Times reporters spent more than a year examining how often homeless mentally ill people under the care of the city have committed acts of violence.
The lack of public information about the incidents made it difficult to evaluate about a quarter of the cases.
Still, the examination identified 94 instances in the past decade in which breakdowns of the city’s social safety net preceded the violence, sometimes by just days or hours.
A 23-year-old whose outpatient treatment team stood by as he became increasingly violent, doing little to intervene.
Taken together, the 94 cases offer the fullest picture yet of how, where and why the safety net has broken down.
Persons:
Michelle Go
Organizations:
Times, The Times