State Hearings Set on Transfer of Mental Patients to Hospital

State officials, buffeted by anxiety from Norwalk residents, will hold two public hearings later this month to make the state’s case for transferring 250 court-referred mental patients to Norwalk’s Metropolitan State Hospital.

Department of Mental Health officials stirred residents’ anxieties in December when they moved 68 patients to the hospital from a San Bernardino facility that serves only patients committed by courts.

The idea of temporarily transferring another 250 patients from the San Bernardino hospital has resulted in a barrage of calls to City Hall, some from residents who remember an incident almost 20 years ago when a patient escaped from the Norwalk Boulevard facility, walked to a nearby shopping center and stabbed a child.

But Metropolitan officials insist that they would be highly selective about which patients they would accept from Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino during renovations there. They add that Gov. Pete Wilson’s state budget would buy a new fence around part of the Norwalk hospital and provide for extra security during the new patients’ stay, which could be as long as three years.

The hearings will be held at 7 p.m. March 20 at Lakeland Elementary School, 11224 S. Bombardier Ave., and March 25 at Norwalk City Hall, 12700 Norwalk Blvd.