After reading Patrick Warren’s story in the Argus this weekend, I got the feeling that the city is making excuses or in denial about how they treat their employees with mental illness. It seems if someone’s behavior is interrupting city business, instead of trying to determine what is going on, they fire the person.
Patrick contacted me several months ago about his story, and after talking to him for over 2 1/2 hours, I decided to pass his story on to John Hult, I felt John would do a better job of telling the story. And I am impressed.
There are some things missing from the story, that eventually I would love to delve into, a lot of it stems from some of the actions of the current police chief and his relationship with the union president for the firefighters.
Patricks’s story about recognizing mental illness in employees is just the tip of the iceberg of what is going on behind the scenes at the Fire Department.