MIAMI, Fla. – County jails are often referred to as the largest mental health facility in the area.
But what if mentally ill defendants did not go to jail and, instead, went to treatment?
That is precisely what is happening in Miami-Dade County, and prosecutors around the country are calling it a game-changer.
Armando Montalvo
Armando Montalvo, 35 of Orlando, was shot by Orange County sheriff’s deputies outside the World Wrestling Entertainment Complex in Orlando in 2015 after they said he ignored commands to leave and tried to break down glass doors.
He was charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest with violence, and trespassing.
According to court records, he was found not competent to proceed, and he was freed from custody.
Montalvo was arrested again in June 2020 during the height of the pandemic.
According to his criminal complaint, he was again arrested outside the WWE complex where a live stream of the incident showed him exercising. Deputies charged him with resisting an officer with violence, battery on a law enforcement officer, and trespassing after a warning.
Court records showed this marked Montalvo’s seventh arrest in seven years and for a seventh time, he was scheduled to undergo a competency hearing.
Orange and Osceola County Public Defender Robert Wesley could not speak directly about Montalvo’s case, but he said that his team works hard to make sure their clients understand what is happening in their court proceedings.
According to court records, 3,861 competency exams were ordered in Orange County court cases between 2017 and 2019, costing taxpayers $1.3 million.
A source close to the legal system said there is currently a backlog of exams. Where it usually takes 45 days to complete an exam, legal teams were now waiting 90 days.
Getting Results
“The competency system — at least in felonies — works, but it just doesn’t accomplish anything,” Judge Steven Leifman in Miami-Dade County said.
Leifman can be best described as a pioneer in changing the way the legal system prepares mentally ill defendants for court or “competent to stand trial.”
“It’s cruel what we do right now. It’s dangerous what we do right now,” he said. “It’s a waste of critical tax dollars, and it threatens public safety unnecessarily.”
Leifman helped develop and implement a program in Miami-Dade called The Criminal Mental Health Project.
Law enforcement there is now trained to identify suspects who may have mental health issues and a mental health professional can be called to the scene.
Once the subject is stabilized, they are given the option to continue treatment or go to jail to face the criminal charge, according to Leifman.
Over the last 10 years, Leifman said arrests have fallen 71%.
The number of people re-offending and getting arrested again is down from 75% to 20%.
“We have two choices: We can release these people with treatment, or we can release them without treatment,” he said. “We know what happens when we release them without treatment. They just keep coming back.”
Local Solutions
“I think if you talk to the jail director, he would tell you that he runs the largest mental health facility in the county,” Chief Judge Lisa Munyon said.
Munyon said implementing any new mental health initiatives in Orange or Osceola County would take money that she does not have.
“You can’t stand up facilities, treatment programs, pay treatment providers without the resources to do that,” she said.
Munyon said those resources would have to come from Orange County’s Board of County Commissioners and Mayor Jerry Demings.
Demings said he worked with Leifman previously on a state board.
He said he is also witnessing a growing problem with mental illness.
“My observation is that when I come into the downtown corridor, I see a growing number of individuals who are likely mentally ill and homeless, and it’s disturbing to me,” he said.
Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery
“I’m going to take you into our receiving facility, which is amazing,” said Steven Leifman as he took us through a brand new facility called theMiami Center for Mental Health and Recovery.
Miami-Dade has spent $51 million to renovate an old building into a new state-of-the-art mental health facility to help more than 9,000 patients each year avoid criminal charges and get help.
We toured the facility with Andrew Bain, the chief prosecutor for Orange and Osceola Counties.
“It’s my biggest thing,” Bain said. “You got to treat people like a human first.”
“It’s not complicated,” Leifman said. “It’s all common sense.”
“You can solve so many issues after that,” Bain said.
Second facility in the works
Bain said he wanted us to join him on this tour in Miami because he wants to bring a facility just like it to Central Florida.
“This is amazing. It truly is,” he said. “It’s something that is needed in Orlando and Osceola County. We have a great group of people that are working on this project and desire this to happen and say yes to the project.”
Again, he said, funding it is the largest obstacle.
We took that issue to Rep. Tom Keen, who represents portions of Orange and Osceola counties in the state House.
“We don’t need to be incarcerating people who are mentally unhealthy, right? Yet, the jail systems are doing exactly that, and that doesn’t seem to be what we should be doing with our criminal justice system,” he said.
He said this is an issue he could get behind.
Our team contacted other Central Florida legislators and found support for this facility on both sides of the aisle.
Republican Sen. Jason Broeder said, “As we continue to address the critical need for mental health and recovery services in our community, I would echo the frustrations made by State Attorney Bain on the funding initiatives to explore a similar treatment facility to that of Miami. I’d be happy to work with State Attorney Bain on exploring the unique needs of Central Florida and the potential for having a mental health treatment and recovery center.”
Democrat Rep. Anna Eskamani said, “We need to focus on intervention versus incarceration for non-violent offenses that involve mental health.”
Bain said he has a location in mind for a similar facility to be developed in the greater Orlando area, but he would not offer specifics.
He said he did not want to jinx it.
“Do you want to be arrested for a crime, or would you like to go voluntarily into this diversion program?” Bain asked.
He said he will be working to make that question an easy answer during the next legislative session.
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