Seven Years Ago Today Was a Turning Point in Shelters

Rita Ciofani was killed while working as the director shelter for veterans operated by the Volunteers of America on East 152nd St. on February 10, 2011.  She was killed by a resident of the shelter who was also killed by the police.  Everything changed for shelters in Cleveland and for those who worked at the shelters in 2011.  Safety became the primary issue and staff began to view their jobs as more of a corrections officers and less as providing a safe haven for those without housing.  I read the Cleveland Plain Dealer online article which was an amazing piece of first person journalism.  Not the story itself, but the comments attached to the story were amazingly relevant, touching and really forwarded the story.  Typically, the comments are dominated by trolls and angry young people with way too much time on their hands.  Maybe because this was an article out of a horror story with way too much death, the typically stupid anonymous commenters stayed away.

Raymond Ice, a mentally ill veteran, was being evicted from the shelter and was going to have a meeting with his Veterans Administration contact that afternoon when he left the shelter to retrieve an axe from his car.  He returned to the shelter and killed the director, then was shot by the police who showed up to arrest him.  The Plain Dealer article contained all the facts and the gruesome nature of the situation, but also a relative, case worker and friends commented on the situation in a longer form than they would normally be provided in a body of the newspaper.  Here are some of the comments:

It is also my observation, that although there are good people out there trying to help, that there are also many shelter workers out there who are so undertrained and so are mired own in their own issues that they often respond in ways that actually escalate potentially violent situations and make the risk of danger much worse.

I also knew Raymond, not well but I still knew him. He was a very quiet man just as one of his social workers had mentioned here in an earlier comment. Raymond's family has been supportive of him, however he was obviously mentally ill, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. He had been attempting to get help from the VA system to no avail. A truly mentally ill person cannot see how ill they truly are, or may not be cognizant of what they are doing. So for all the people that chose to make ignorant judgemental comments about mental illness.....please refrain.

 Mr. Ice was once my client. He was a very quiet man, kept to himself, just like his step brother said. It's a horrible thing he did, and I feel for Mrs. Ciofani and her family. 
I think Mrs. Ciofani would probably say that she loved her job and couldn't help the choices others made. From what I've read about her she was very compassionate and dedicated. I didn't know her personally but as a social worker myself, we don't go into this field to glorify ourselves but to help others. 
Some, like Mr. Ice, are not given the proper assistance for his situation. Either he didn't know how to ask for help, didn't follow through or was misdiagnosed. 
I remember him as a man who had very little to say, very shy, and keeping to himself. I could also tell he was dealing with a lot. I'm sad to know that he felt so desperate as to do this. And I think anyone who doesn't have compassion for his humanity alone is dealing with their own issues, with the exception of Mrs. Ciofani's family and friends.

 Thanks Ruth. When Raymond was in the Veteran's Hospital Psych Ward they should have seen the need to have kept him for his violent behavior instead of throwing him out onto the streets. Then maybe this whole tragedy could have been avoided. This country has failed our Mental Health Systems and our Veteran's Care Systems. These men and women who fight for our freedom may come back whole physically but they never come back whole mentally.

Then there was a back and forth on the merits of metal detectors and the purpose of shelters vs. correctional facilities.  There are 76 comments and there was surprisingly a lot of really good content. There were expressions of pain and sorrow which are rare in the comments section. It was one of the rare instance when un-moderated anonymous comments actually enhanced the story.

For the shelters after 2011 everything became about security, but the things that would have avoided this tragedy never materialized. The biggest shelter in Ohio installed metal detectors and wanding people, but it is still easy to slip things through the fences.  Another unionized staff demanded armed police on site or they would not work.  This exploded the budget for shelter, but did nothing to help the mental illness/PTSD and trauma at the shelters.  No one demanded a fix to the horrible grievance process that Mr.Ice was upset about, but staff were quick to kick people back onto the streets. There was no requirement to give additional training to the staff or provide additional counseling or even a break from the tough work within the shelters.  It established a distrust between client and staff and did nothing to reduce overcrowding in the shelters.  February 2011 fundamentally changed the shelters from temporary homes to jails with a daily release schedule.

Brian Davis