From The Gothamist
Monday, March 8, 2010
By Sabrina Jaszi
Peyser: Putting Mental Patients in Their Own Apts is Crazy
In this city of crazies, lots of people joked that a judge’s ruling to release mental patients from group homes and allow them to live in their own apartments was nothing special. But not Post columnist Andrea Peyser, who calls the decision (cue eye-roll) “insanity.” Peyser opines that the move will strengthen “the army of the damned,” leading to more incidents like a 2005 stabbing by an unsupervised mental patient who went off his meds and attacked a baby. She also accuses the judge who made the ruling, Nicholas Garaufis, of a potential conflict of interest.
Judge Garaufis—the same who ruled in favor of minorities in several cases concerning racism in the FDNY—is married to a board member at the Fountain House, an institution that according to Peyser, “supplies the very “supported” housing units to the city that the judge so loves.” Garaufis says he disclosed that information back in 2007, and no one objected. The columnist says he declined further comment.
