The Ghost of Margaret Mitchell Still Haunts Us Today

Six years ago, while pushing a cart down a Los Angeles street, Margaret Mitchell was shot dead by a police officer. She was homeless and struggled with mental illness.

Today, society continues to struggle with enforcing the law with persons who are mentally ill. Some get shot and die. Like the man on the American Airlines flight this week.

With an unhealthy percentage of people who are homeless struggling with mental illness, it only makes sense that we help law enforcement officers deal with homeless mentally ill people. Or else more will die. Here's an article.

I describe Ms. Mitchell’s encounter in my book:
__________

Her name was Margaret. She was a typical homeless woman pushing an old shopping cart overflowing with her life’s possessions as she trekked through an upper-class neighborhood of Los Angeles filled with L.A.’s old moneyed families. She stood barely five feet tall and weighed a mere 100 pounds. She was no threat to anyone except those who might feel she was a quality of life annoyance in a neighborhood wishing that all those homeless people would stop invading their tree-lined avenues, nicely groomed lawns, and obscenely large homes.

Margaret Mitchell was an elderly woman who had been detached from her family for years, and ended up living on the streets. She was clearly overcome by phantoms lodged in her mental consciousness that haunted her very being. She strolled down the boulevard pushing her supermarket shopping cart when a couple of law enforcement officers on bicycles stopped her. They thought she might be possessing a stolen cart. The usual offense for a person who was homeless.

Being homeless, disoriented, and haunted by demons were her only crimes. But unfortunately, Margaret made a fatal mistake by reaching in her cart for a screwdriver. Why would she make such a threatening response with officers carrying arms, you might ask? Didn’t she know that you don’t make aggressive moves toward armed police officers? Easy for those of us who are mentally stable to say.

So the officers, obviously not following policy but feeling threatened nevertheless, pulled out their pistols and fatally shot the crazy woman. Her death caused an uproar among angry homeless activists who all along had felt that society had criminalized homeless people. Death is an inappropriate penalty for a homeless person trying to reach for a screwdriver in her cart. Candlelight vigils and angry marches marked this sad occasion.