Over the course of about a year, a 43-year-old Middle River man called police 62 times, often “rambling” or “speaking in nonsensical speech” about such things as the military infiltrating his home or his neighbors operating a sex trafficking ring involving the Baltimore Ravens. Police described his 911 calls in court documents charging him with making false statements to officers. He was eventually convicted of two such counts and sentenced to two years of supervised probation, with the condition that he undergo mental health treatment.
But in April, after he allegedly threatened to kill his neighbor’s family with an airsoft pistol, the man’s probation agent reported to the court that he didn’t verify that he was in treatment. After he was arrested, a Baltimore County judge, at prosecutors’ request, ordered him evaluated for mental illness. Heeding the opinion of state doctors, the judge found he was too mentally ill to face charges that he violated his probation and that he presented a danger to himself or others.
On May 7, she ordered the Maryland Department of Health to admit him for psychiatric care within days. Yet the man remained until June 20 at the Baltimore County Detention Center, where correctional officials reported that detainees in the mental health unit sometimes smear feces on the walls, flood their cells and refuse daily activities, such as showers. People with severe mental illness, accused of crimes in Maryland but deemed too sick by the co.