Irony In The World of Bipolars, And Maybe A Chance For Change

The King County Sheriff's Office--the big metro area around Seattle--yesterday named a panel of citizens to look into all manner of management screw-ups at the agency and recommend changes. Leading the panel will be Randy Revelle, former King County exec, former Seattle City Council member and openly bipolar. Why is that significant? 18 months ago, KCSO fired Dep. Angela Holland after she revealed that she had bipolar disorder, a story I reported in Seattle Weekly last year. She had done nothing wrong on the job, but she was canned while other cops went around acting crazy on the job--sticking a gun against a citizen's head over nothing in one case--as has been documented in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and these cops never had their stability or job performance questioned. How much does anyone want to bet that Revelle, who last year was instrumental in getting mental health insurance parity passed by the Washington State legislature, finds a way to insert something in the panel's final recommendations on cops and mental illness...and dumb decisions made by sheriffs to discriminate against them over nothing? Stay tuned.