San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Systems fail neediest — and us
Courts, hospitals stay on sidelines while dangerous behavior persists
The first disturbing text came Tuesday at 5:32 p.m. from San Francisco’s fire chief. She told Supervisor Rafael Mandelman that a man had scaled the famous Castro Theatre, allegedly damaging the beloved neon sign, hurling heavy objects from the roof and stripping naked.
Mandelman received an even more shocking text early afternoon on Wednesday from the Police Department. A different man had been arrested the previous day for carrying a loaded gun onto the campus of New Traditions, an elementary school near the Panhandle, where he allegedly attempted several times to enter the school’s side entrance and accosted children and parents.
Both men now sit in jail — again. And San Franciscans are left scratching their heads — again — about why such a wealthy, compassionate and innovative city can’t do better by its sickest residents and those who happen to cross their paths in their darkest moments.
Both men involved in these events have extensive criminal histories and clear signs of substance use disorder or mental illness. Both are well known to city officials and police. And both have repeatedly cycled through the criminal justice or health care system with no apparent success at staying healthy.
Both men also demonstrate the failures of San Francisco and California’s mental health care system and the risks those
Police arrested an armed man at New Traditions School near the Panhandle on Tuesday after he allegedly attempted to enter the school and accosted children and parents.
Volunteer Carol Arri plays with Chunks in an outdoor area at the new S.F. Animal Care & Control center.
failures present for everyday people. Fortunately, nobody was hurt in either incident, but they easily could have been — including the suspects themselves.
“It makes you feel like you live in a failed state,” said Mandelman, whose own mother struggled with intense mental illness. “It makes me question whether we are making any progress at all.”
The vast majority of people with substance use disorders or mental illnesses will never pose a danger to others and are more likely to suffer harm themselves than hurt anyone else. But for those who are potentially and repeatedly violent, the city doesn’t provide enough safeguards.
The bizarre chain of events began Tuesday afternoon when someone at New Traditions called 911 to report that a potentially armed, mentally disturbed man was making threatening gestures and incoherent statements to families outside the school.
Police spokesperson Matt Dorsey said that when police responded, Brandon Paillett, 39, told them he had no weapons and threw his backpack at officers. That’s when they say a loaded Smith & Wesson .38 fell from his pocket. Police say they took Paillett into custody and secured the gun.
“Mr. Paillett is a prolific and often violent criminal offender,” Dorsey said.
District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Sara Yousuf said the office has filed three felony charges against Paillett over Tuesday’s incident: possessing a firearm on school grounds, possessing a firearm with a felony conviction and carrying a loaded firearm. The office is seeking his detention without bail.
“We take these allegations very seriously,” she said. “No child, parent or teacher should have to fear for their safety ever.”
If Paillett’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he made headlines just six weeks ago for allegedly breaking into the home of a disabled woman in the Castro. The 62-yearold woman has multiple sclerosis and cannot walk.
At around 11:30 p.m. July 20, Paillett allegedly entered the woman’s home, took his shoes off, sat in an armchair and began talking to somebody who wasn’t there. The woman said the shock made her fall off the couch. She phoned 911 from the floor, and police arrived but couldn’t enter because Paillett had locked the door.
“I was so frightened. There was no way of escaping. I can’t just get up and run away,” she told me. She yelled to police to kick down the door, which they did, before they helped her into a chair and arrested Paillett.
The District Attorney’s Office charged him with misdemeanor false imprisonment, resisting an officer and trespassing. Yousuf said Paillett, who was supervised by the Adult Probation Department, served 39 days in a court-ordered residential treatment program. That means there was hardly any gap between him leaving the treatment facility and carrying a loaded gun onto a school campus.
There was also hardly any gap — just five days — between the Castro break-in and Paillett’s release from jail in a carjacking and kidnapping case. He was arrested June 3 after allegedly trying to steal a pet groomer’s van while the groomer was inside, according to KTVU.
