CT Librarian To Retire After Controversy

clarify
It wasn’t the presence so much. Actually I think some of the staff were fairly rude toward the folks were just weird, poor, a little mentally ill, etc. and just wanted some help or a place to sit and read or use a computer.

The problem is that if someone is mentally ill enough they are, almost by definition, a problem patron. They act out, make noise, scare people, get belligerent and so forth. Same thing with drunks and heroin addicts. Ever see a junkie with good manners, one who doesn’t fall asleep on the floor with his pants down? Me either.

The problems some of these patrons have, by virtue of the groups they are in, are so severe and constant they can’t act right most of the time. Drugs and unmedicated schizophrenia will do that.

I’m not sure who “bad news folks” are, but they also fall under the protections of the Constitution.

Bad folks are the ones who want to break a few of your patrons ribs for their wallet or masturbate at one of the computers. Their constitutional rights have nothing to do with their conduct in the library, nor does it give them license to scare off other patrons.

I will never filter my internet and I will never take down or get rid of a “bad” book. Nor will I ever allow some poor sod to act the fool and scare or hurt people.

That person will be using the “outside the front door pavement branch” for their services.

I think you misunderstand
I understand the reality of severe mental illess far better than you know. Far better than it is appropriate to share here.

It is my belief and experience that someone sick enough is going to cause problems in regular society. Especially a library where many of the deinstitutionalized spend their days.

There aren’t a lot of frat boys in Hartford, save the ones who came in to score drugs.

And yes the behavior matters. If it was diagnosis then I would have been thrown out of my own library years ago. But you have to know the situation you are in. Poor, urban areas have a higher than average concentration of addicts and the severely mentally ill. These people are more apt to act in anti-social manner because of their illness.

Of course not all mentally ill people act out. But you know something about the problems you are likely to have and how to deal with them.

No one wants to treat these people as a diagnosis or strip them of the their rights or dignity. But addicts, drunks and the mentally ill can have behavioral problems that librarians have to deal with. Perhaps more often or more severely than the rest of the population.

There is a difference between stereotyping someone and having a realistic view of them.