Treating MICAs: "Wild Man of West 96th Street"

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They call him the Wild Man of West 96th Street. Larry Hogue first showed up in this neighborhood on Manhattan's Upper West Side about seven years ago. The residents got used to seeing him walking in and out of traffic and talking to himself like so many of the homeless mentally ill who've been dumped on to the city streets.

But as the years went by, his behavior became more bizarre and more menacing. He started destroying property, carrying weapons, and threatening people. Lisa Lehr used to give food to Larry Hogue and cover him with blankets while he slept on the street. Now she's made it her mission to get him off her block.

He's very large. He's very powerful. He's very agile. And he springs. He crouches between parked cars and suddenly, as you're driving along, he jumps onto the hood of your moving car, so that you are carrying him around like a hood ornament.

Lehr told us she also saw him rip apart a large stone bench and throw a slab of it through her car window.

He took this bench, and he forced it through my car window with such incredible force that it bent the frame my car. I realize that if this had been a person, or a child, or somebody's neck that they wouldn't have been here. Human flesh could not endure this type of violence.

Lehr says many residents of 96th Street are afraid to go outside if Larry's around.

People on 96th Street, when Larry's out, are like groundhogs coming out of boroughs. They take a look, and if Larry's in the street, they go home. And they run back in incredible terror. It's hard to believe that in the 20th century, in a civilized community, you have one person who has instilled such fear in people and taken away, really, from the joy of life.

Larry Hogue he's been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. He suffers from irreversible brain damage. He told psychiatrists that his mental problems started after he was hit in the head by a propeller blade while serving in Vietnam.

I'll give you $3,000 if I go away.

Every month, he gets $3,000 in veterans benefits, which he picks up at a local bank. He's often homeless because instead of spending the money on housing, he spends it on drugs and then heads right back to 96th Street.

Yeah, he would constantly fight officers who tried to take him in as an emotionally disturbed person.

Did he ever fight you?

Yes, he did. We fell off the sidewalk into the street, where traffic had stopped at that point.

The police want Larry Hogue off the streets. The community wants Larry Hogue off the streets. But as it turns out, that's all but impossible under the law without Larry's consent. And he's not willing.

Every time Larry Hogue is picked up by the police, he's taken to jail or to a psychiatric emergency room at a local hospital. He's kept in custody until the drugs are out of his system. Without drugs, he goes from being a wild man to being a calm and docile man. Since he's no longer a threat, he's released. And inevitably, he gets high again and returns to haunt the residents of 96th Street.

Assistant District Attorney Paul Shechtman says there's no way the criminal justice system can keep Larry Hogue off the streets.

What I know is we can't do anything here until Larry Hogue harms someone seriously. And that's a terrible thing to say. And you can't make policy for Larry Hogue by waiting for him to hurt somebody.

The problem, Shechtman told us, is that as long as Hogue keeps committing misdemeanors, he'll keep coming right back out the revolving door of the city's prisons.

When Larry Hogue appears in court, he's usually meek as a lamb and rational.

Where does your case go from here?

The trial.

What is the purpose of the trial?

To find me guilty or innocent.

Since the criminal justice system can't keep him off the streets, Shechtman thinks Larry belongs in the mental health system. And he's told the court he thinks Hogue should be involuntarily committed to an institution. But the laws to protect the mentally ill are strict.

The law requires for him to be in imminent danger. They say once clear of cocaine, 72 hours later, he's not in imminent danger. Everyone tells me that the word that keeps Larry Hogue back out on the street is imminent—that he's not in imminent danger. And I say, jeez, when we know that he's going to do it tomorrow, isn't tomorrow imminent enough? And the answer seems to be, imminent means now. To which I say, we really have lost our good sense.

The criminal justice system can't keep Larry in prison. And the mental health system can't keep him in a hospital. So there's nowhere for Larry Hogue, or the 150,000 others like him, to go, except the asylum of the streets.