In a July jailhouse interview
At the Castro Theatre on Tuesday, police arrested a man who allegedly climbed onto the roof and engaged in odd behavior.
with KTVU after the break-in at the disabled woman’s house, Paillett said he’d been summoned there and that he had heard voices in his head including that of the classical composer Johann Sebastian Bach.
Paillett was arrested six other times dating to 2019, KTVU reported. Tenderloin police tweeted in July 2019 that they’d booked Paillett on 11 charges, accusing him of stealing a Tesla and leading police on a high-speed chase.
In the Castro Theatre incident, police arrested William Quezali, 33, after he allegedly climbed onto the roof, made incoherent statements, took his clothes off and masturbated. Police said he damaged the neon sign and threw heavy objects onto the street.
Police eventually talked him down. Yousuf said the District Attorney’s Office is charging Quezali with three counts of felony vandalism and one count of misdemeanor trespassing.
A Chronicle story from 2013 said Quezali had been picked up five times in recent months for standing in traffic
and punching at cars driving on Market Street, fighting with Safeway security and shadowboxing naked at the Ferry Building before jumping into the bay.
Another time, he stood on a ledge at the Embarcadero Center shopping complex, throwing rocks and leading to a nine-hour standoff with police. He was repeatedly held for 72-hour psychiatric detentions at San Francisco General Hospital and released.
Quezali climbed up part of the Ferry Building in 2015, screaming and throwing things at pedestrians down below. His public defender at the time told The Chronicle, “He’s been suicidal since 6, and in and out of hospitals all of his life.”
The Department of Public Health could not comment on either Paillett or Quezali’s treatment or lack thereof because of privacy laws. The Public Defender’s Office said Thursday it hadn’t yet been assigned to either case, but that generally, people accused of crimes have to wait a long time to access mental health treatment, making successful outcomes less likely.
Dr. Paul Linde, who treated patients in the psychiatric emergency room at S.F. General for 25 years, said San Francisco needs to compel more people into mandated treatment under state law and needs more psychiatric treatment beds to do so.
“The city needs to start doing what the law allows for and not be as concerned about offending certain interest groups in doing so,” he said, referring to civil rights advocates who argue that an expansion of involuntary holds will yield abuses.
Under the state’s conservatorship laws, people can be compelled into treatment if they pose a danger to themselves or others or if they’re gravely disabled and unable to provide their own food, clothing and shelter.
Linde said he’d also like to see the state law changed so that anybody who’s compelled into treatment can also be made to take antipsychotic medications; currently those require two separate hearings before a judge. He said there was good reason for the split when the law was written decades ago, but that medications now have far fewer side effects and work much better.
“The irony is we’re making it difficult to get these medications into the systems of people who really desperately need them,” he said.
Rachel Rodriguez, a psychiatric social worker, said the city’s mental health programs are strong — but that we need more of them. She said that, after noon each day, nearly all treatment beds are full and it’s nearly impossible to get them at night or on the weekends.
“I wish it was 24/7 access to
care — at whatever time they’re ready for it,” she said.
She said the city also needs more treatment beds at all levels including in locked treatment facilities, which would make compelling more people into care possible. Two years ago, Mandelman created a list of the most severely disturbed people in his district in an attempt to get them help, but it hasn’t done much good. One woman on the list died of an overdose, and a man on the list has been charged with murder. The list has swelled from 17 people in December to 35 now; Paillett was on it because of the Castro break-in, but Quezali was not. Mandelman said the city needs more shortterm interventions like sobering centers and psychiatric emergency placements, as well as more locked facilities and board-and-care homes.
“We can improve outreach and crisis response, but if there aren’t the places to take people in crisis and the long-term placements to keep people out of crisis, our streets will continue to feel chaotic, and very sick people will continue to suffer,” he said.
Mayor London Breed’s new budget includes money for 400 new treatment beds, but only 140 will open this year.
When I told the woman in the Castro that the man who’d broken into her home just six weeks ago had been arrested with a loaded gun on a school campus, she gasped. “Oh my goodness — that is so sad,” she said. “I didn’t want to see him severely punished, but I wanted to see him get some help.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
She’s right. It doesn’t make sense — for him or for the rest of San Francisco.