Yesterday while watching the local news, I saw a story about an officer who was called to an apartment complex after residents called bout a naked woman outside of her apartment.
Upon arriving, officer Ryan McIntosh found 20-year-old Ayanna Alexander outside of her apartment, but she had put on clothing by then.
Ayanna, who is an exotic dancer, told the officer that she was upset because she didn’t have a ride to work at Rachels, a local strip club.
The officer didn’t think Ayanna was impaired or had any other medical conditions, so he called his supervisor and got permission to drive Ayanna to work. He dropped her off and left, only to be called back shortly afterwards to a nearby restaurant after receiving a call about a naked woman thrashing the restaurant and disturbing patrons.
The officers arrived at the restaurant to find Ayanns with no pants or underwear on and during questioning by the police, she removed her shirt and bra and said she wanted to go to jail.
Ayanna was charged with disturbing the peace, indecent exposure and trespassing.
The problem I have with this is, not many people in their right minds, especially an “attractive” 20-year-old woman would just strip naked and cause havoc. To me, this just screams mental illness from the start, rather it is bipolar disorder or something else, but from the start of this story i felt like this woman should have been taken to the hospital for a mental evaluation, not taken to work and just dropped off.
Even after the second incident, instead of taking her to jail, I still feel like she should have been taken for a mental evaluation. Something clearly isn’t right. Maybe it is drugs, who knows? The officer said she didn’t seem impaired, but her behavior was abnormal and he didn’t do a urinary drug screen to rule out she was on anything.
Also, he was obviously not a Crisis Intervention Team officer or had much training, experience or exposure to mental illnesses or he would have recognized that this woman was in need of help, not a ride to her place of employment.
I’m not necessarily blaming the officer for not being trained properly, but I am blaming him for being ignorant and perhaps even blinded by an attractive female and wanting to do the “nice” thing by giving her a ride to work instead of truly investigating the incident.
At the hospital I work at it’s not uncommon for officers to bring us young, attractive, 20 something year old women they find naked running or walking through the streets or just sitting in the middle of the road. Nine times out of ten these women are not under the influence of any drugs or alcohol, but are suffering some type of mental break.
Often times it’s their first psychotic episode and they go on to be diagnosed and treated for bipolar disorder (most commonly), and other times they are people with long histories of mental illness.
The late teens and early twenties are the prime ages for the development of bipolar disorder and it’s not uncommon for people to present with symptoms of erratic, impulsive and irrational behavior for the first time around 20.
If this woman is simply arrested, charged and then released, she will get no help and eventually spiral out of control again, but maybe next time she won’t run into a naive officer who is trying to be nice, but maybe a predator or someone else who instead of helping this lady may victimize her or she may do something much more reckless and dangerous than taking off her clothing and throwing food in a restaurant.
Sometimes it’s hard to recognize and start treating the first symptoms of a mental illness, but to me it’s common sense that if you come across a naked, exotic dancer who gets paid to take her clothes off, doing it for free outside in the daytime, something isn’t right and the two most likely culprits are drugs and mental illness.
If the officer quickly decided she wasn’t impaired or had a medical conditions, why didn’t he take her to rule out a mental health condition other than ignorance? This is a problem on many occasions, but especially when you consider that the jails and prisons in our country today house many more mentally ill people than all of the mental hospitals, clinics and institutions combined.
Untrained officers come in contact with mentally ill people on nearly a daily basis and often times the result is tragic (numerous officer related shootings involving mentally ill people is what sparked crisis intervention team training for law enforcement officers), or they are arrested or simply ignored.
In this case, two out of three happened. Her mental condition was ignored and then she was arrested.
Licensed Mental Health Counselor 
I knew ayanna personally, she was living with my best friend at the time. She had been in and out of mental hospitals for many years and done many terrible things prior to this incident. Her mother also suffered from mental illness but never sought help because her father was against it. He was also a manipulator and used her illness to run her life in his image. I agree that ayanna could have been help and should have been taken to the hospital. However had she does that she would have lost her job and been kicked out if school. That’s no excuse I know, but when you have to take care of yourself mental health sometimes takes a backseat. She was violent, ruthless, and sidistic. However she was also sweet and funny at times.