Send them to Hawaii for some R and R leave.
The man in the blue hooded sweat shirt rocked back and forth — seemingly in a trance — in an intake pen surrounded by a chain-link fence in the basement of the Cook County Jail. He sat quietly on a wooden bench with his back against a cinderblock wall, oblivious to the yammering of a fellow inmate boasting about a street fight.
Elli Petacque Montgomery, the chief clinical social worker in the Cook County Sheriff’s office, stood behind a white counter outside the pen with a checklist in front of her. She asked a deputy to fetch the 25-year-old dreadlocked man in the blue hoodie, Anthony. The deputy yelled out Anthony’s pre-bond intake number: “42! Number 42!”
It slowly dawned on Anthony that he was Number 42, and he was led to the counter. On that late December day, he was one of 54 men interviewed by Montgomery and her staff before they appeared in bond court. Of them, 22 showed signs of mental illness, including five with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
That was normal: An average of five to 10 detainees a day are diagnosed with PTSD in those morning screenings. Anthony and one of the men dozing in his pen were among those deemed to have PTSD.[…]
Anthony said he saw a stranger killed in front of him on the street when he was just 12. Two years later, he was shot four times — in the back and a leg. He told Montgomery he was continuing to have nightmares about both experiences.
He told her he was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and was taking medication to sleep. Sleep disorders are one of the indicators of PTSD, Montgomery said.
Anthony also said he had been treated at Hargrove Hospital, a psychiatric treatment center.
Montgomery asked Anthony a simple question tailored for people she suspects are suffering from PTSD: “Do you like the Fourth of July?”
“No, I try to sleep through it,” Anthony said.
People who have been traumatized by being shot or witnessing gun violence don’t like the sound of firecrackers and bottle rockets exploding, Montgomery explained.