Letter to the editor: While it may have good intentions, Flanagan’s Law lacks respect for personal liberty, privacy, and issues of mental health

This is a letter to the editor submitted to Fall River Reporter and was not written by us.

Representative Silvia’s proposed legislation – dubbed “Flanagan’s Law” – is a dangerous combination of carelessness and ineffectiveness.

The bill’s negligent lack of specificity in, and due respect for, profoundly critical issues of personal privacy, civil liberties, criminal justice, and mental health are astonishingly reckless.

My first concern is that this bill reads that anyone would be eligible for inclusion on this new database if they were “found to be a ‘violent or dangerous person’”. You might ask, how is a “violent or dangerous person” defined? The answer is less specific than you might think.

It would include anyone who, within the acts of a crime, used a deadly weapon or any other sort of physical force against another person. Or it could mean someone who commits the crime of burglary, extortion, arson, or kidnapping. Or, astonishingly, it could include any adult – or juvenile – who commits a crime which “otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious risk of physical injury to another”. The bill lacks clarity on who gets to decide this last part.

Whew, talk about casting a wide net. This seems to be wide open for interpretation and seems to be grounds to include everyone from drunk drivers to people who start forest fires to hungry and desperate teenagers running out of a store stealing a loaf of bread. How scary.

Believe it or not, that’s not the only way someone could find themselves on this secret list. And no, someone doesn’t need to meet both criteria, only one.

The second way an individual would be eligible for inclusion on this list of “Violent and Dangerous Persons” if they are ever, even once, “adjudicated as posing a substantial risk of harm to self or others as determined by a qualified mental health professional” under either a Section 12 (involuntary mental health treatment) or Section 35 (involuntary substance abuse treatment) proceeding.

It is wholly illogical and irresponsible to conflate anyone’s risk of harm to themself as any kind of indicator or predictor of risk to others, now or in the future. The inclusion of this criterion is a gross mischaracterization of mental health crisis and is downright disrespectful to those who have experienced it. Furthermore, conflating addiction with interpersonal violence is a similarly reckless and uninformed decision. I’m truly flabbergasted at the suggestion.

Think of how many people you’ve heard of, or maybe know or even love, who at one time needed mental health or substance use treatment through a civil commitment proceeding. Did their struggles make them violent? Did it predict violence? Should their struggles follow them for the rest of their days, more than it already does? Should first responders or judges treat them differently for the rest of their lives because of it?

Finally, I also assert that any insinuation that the existence of such a “list” like the one Mr. Silvia aims to create would have prevented the unquestionable tragedy of what Mr. Flanagan experienced in his assault on October 20th, 2025, is equal parts irresponsible and unsubstantiated by any precedent.

I’m able to say this because no similar State-sponsored database, or “list”, containing this combination of personal information and with these stated goals exists anywhere else in our country. There is no proof or precedent that the creation of such a list or database would prevent any crime at all, big or small, visited upon any citizen of our great Commonwealth, well-known or otherwise.

I hope it becomes increasingly clear to folks that this idea, while may be coming from a good place, is half-baked. It lacks precedent and, as currently constituted, lacks respect for personal liberty, privacy, and issues of mental health on multiple levels. There’s no indication it would be effective at anything beyond that of more established and responsible Federal and State databases. I hope Mr. Silvia, his citizen collaborators, and his legislative co-petitioners all reconsider this bill.

Owen Tidwell
Fall River Resident
Mental Health Professional and Social Worker