First Draft: Stenonymous’s Proposal for Addressing the New York State Mental Health Crisis – March 2024

The mental health crisis in New York is a big topic of discussion online and off. I had an online interaction recently that sparked that more activist side of myself. So many of us are busy working people with not much time to protest or make our voices heard. Consequently, so many voices go unheard, and problems we experience go unsolved.

The core of my idea is creating a lawful process by which police are not just allowed, but required, to investigate problem incidents and people. As I’ve admitted in the past, I’ve seen the NYPD not show up when people call for help. I’ve read articles about how the NYPD ignores things it considers beneath it. A lot of cops, I’ve admitted in the past, I feel are heroes. But I’ll throw a bone to the ACAB crowd. Consequences are a universal human language. If there are no consequences, people will often opt to do the easiest thing. The easiest thing, by far, is to denigrate low-level complaints as “not worth the time,” or “a civil matter,” or whatever, and swear up and down that there are more important crimes to investigate, and then do nothing. Just how it is. I get it. This is a really nuanced issue, thinking of cops’ attitudes towards district attorneys declining to prosecute, and if I go into it any more this is going to be 9 years long. Let’s continue.

After you create a process by which the police MUST act on community complaints and create a process by which the police may detain or arrest for the purpose of assessment, amend the law to create consequences for people who stop treatment after having been assessed as requiring. Basically, if you don’t handle your problems, the consequences compound. And I don’t want to compound anyone’s problems, but this is just how it works. If you’re showing the system that you want to be a nuisance as opposed to just being someone in need of services or help, it ramps up consequences on you until you comply. Or you never comply, and eventually, bad things happen to you.

Now, there are definitely flaws in my idea. There may be case law that makes this difficult or requires this to be tweaked. On some level it might be redundant. We have initiatives for mental health. We’ve had initiatives like this challenged recently, though I don’t know the outcome as of writing. There are valid concerns about weaponizing mental health laws to allow police abuse versus “just” funding healthcare. But as I see it, this is silly binary thinking. We are human. We are imperfect. Our law is imperfect. You do the best you can to ascertain the impact of a law. If it seems good, you pass it. As the results come out, you tweak it to better suit the needs of the population.

Sometimes leadership is about making the best of a sea of bad decisions. Our leaders can’t say that because they like to be elected and the media likes to make them look ridiculous. The media’s terrified of me because I do not give a fuck if I look ridiculous. The more followers I get, the more I get to play leftist Elon Musk and use America’s obsession with the rich and powerful to fuck with the rich and powerful (in my case, the lawbreakers.) Today, I don’t have a lot of money. But I bet you there are millions of people who would throw down one or two bucks for the chance at creating a media personality that would make anti-retirement talking heads like Ben Shapiro beg for universal healthcare. Go ahead. Publish about me. Grow my follower count.

Maybe if we’re so concerned about the NYPD harassing people with mental health issues we should create a process by which those who feel they are experiencing harassment can bring it to the attention of a court, whether it’s an Article 78 proceeding or some other similar petition, and then maybe even get a court-issued order for the institutional harassment to stop, with penalties charged that go right to the aggrieved if they don’t stop. I’ll say in the NYPD’s defense that when I spoke to a sergeant recently about my 61 Broadway claims, he was professional, nice even, and as of yet, nobody’s harassed me. Again, nuanced, I have some benefits thanks to systemic issues in our society. There are arguments to be had a court process wouldn’t be accessible to the poor. I can go on for 9 years. I won’t.

Anyway, so what I’ll do now is share what I’m writing the public officials. Then I’ll put a download to the docx. If anyone wants to join me in trying to attract some attention, please do. I’ll be mailing these next week.

A download of what I’m sending the public offices is below.

New-York-State-Mental-Health-Crisis-Proposal Download

Addendum:

Just a note, I am reminded of something horrifying I saw today, which I believe is an old video out of New Mexico of a cop basically being butchered. It’s something I would think cop haters should see. Criticisms of police are valid enough, but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that these people are not putting their lives on the line for us.

EXTREMELY GRAPHIC, DO NOT WATCH if you cannot handle extremely graphic violence, including blood. Video.

If you would like a non-graphic video, check out these simulated shooter drills where they had a police critic try to determine when to shoot and when not to shoot. It really helped balance my perspective when a lot of the cop brutality stuff was coming out years ago.

…nine years of nuance.

3/19 update:

Christopher Day laments the state of law enforcement in the United States, where it is effectively legal for the nation of laws to harass working people with tolls, taxes, and everything else, while the degradation of our quality of life goes unabated and out in the open thanks to politicians afraid to admit difficult truths. Christopher Day has no opinion on any individual case because his duties demand he remain impartial, but feels this is a great example of the things New Yorkers are reading, discussing, and sharing. Just wait until you find out why this is in the third person.

Join Chris DeGrazio’s Virtual Steno Events!

Rising professional Chris DeGrazio will be holding a series of online events in May and June. If you’re free, check these out this weekend.

On Sunday, May 29, at 8:00 p.m. EST, join us for a mental health discussion.

Then on Monday, May 30, at 8:00 p.m. EST, check out the virtual healing session!

