Western State escapes show deeper troubles
Washington’s troubled mental health system had a lapse that put the public at risk last week. Two patients, including one who had been found incompetent to stand trial for first-degree murder, escaped from Western State Hospital in Lakewood on Wednesday.
Anthony Garver, 28, was captured Friday night in Spokane. He had been at Western State since July 2014 after being found incompetent to stand trial for the torture death of a woman stabbed 24 times; police referred to him as “scary and dangerous.” He previously served time in prison for threatening to blow up a federal office in Spokane in 2006 and was described as schizophrenic.
The men got out of their room through a locked window apparently by loosening bolts over a period of months, according to spokesmen for the state Department of Social and Health Services, which runs the hospital.
Carla Reyes, assistant director for the agency’s Behavioral Health Administration, said it was doing a safety review and also planned to have outside experts check out the hospital.
That is not Western’s only worry. DSHS has been operating under federal orders to fix safety problems that put patients at risk at Western State, or risk losing federal funds.
Separately, the state faces federal court orders to improve its psychiatric care responses for mentally ill offenders that are arrested by local police agencies and then held for excessively long periods without psychological evaluations and care. As a result of that court order, the former youth prison at Maple Lane School near Grand Mound is being refitted to evaluate mentally ill offenders until the state can get more permanent beds online at Western State.
Substandard care at Western State has been a problem for a very, very long time, through multiple governors and DSHS leaders. A statewide shortage of psychiatrists and other qualified staff have compounded the hospital’s problems.
The Legislature, which finished its special session earlier this month, put almost $30 million into its supplemental budget for 2015-17 that goes for various upgrades of state mental health programs. Included was money for staffing, higher pay and added beds at the state’s mental hospitals.
The escapes, though not a common occurrence, put a more urgent point on the message that state government needs to do better — much, much better — with mental health.
The entire incident, which ended with the recapture of both escapees, punctuates a Republican criticism of Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee’s administration over its management of state agencies. The state Department of Corrections is also under scrutiny for freeing nearly 3,000 offenders early over a 13-year period.
Even if election year rhetoric is burning a little recklessly, the administration needs to show the public it has control of these vital institutions and that safety is paramount.
This story was originally published April 10, 2016 at 12:30 PM with the headline "Western State escapes show deeper troubles."