Tag Archive for: Florida Mental Health Act (Baker Act)

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Jennifer Webb Files Legislation to Curb ‘Unnecessary’ Baker Acts in Florida Schools

Rep. JenniferWebb is responding to recent reports of children being sometimes unnecessarily removed from school under Florida’s Baker Act over incidents school officials or law enforcement officers deem unsafe to the student or others. Webb’s…
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Florida’s Flawed Baker Act Rips Thousands of Kids from School

Over the past seven years, children have been taken from public schools in Tampa Bay more than 7,500 times and temporarily placed in mental health facilities. They often leave campus handcuffed in the back of police cruisers. Some are as…
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Lawmakers Call for Investigations into Wesley Chapel Psychiatric Hospital

State and federal lawmakers are asking for reviews of North Tampa Behavioral Health after the Tampa Bay Times found that it exploits patients held under the state’s mental health law. U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor, sent a letter…
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Parents Say 10-Year-Old Son with Autism was Handcuffed, Put in Patrol Car

Parents of a 10-year-old boy who has autism say the child was handcuffed, put in the back of a patrol car and transported to a mental health facility after he ran from school administrators. According to a federal lawsuit filed…
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Child Baker Act Cases Continue to Climb in Florida

Florida has once again broken the records for the number of people mentally evaluated, involuntarily, under the state’s Baker Act. In May, investigative reporter Karla Ray first exposed that child Baker Act cases have more than doubled…
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Who is Florida Man?

THE STORY, HEADLINED “Drunk, shirtless Florida man arrested after shoveling spaghetti in his mouth at Olive Garden,” hit the website of southwest Florida’s NBC-Channel 2 at 11:13am on April 8 this year. The mugshot revealed a scraped…
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Court Denies US Motion to Dismiss Air Force Veteran’s Suit Claiming False Imprisonment

Doan served in the Air Force from September 1993 through the following February. He claimed in his suit that he was involuntarily detained at the Miami Veterans Affairs Healthcare System (VAMC) after a Compensation & Pension evaluation in…
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Mentally Ill South Florida Man Starved to Death in Prison, Lawsuit Alleges – The Miami New Times

When Vincent Gaines was sentenced to five years in prison on robbery charges in June 2013, state officials recommended he be placed in a mental-health unit because he had regular visual and auditory hallucinations. So Gaines was transferred…
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Mental Competency Exam Ordered for Man Accused of Mowing Down New Tampa Family – The Tampa Bay Times

  TAMPA — A doctor will determine whether the man accused of running down and killing a New Tampa father is too mentally ill to face trial. A judge Friday appointed a psychiatrist to examine Mikese Morse, after a defense attorney…
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Intersection: Exploring the Overlap Between Mental Health and Law Enforcement – WMFE

In this episode of Intersection, 90.7 News Director Catherine Welch, Ninth Circuit Public Defender Robert Wesley, and Treatment Advocacy Center Director Frankie Berger discuss how Florida approaches the intersection of mental illness and law…