It's true Mike. My wife has been a nurse in mental institutions for the last fifteen years or so. They shut down the hospital at Allentown 4-5 years ago. Some patients were transferred but many were simply released.
She saw the writing on the wall and transferred to another institution. She regularly tells me about patients being released that, in her opinion, will not be able to fend for themselves outside the hospital environment.
So not only are they unstable, they will now likely be desperate. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.
There is a branch of some kind of mental health thing here in my little Podunk town. They bus them in here for therapy or something... But when they aren't in therapy they're allowed to wander around town unsupervised. Naturally a lot of them gravitate to the little convenience store a block away and the owners of the store have ran them off numerous times for panhandling. The local sheriff's office has received numerous complaints and they basically shrug their shoulders and say there's nothing they can do. One of the "patients" has even been spotted (more than once) sitting under a tree behind the clinic "walking his dog" if you catch my drift... Again, the sheriff's office doesn't do anything about it.
I rather imagine everyone here knows what my reaction will be if I catch the "dog walker" pursuing his favorite activity under the tree in my front yard... Especially if my 10 year old daughter is staying with me at the time.
Aside from that, I feel they're mostly harmless. But letting them roam unsupervised seems like a big liability for the clinic, especially with a busy highway and railroad line running through town.
Mike
