I Spoke With Pete Earley

I sent Pete Earley, who authored that Washington Post op-ed last week, an email yesterday. He called me a couple of hours later and we talked, reporter to reporter. I told him that I thougt the numbers in his piece were distorted. He asked me to detail my claim, so I did in much the same fashion as I did in my recent posts.

He told me he was embarassed, especially since he had used an 8-year-old number--sent to him by the Treatment Advocacy Center--to describe present reality. He was troubled too that the number described on people with severe and persistent mental illness instead of all people with mental illness, as his copy had it.

I told him I would address that in my resposne which I hope to pen in the next day.

Oh, yeah, he's a nice guy, who is actively trying to do something to help the mentally-ill, just as I had suspected. I join him in that. But we all need to get our numbers straight lest we make flawed public policies based upon distorted numbers, especially in the wake of the tragic, senseless murder of a cop.