Home / Special Feature / Did you see "Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell" last night??!?

Did you see "Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell" last night??!?

We talked about a missing-persons case in which a young woman went to a Malibu, California restaurant alone, behaved bizarrely (reportedly saying she was here from Mars to avenge the death of Michael Jackson), ran up a tab of approximately $90, and had neither money nor a credit/debit card to pay the tab, at which point the cops were called, who then found marijuana in the woman’s car, arrested her, impounded the car, took her down to the cop station, booked her, and released her on her own recognizance several hours later, at which point she walked out of the police station, apparently slept for a while in the backyard of a nearby house, and hasn’t been seen since.  No one knows what happened to her.  Maybe she suffered a psychotic break and is now walking around aimlessly in a dissociative “fugue” state (in which she doesn’t know who or where she is), and/or maybe she’s a victim of foul play (maybe someone slipped something into her drink and took her money, but the cops intervened before that person could lead her out of the restaurant, and then after she was released from custody, she was still somewhat out of it and was victimized by someone, either the same individual who drugged her — maybe that person was lying in wait outside the cop station — or maybe some other individual who came across her later and took advantage of her).  So, on the program with us were the missing woman’s father and the family’s lawyer.  I felt terrible for the father, as I’m sure we all did — his daughter’s missing, and he’s probably and emotional wreck — sad, scared, angry… .

The lawyer, on the other hand, seemed more interested in setting up a lawsuit against the Malibu cops than in finding the missing woman.  He vehemently argued that the cops should’ve kept the woman in custody until she could’ve been evaluated by a shrink, and I stepped in to defend the cops because I’m sick of cops being accused of mistreating people before the evidence is in.  In this case, the cops had absolutely no duty to detain the woman unless, at the time of her release, they knew or should’ve known that she was a clear and present danger to herself or others, period!  Now that she’s missing, it’s easy to say that the cops should’ve seen it coming, but I doubt they did.  I give the cops the benefit of the doubt and assume that if they believed the woman was in imminent danger, they would’ve tried to prevent it.  In fact, one police department employee reportedly did offer the woman the option of spending the night in the cop station lobby rather than walking home at night alone, and she apparently declined that offer.  The lawyer seemed to think that the cops had a duty to detain the woman against her will simply because she had behaved bizarrely earlier in the evening, but that’s just plain wrong!  We don’t know how she behaved in police custody.  Maybe by the time of her release she seemed reasonably lucid, but even if she was still behaving bizarrely, she may not have posed a clear and present danger to herself or others.  She wasn’t driving a car — her car had been impounded because of the marijuana, remember?

Imagine if the law required the cops in California to detain every person who behaves bizarrely in that state until they could be evaluated by shrinks — every jail in the state would be overflowing every day, and the state would’ve been bankrupt decades before now, not to mention the Constitutional issues it would raise (you’re free to be bizarre in this country as long as you’re not posing a danger to yourself or others)!  Another guest chimed in with the lawyer and accused the cops of “harassment” for arresting the woman because people with prescriptions for it are allowed to possess marijuana in California — never mind that it’s absolutely still a crime for people who don’t have prescriptions, as this woman apparently didn’t, to possess it!  See what I mean?  There’s no evidence that I’ve seen that the cops wanted to harass this woman, nor have I seen any evidence that they had reason to believe, at the time they released her, that she was a clear and present danger to herself or others.  The lawyer first told me I didn’t know anything about the law on the temporary detention of people on mental-health grounds, then after I informed him that I’m both an attorney and a shrink, he suddenly claimed to have tapes which prove that the cops released the woman when it was clear that she was a danger to herself or others, at which point I challenged him to provide copies of those tapes to the network.  First, he hedged, saying he’d need to discuss it with the family first, but when pressed by Jane, he said he’d show up on tomorrow night’s show with the tapes.  It’s on folks!  I’ll be back on the show tomorrow night as well, and I’ll predict right now that there will be no tapes (I don’t know how he could possibly have jailhouse video this quickly, especially jailhouse video that the network doesn’t have), and if there are tapes, I predict that they won’t come close to proving that any reasonable cop should’ve deemed the woman a clear and present danger to herself or others at the time of her release.  I could be wrong, and if it’s proven that I am, then I’ll join the chorus criticizing the cops, but until then, I’d like to see the focus be on finding the missing woman instead of on nailing the cops!  Tune in to Wednesday night’s to see what happens next!
(P.S.  A quick Anthony update:  Florida prosecutors are saying that high-tech forensic evidence will show 1) that a young child in a fetal position was in the trunk of Casey Anthony’s car at some point, 2) that hairs matching little Caylee’s were also found in the trunk, and 3) that the hairs matching Caylee’s were shed from the scalp of a deceased person.)