Dates and registration links for June events will be released as soon as possible.

Addendum:

Happy Memorial Day! See the message and resources released by NCRA today!

Correcting the Record on Dave Wenhold and NCRA

Some months ago, I was writing about a plot in our industry. In its loosest sense, this deals with Veritext, US Legal, and my documenting that the companies tend to spend a lot of energy building digital court reporting at the expense of stenography. In my view, both companies and the Speech-to-Text Institute appear to be crafting a narrative rather than responding to legitimate shortage concerns. “We cannot recruit enough stenographers from the 40 to 80 stenography schools nationwide, but we can somehow fill demand with digital reporters and Blueledge.” It’s not a believable position. To this day, I’m making efforts to determine whether there is actual cooperation among competitors, a sort of tacit parallelism where major players in our industry all suddenly and “independently” decided that digital reporting was the future, or something else. The motivation would be money. By making our market out to be an emerging market that investors can be first in on and omitting the fact that there’s a well-established profession, more low-information investors can be drawn in and more capital can be raised. My work is largely about restructuring the discussion from “the stenographer shortage is irreversible” to “we beat it.”

In the course of my writing and documentation in December 2021, I began experiencing psychosis symptoms. This culminated in a nasty bout of paranoid thinking where I made some crazy claims. Specifically, claims attaching Dave Wenhold and the National Court Reporters Association to the plot claims. I do want to clear this up for my readers: Dave Wenhold and NCRA have done nothing wrong. On all the available evidence I have today, Dave’s been a leader and friend to stenographers for many, many years. I’ve written before that I generally admire Dave Wenhold. I think he’s brilliant. My more negative thoughts about him and the NCRA were a side effect of the distorted thinking I was experiencing during my medical situation in December and some months afterwards.

I’m deeply sorry for some of what came out of Camp Christopher Day. I have no problem being a “bad guy” if it’s justified. But I stand firmly against misinformation. To the extent that I gave my readers misinformation that caused them to believe NCRA or Dave Wenhold are not working for stenographers, it’s a problem I need to address. The claims I made about them were largely motivated by a broken mind coupled with some bad information. I should not have written things I did in December.

There are a lot of promising things coming out of Camp NCRA that members can get behind. The organization is calling for volunteers and has launched an advocacy center. The advocacy center’s first move seems to be focusing on the Training for Realtime Writers Act. If successful, we can expect an expansion of stenographic education, as more dollars will flow to schools. If that’s something you’re interested in supporting, head over to the advocacy center page and send a message of support to your elected representative. NCRA’s made it easy for you, just fill in your address and it will assist you in contacting your rep.

It’s an exciting time to be in this industry. We are finding our footing in a data economy. It may be worthwhile for NCRA to continue to collect and publish statistics on our field, but especially rate data. For over a decade, a myth has pervaded our field that associations can never discuss rates. I surveyed nearly 100 court reporters last year. Over 72% reported that they did not have a good grasp on antitrust law. Over 86% had heard that associations can never discuss rates.

Stenonymous Project Phoenix survey results.

Despite the ubiquity of the rumor, it is untrue that associations can never discuss rates. In fact, the FTC itself states that many trade associations share aggregated data with members. I’ve clipped out the relevant text from the FTC site for my audience.

This is important for a number of reasons. My survey results showed a dire need for antitrust education that NCRA or a private vendor could jump on to increase revenue. Aggregated rate data on our field would help attract investors, new blood, and entrepreneurs to our field. The data collection could be featured in the JCR and increase the value of membership and the publication. Imagine, in the not-so-distant future, mentors being able to concretely tell mentees average rates and earnings. It would be a monumental project for NCRA alone, but perhaps the National Congress of State Associations can be mobilized to train and organize the state associations to provide state data, which could then be fed up the pipeline to NCRA every quarter.

I pledge to do my part, remain in treatment, and continue to platform people and support this profession. If any of my readers need clarification on my work, please comment below or reach out to me at contact@stenonymous.com.

I Am Alive and Well

This December I have been experiencing an onset of mental illness. I was unaware. I did some terrible things that I can’t take back. I was hospitalized and am now better than ever.

When my thinking finally became clear again, I realized that I had been given a second chance at life. No one was physically hurt, which is great, considering my court family just lost someone this year. I can use this experience to help others.

To anyone I hurt emotionally, lashed out at, or latched onto, I apologize. I did not know I was losing it. Now that I know such a thing is possible, it will never happen again; medical intervention was necessary.

The antitrust conspiracy post will be rewritten to be simple and constructive. Stenonymous will return to its original goal of uplifting the profession. I will take some months off.

A word of caution to those that were rejoicing over my suffering: What does not kill us makes us stronger, and I didn’t die.

A word of advice: If you notice behavioral changes or mood issues, go to the ER. It just might save your life.

For me personally, this is going to be a positive. We now know that even in the event of psychosis I’m nonviolent. Better still, I just created and managed the industry’s largest blog while mentally ill. Now that I am mentally prepared, my life is about to get a lot easier. Years ago, we got NCRA 2.0. Who knew that was possible with people too?

If you’d like a great song for this blog post, check out Poor Jack from Nightmare Before Christmas. It fits incredibly well.