North Carolina Lawmakers Are Misguided in Response to Iryna Zarutska’s Murder

 

Let me be clear from the start, I, like most humane, sane, and kind people, sorrowed over the killing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte metro train. No one should experience such a tragic and horrible death. By all accounts, Iryna should be here today. She should be living her best life in a country that she fled to from her war-torn home of Ukraine. She should be enjoying the magic of being young, beautiful, and full of hope in a country that offers an abundance of opportunities to succeed and live out her dreams.

However, I can’t think of Iryna without also thinking sadly about 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr., the person charged with her fatal stabbing. His story is also tragic, and his family also deserves public sympathy and our prayers. Many lawmakers including Governor Josh Stein, President Trump and VP Vance as well as members of the NC General Assembly are using this tragic case as a political battle ax and an opportunity to demonstrate a “tough on crime” posture. However, the fact of the matter is, rarely has vigilante justice cloaked as sensible public policy ever worked the way lawmakers think it will.

The reality is that Decarlos Brown’s case points more to colossal systems failures that are not uncommon; rarely do any of our public judicial, social services, and mental health systems act or respond to the needs of people in crisis quickly. The hard truth is that Decarlos Brown is a tragic case study for what happens when our mental health, legal, and social services systems fail people with serious mental illness.  Let me be clear, people with SMI are more likely to be victims of crime than they are to be perpetrators of violent crime. In fact, people with SMI are more likely to be a harm or danger to themselves than to others. Data from credible sources including the American Psychological Association report that persons with SMI account for about four percent of all violent crime in the US.

According to multiple reports, Decarlos’s family sought help for him and unfortunately, they faced what many families face—slow responses, closed doors, and woefully inadequate action. Governor Stein and the NCGA appear to be misguided about what is needed the most to mitigate and reduce the risk of another Iryna story from happening again. News flash, it is not stricter or draconian criminal laws or heavy-handed law enforcement responses. I think many sociologists and criminologists as well as mental health professionals would agree—what we need is more investments in building up our community mental health services including evidence-based critical time interventions; and more financial investments into a shamefully underfunded public mental health, substance use, and IDD services system.  (Ironically our public MHDDSUS system is at risk of failing more people as we face the very real threat of drastic and deep Medicaid cuts.) What we need are more investments into creating a stronger labor force to  meet the needs of people with serious mental health conditions including more trauma informed licensed clinicians; what we need is more funding to support housing and employment needs of persons in MH and substance use recovery.  What we DON’T need is continued criminalization of people with mental health and substance use conditions. What we DON’T need is a general assembly and Governor who is short-sighted, reactionary, and blind when it comes to meeting the social drivers of health outcome needs including healthcare coverage, safe and affordable housing supports, and food security. And what we definitely DON’T need is to begin militarizing our local police but instead endorsing and expanding the community policing model that encourages law enforcement to know the people they are assigned to protect and serve. 

The reality is, Iryana should be alive today and Decarlos should have gotten the help he needed long before this tragedy happened. And our lawmakers should be leading us through this valley to higher ground not simply enacting laws that essentially keep us in the same place and fail to address the root causes of crime and violence.