Brian Chasnoff

I found out a few weeks ago that Bexar County is breaking a state law aimed at moving mentally ill offenders toward treatment and away from jail, where only two full-time psychiatrists treat about 900 mentally ill inmates a day. This front-page photograph offers a glimpse into the daily life of mentally ill inmates “in crisis,” who are sent to a specialized unit where some stay in padded cells for 23 hours a day.

Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje and I wrote this story on the situation. The article prompted Roland Pastrano to contact me about his schizophrenic brother, Edward, who has been in Bexar County Jail for months now on a charge of “failing to identify to a police officer.”

Our follow-up story describes how Edward was deemed incompetent to stand trial and placed in a long queue for a bed at San Antonio State Hospital, a predicament that sheds light on a larger problem: a dearth of funding for mental health services from the state level.

Haven for Hope's campus

A few months ago, a $100 million campus for the homeless called Haven for Hope opened its gates in San Antonio. (Not so fast: drop your deadly weapons and illegal narcotics, please, into the “amnesty box” here at security.)

Touted as the first of its kind anywhere, the crisp, college-like campus is a coalition of about 80 social service agencies, many of them located on-site to deliver direct aid to the homeless. For the first time, the homeless here have access to meals, housing, job training, counseling, medical care and other services in one place.

As reporters on the newspaper’s projects team, my colleague, Melissa Fletcher-Stoeltje, and I are tasked with covering Haven, from its opening through the inevitable hiccups and successes that are following.

I’ve met some interesting homeless folks with some interesting names: among them, Moose, Blessed and Brad Cain.

I’ve tried to keep up with Blessed and Cain, a challenging process. Blessed resisted living at Haven and disappeared onto the streets for a while before popping up unexpectedly and joyfully in Haven’s kitchen. Cain was the first man on campus, but he has since foundered against the structured way of life there. I wrote about his complaints and his anger problems. At the moment, Cain is no longer speaking to me.

I’ve also wandered through some interesting places, most notably Ghost Town, a stalled construction zone in which scores of homeless commandeered their own sparsely furnished condos.

Melissa and I, along with photographer Bob Owen (a force of nature in following this unfolding story), spent the night in Haven’s courtyard, where the chronically homeless come to shower, eat and sleep on mats — and sometimes to sleep off drug and alcohol binges.

I wrote about Haven’s struggle to assist the large portion of the homeless who are mentally ill.

And I chronicled a big problem at Haven — the rampant misuse of prescription medications aggravated by the lack of an ordered system at Haven to dispense them.

For more on this massive experiment in social transformation, click here for MySA’s orderly compilation of coverage.

From my end, there’s certainly more to come.

In honor of this year’s Father’s Day, here are a bundle of my recently published parenting columns. (I’m not a huge fan of the headlines; they’re a bit too pat and sappy for my taste. Anyway.)

Update: I’ll add to this post periodically as I churn out more parenting palaver.

• In this column, I explore my experiences with withering envy and boundless love.
• This one charts the ephemeral obsessions of my 10-year-old, flowing seamlessly from automatic weaponry to Buddhist meditation.
• Here I recount the major panic engendered by my toddler’s minor tooth injury.
• This is a bold attempt at writing a non-parenting parenting column.
• And lastly, I give you vomit and diarrhea. Incidentally, this column was a tad controversial, prompting valued reader Don C. Brummett to pen the following Letter to the Editor:

“Although I didn’t read past the first few words, I would say Chasnoff’s column hit a new low in journalism! Who does he think wants to read such trash?

Why do you want a columnist who can’t write anything better and doesn’t have the judgment or discernment to know better?

I look for positive articles and good writers with a standard of excellence in the Express-News. Chasnoff doesn’t contribute to that.”

A new low in journalism? I am tempted to take pride in this distinction. After all, it is a milestone in my profession. Instead, I’ll just have to quote the Dude on this one:

Here’s to Xelina, my wife: She took the photographs that ran with my travel piece on Big Sur, Calif.

We are now entertaining delusions of forming a husband-wife/writer-photographer team, roving across the world to capture and record its wonders.

And do you know the crazy thing about delusions? Sometimes, they come true.

In April, a $100 million facility that caters to the homeless will open in San Antonio.

But will enough of the homeless come?

Leaders say that depends on the cooperation of street feeders. And some street feeders say they won’t cooperate.

Octavio, 3

I couldn’t decide what to write about for my latest parenting column.

Then my 1-year-old clawed my face, my 3-year-old went nuts and my 9-year-old made a sword out of branches and masking tape.

Photo by Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News

This story features a fellow named Chief Broken Eagle, a wealthy landowner, a criminal investigation and a decapitated bear (or, as some prefer, “barrr”).

What more could you ask for? That’s right, nothing. So read the darn thing.

That certain blooping sound from my iPhone woke me up before 6 a.m. the other morning — a text message.

It was a police source with a terse note: “Tru off dwi acc at 90 and mcmullen. Off being booked.” The tip would spawn this story.

“Tru” stands for Tactical Response Unit, a specialized force that Police Chief William McManus created shortly after he took the helm here in 2006. The unit’s mission is to saturate high-crime areas of San Antonio. It has been criticized — both within the Police Department and without — for a certain latitude in tactics and culture.

Now my source was saying a TRU officer, drunk, had crashed a city vehicle. (more…)

Octavio and Gavriel

Faustino

I now have a professional outlet for the weird insanity that is my life as a father to three rambunctious boys: The newspaper has made me a parenting columnist.

Here’s my first column.  It’ll show up once a month in SA Life in a rotation with three other writers.

On a related note, I dreamed last night that my wife told me she was pregnant again.

I love my children, folks. But I was happy to wake up.