Keepingitreal

Tragedy in the Tenderloin

BY C.W. Nevius -- It seemed everyone in the Tenderloin knew where Caprice Darnell Curry was headed. Last week that's where she ended up - assaulted, stabbed, dead on the street.hat the neighbors can't shake is the gloomy feeling that her death could have been prevented. They knew that Curry, a 31-year-old man who presented himself as a flamboyant, flirtatious woman, had serious psychological problems. They knew she was in danger. Yet when she was taking her meds, Curry could also be charming, caring and likable.Most of all, they knew that she had the potential to be saved.We talk a lot about people falling through the cracks of the city's support system. It isn't often that we get to actually watch it happen.It is ridiculous that this continues. It's easy to say the problem is the number of severely mentally ill or drug-addicted people in the city. The bigger picture is that the city has failed to find a way to deal with two fundamental problems. First, there is no mechanism to compel those with psychological problems or drug addiction to seek help. And second, concentrating those with the very worst problems in the Tenderloin - a center for drug sales and violence, and where there is the city's highest concentration of parolees - is disastrous.In this case, Curry was arrested several times, given medications and encouraged to go to counseling. Yet at the end of the day, she was turned back onto the Tenderloin streets and left to succumb to her tendencies to get herself into drugs and danger.Eshana Singh is a mental health services program director. She counseled Curry at the Lyric Hotel, a residence for people with both mental health and substance abuse problems."If I could have waved a magic wand, it would make her take her medications, to be the incredible person she could be," Singh said.But there is no magic wand. Does that mean friends have to stand by and watch a slow-motion train wreck?"We talked about this many times," said David Villa-Lobos, a 28-year Tenderloin resident and executive director of the Community Leadership Alliance. "As many times as this young man went to court, nothing was done. The cops are trying to do their job, but something breaks down in the courts. The poor guy needed some help. He needed some supervision."Instead, Curry got court dates, warnings and invitations to counseling. Unless the patient is deeply, dangerously disturbed, that's all that can be done."The basic problem is that no one can be forced into treatment," said Dr. Bob Cabaj, director of San Francisco Behavioral Health Services. "If someone is deemed not to be gravely disabled, they would be encouraged to follow through (with counseling), but if they don't want to, they don't have to."There is an alternative. Many of those who work in the system wish they could be empowered as "conservators" for those who are in psychological need. With that authority, health workers could require patients to take their medications and undergo treatment."If I could do anything, I would ask to have a stronger ability to use conservatorship when it is appropriate," Cabaj said. "To have someone's case overseen by someone who cares."Or we can have the alternative - the short, sad life of Caprice Curry.She was certainly no shrinking violet."She strutted around like a model," Singh said. "She was more of a woman than I was. She was very flamboyant and very flirtatious. She flirted with everybody."But when she wasn't taking her drugs, she could also be mouthy, difficult and argumentative. There were scenes at the local markets, a fight at the Laundromat. She smoked crack.A month ago she was taken to the hospital after getting beat up. Singh said Curry was given better medications and returned with a new interest in counseling.But what was it she returned to? "You see the neighborhood," said Dmitry Erikalov, Curry's friend for nine years. "People get killed there every month. People deal drugs everywhere in the open."Seth Katzman, who is the director of Conard House, which runs the Lyric Hotel, said the neighborhood is a prescription for failure."It is really difficult to put individuals with severe mental illness and substance abuse problem in a neighborhood where so many others have the same problems," he said. "You might go to a 90-day rehab program, and they may do a great job, but when you come back into the Tenderloin and everybody is using, I can't imagine staying sober."Curry didn't. She didn't stay on her meds and she couldn't keep herself out of trouble. At the same time, she was a force of nature at the Lyric, fluttering in and out of Singh's office, flirting with the men and sashaying out the door."This is not just another Tenderloin murder," Singh said. "She was a wild child. But she was also loving, caring and considerate. She cared."And in the end, so did the neighborhood. Erikalov said they raised $7,500 for her funeral. On a glass door at the Lyric is a small shrine, including several pictures. One of them shows Curry standing on the street, grinning into the camera, next to something she used to say all the time."You're gonna miss me when I'm gone."

Stepped-up police efforts can't head off 3 S.F. homicides

A bloody weekend in San Francisco left three men dead, with all the killings happening in or near areas where police are trying to curb violence by adding undercover officers to the streets. An attack at 10:45 a.m. Sunday in the Tenderloin left Ralph Ruiz, 59, dead of stab wounds. Investigators said Ruiz had been arguing with a man outside 245 Hyde St. when the man attacked him. The killer was described as a stocky white man, about 5-foot-2, with a white beard and white hair. He was wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt and blue jacket, police said. The other two slayings were in the Bayview. The first happened at 6:30 a.m. Saturday on the 1700 block of Newcomb Avenue, when Darius Cooper-Brooks, a 26-year-old San Francisco resident, was shot to death on the street. No arrests have been made, and police said there was no description of the killer. At 10:25 p.m. Saturday, Calvin Fennell III, 59, was shot several times on the 100 block of Kiska Road. Fennell died later at San Francisco General Hospital. Police said the killer wore a ski mask and black clothing.Family members said Fennell had been on his way to visit his 14-year-old daughter in the Hunters Point housing development when he was slain. They said the gunman appeared to have been waiting for him, but said they did not know who would want to kill him."He was a good guy," said his mother, Doris Fennell. "He didn't bother no one." A sister, Francine Fennell, said Calvin Fennell had another daughter and a son. "I'm shocked," she said. "I can't really believe it."The Tenderloin and Bayview areas have been the focus of a 6-month-old police crackdown that Chief Heather Fong said last week was showing results. The department is relying in part on flooding streets in the areas with undercover officers targeting the drug trade. So far this year there have been 81 homicides in San Francisco, compared with 82 at the same point in 2007. Ninety-eight people were officially listed as homicide victims for all of last year, but police are still reviewing two deaths that may push the total to 100. SOURCE:SFGATE.COM