our own affidavits in those days.) I took the affidavit over to the County Judge first thing Monday morning and got a thirty-day commitment order. Less than 24 hours from the time I took him into custody, he was in the State Hospital getting help.
I have dealt with other paranoid schizophrenics, and I have very dear friends and relatives who are bipolar 1, a condition sometimes confused with paranoid schizophrenia. In my police training in 1973, we got no instruction on mental patients. I was lucky to have had the instinct to adjust to the situation.
But not all cops handle mental patients with compassion. Take, for example, the case of Joshua. “He’s batshit crazy. Just lock him in a cell and ignore him.” That seemed to have been the attitude toward Joshua, a man with schizophrenia jailed in the US less than two years ago. Joshua was allowed to deteriorate unattended in a cell until he died 20 days later. For more information about Joshua and how he died, including CCTV video in his cell, see here:
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/investigations/2023/04/12/death-joshua-mclemore-a-mentally-ill-jackson-county-indiana-jail-inmate-prompts-lawsuit/70075225007/
All police should be trained in how to recognize and handle mental cases and should engage in realistic roll play situations during training to develop the skills to do so. Perhaps then, there would be fewer tragedies involving mental patients.