Foes of Hospital Conversion Plan Get Organized

Fearful that a new patient population could threaten the community’s safety, some Camarillo residents are waging a campaign to derail plans to convert the state hospital to an institution for mentally ill criminals.

More than 10,000 canary-yellow leaflets alleging that Camarillo State Hospital officials have deceived the public about the conversion plan have cropped up on doorsteps during the past few days.

Postcards addressed to Gov. Pete Wilson are attached that urge Wilson to instead convert the hospital to a state university campus. The addresses of several key legislators also are included.

“It will happen unless we stop it!” the letters warn. “A prison for the criminally insane and sexually violent predators in our backyard!”

The fliers, paid for by a group called Concerned Citizens of Camarillo, represent the first attempt to generate grass-roots opposition to a state Department of Mental Health plan to change the mix of patients at the 60-year-old facility.

Organizers said they launched the campaign after two public hearings in March that were crowded with hospital workers fighting to save their jobs.

“You still have the employees sort of overpowering the public forums,” said Dick Wagner, a Camarillo stockbroker who helped organize the campaign.

“They’re well-organized, as you would expect people concerned about their jobs to be,” Wagner said. “To get the rest of the community to focus on this, we really felt this [campaign] was necessary.”

Participants in the grass-roots effort say the majority of Camarillo residents have not spoken out against the conversion plan because they fear retaliation by hospital workers, who have been organized for months.

“Don’t be skeptical,” Camarillo Councilman Mike Morgan said of the so-called silent majority. “It’s there.”

The single-page letter derides a Sacramento proposal to keep Camarillo State open by replacing the more than 850 mentally ill and developmentally disabled patients there with forensic patients--those ordered into treatment by the justice system.

State health administrators have proposed a screening process that would weed out the most dangerous of the forensic patients. But the flier alleges that such a process would not be adhered to.

“Don’t be fooled by officials who propose allowing only low-risk inmates,” the letter reads. “Once the conversion is complete, it will only be a matter of time before all levels of criminals are included.”

State health officials did not respond to phone calls seeking comment about the allegations contained in the leaflet.

The flier also maintains that employee groups pressured state and local officials into converting the hospital to a forensic facility--an allegation that union representatives deny.

“We did not,” said Kim Selke of the local chapter of the California Assn. of Psychiatric Technicians.

“We were told that there was the possibility of forensic conversion if the community would accept such a facility,” she said. “At that point we set out to find out how much support there was.”

Hospital workers, who number nearly 1,600 in total, have gathered more than 6,000 signatures of community residents who favor the proposed conversion, Selke said.

The anti-conversion flier also implies that Cal State University administrators would be interested in the site, quoting unnamed officials saying: “The hospital facility lends itself relatively easily to conversion to a university.”

But Cal State spokeswoman Colleen Bentley-Adler said Tuesday that the chancellor is not considering such an investment in an alternate site. “We’re not looking at it as a facility,” she said. “We’re looking at developing our 260 acres.”

Mental health officials have been saying for months that they cannot afford to continue operating Camarillo State without an increase in patients. In January, Wilson recommended that the institution be closed.

But state Mental Health Director Stephen W. Mayberg said he could justify keeping the hospital open if the community supports a plan to convert it to a medium-security facility housing 1,000 or more mentally ill criminals.

In that scenario, mentally ill criminals locked behind the hospital’s fences would wear identifying uniforms and be guarded by state correctional officers.

Most patients would be people who were found not guilty of crimes by reason of insanity or who were judged unable to assist in their own defense.

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors and the Camarillo, Oxnard and Port Hueneme city councils all have endorsed the proposal. But Camarillo council members Morgan, who is a candidate for county supervisor, and Charlotte Craven are leading the opposition.

“We’d rather see other uses and not turn it over to the Department of Corrections,” Morgan said. “Otherwise, we’ll become just another prison.”