Crazy As A Fox

Francis W. Porretto has a blog called Eternity Road which ran a story called 'Let's Play Spot The Loony' which is all about people running around in society that act wierd. If you read the article linked, it will tell of a hairstylist that had a customer go strange on her and her reaction. Porretto goes on to tell us that society is full of these strange folks and we are afraid to do anything about it as these wierdos are protected by laws (legislated to protect the loons).
Hell, we have laws to protect wolves against farmers so why not loons?

Here is where my vast experience working in jails comes into play! I've met a few loons in my time. In fact, a lot of inmates I took care of were crazy as shit. Ever watch the movie with Gene Wilder in it where he gets arrested with his co-star and they get put in a very small prison cell with the scariest guy you'd ever want to meet? Well they manage to survive that and you remember how? They acted crazy, or crazier than the crazies they encountered.
I used to do the same thing as a guard. If I entered a crazed inmate's cell and he jumped up on the bed and acted crazy, I'd jump up on the other end of the bed and act crazier. It used to confuse the shit out of them!

My wife, the ex cop, reminds me that crazies were picked up off our street in the good old days when she was a cop and they were put away for a three day assessment by rubberstamp, no questions asked. That's back in the day when folks living off the street were called vagrants, not homeless people as they are called now. The sane ones went to the Don Jail and the loons went to 999 Queen St. With the Vagrancy law, the streets of Toronto were relatively safe.
Well the times have changed and the social workers have managed to get the loons out of the asylums and back onto the streets. The Vagrancy law was written off. And 999 Queen St was renamed to hide its sordid past.

Nowadays, the police have no alternative other than to arrest a crazy and he/she/it is processed along with the rest of the folks who end up in Criminal Court. So these crazies now accumulate in jails and detention centres. I ended up having to testify at an inquest because one of these crazies killed his cellmate overnight. No charge of murder was ever levied although the family of the killer sued for unlawful arrest.
An old jail friend of mine just went through the same process a month ago. During a clockround at three in the morning an inmate was standing at his cell door and told my friend, "Um, Boss, I just killed my cellmate".

Score one for the social workers who got the crazies out of the asylums and back onto the streets.