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Cops took John Potts to Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric ward for evaluation, after he capped his weekend's worth of crazy behavior by threatening to bash his stepfather's face in with a shovel, then running off and jumping into the Raritan Bay while screaming that he had the bubonic plague. Thursday morning he attacked a peacock in a Tottenville Burger King's parking lot, battering the bird so badly, in front of a crowd of horrified onlookers, that it had to be euthanized. He was yelling then that he was killing a vampire.
The trip to Bellevue for an evaluation may have been superfluous. Potts' own mother confirmed that her son is schizophrenic and was hospitalized at the South Beach Psychiatric Center last fall. She claims that her son is actually an animal lover and perfectly amiable when he's on his medication, but he stopped taking them last month. Potts' mother hopes her son doesn't wind up in jail, but isn't that excited about him being free either. "[She] said her son 'doesn't deserve to go to prison. He needs to be hospitalized. I dread the idea of him getting out.'"
John Potts has been living in the woods on Staten Island, where he has been battling demons (literally, he believes), when not stopping in at his mom's place to do laundry and take showers. His mother figures he may have graduated to battling vampires, but is thankful that he only mistook a bird for one, instead of a child. Potts is clearly an ill man, but he also comes across as kind of an a-hole. All of today's articles include the following quote of Potts protesting to cops: "I don't see what the big f-----g deal is about this bird. It had negative energy. It came out of the darkness and I kicked it."
The peackock, which Potts severely injured by grabbing it by its neck, whirling it around and smashing it against the ground, in addition to hitting it with a baseball bat and kicking it, was named Chocolate by its 6-year-old owner, whose dad found the bird in a bar's parking lot a few weeks ago. It's thought that it could be one of the peackocks that a Staten Island man named George Burke raises. He gave a few to a friend in Tottenville a while back. Burke coincidentally has employed Potts on a few occasions to do odd jobs on his Staten Island estate.
(The Metropolitan Club, the peacock is the mascot???, by jwilly at flickr)
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Look, I completely agree that what this man did is horrendous. And we shouldn't trivialize the crime because it wasn't a human victim. He is clearly a dangerous man unmedicated.
However, Dave, you make one very dangerous error in your haphazard mention that this man "comes across as kind of an a-hole"...
Would you say the same of a patient with lung cancer or any terminal disease? What is glaringly clear here is that this man is sick. And until we accept and understand that mental illness is just that--an illness, and not a personality flaw--we as a society will continue to mistreat people like this and counterproductively treat punatively what should/could be prevented clinically.
I am in no way insinuating that his illness excuses his actions or that he should not be held accountable. But your judgment of his character seriously demonstrates your limited understanding of schizophrenia and mental illness in general.
I just always assumed that if you tried to attack a peacock, it would F you up.
[1] I completely understand your complaint and thank you for raising the point. I actually got in touch with a mental health professional and asked what the protocol was in calling a schizophrenic person an a-hole, independent of his illness. I'm still waiting to hear back from her.
Potts' statements to police, however, seem to have been delivered at a time of lucidity, when he was simply discounting an act of incredible cruelty towards an animal as unimportant. If he was deranged at the time, that's one thing, but his statement after the fact made him also come across as "kind of an a-hole."
I, personally, am onboard with Potts' mom, who doesn't think he should be jailed, but definitely needs to be hospitalized. It's also true that the mentally ill, while troubled, are not immune from just behing a-holes, the same way a patient suffering from lung cancer could simultaneously be an insufferable jerk.
that's just DH's passive aggressive snippyness coming back, something I've hoped that would not return because he was doing so well.
he could learn some compassion from Jen.
Hey Dave,
Thanks for responding to my initial comment. Good point about the mentally ill not being immune from being a-holes. If ,in fact, his statement was delivered while lucid, I'd have to agree with you that on top of being schizophrenic, he also seems to be a douchebag. They are certainly not mutually exclusive.
Cheers.
That's ok, Dave, you're perfectly sane and you're still an a-hole.
Lock him up in an insane asylum.
oh, isn't there a war going on?
i'm more concerned with the 6 year-old child to whom the peacock belonged. i hope they didn't actually have to see it. potts is a grade-a a-hole for sure.
"I just always assumed that if you tried to attack a peacock, it would F you up."
Damn, this observation really made me laugh; something along the same lines always seems to have occured to me as well!
I mean, any creature - fish or fowl - that's ballsy enough to stroll around drawing that much attention to itself has GOT to have something up its sleeve on the F-you-up tip, right!?!
Does anyone else find it strange that a peacock wanders into your backyard and you don't call anyone or put up flyers or something to see if its been reported missing? Is it an everyday occurence that a peacock walks in and makes itself at home? Maybe it's just me...
"I mean, any creature - fish or fowl - that's ballsy enough to stroll around drawing that much attention to itself has GOT to have something up its sleeve on the F-you-up tip, right!?!"
Obviously it was just bluffing. All looks, no action.
Any guesses why a peacock would be named Chocolate?
Because it was a blood-sucking peacock...
8: Didn't have to see it, but could always come to Gothamist for a graphic description...
sadly a beautiful bird and house pet died. however, it's better than an innocent person...
it looks to me like the mother might be the ass whole.
i understand he is in his 30s...but
he went off his meds a month ago, and he was just running around the woods attacking things?
she knew he was currently sick, not taking medication, homeless...and recognized he could have mistaken a vampire for a child.
Did I miss the part where someone explained why there was a peacock in the Burger King parking lot??
#[15] Agree with you. Potts is clearly violent and possibly a danger to anyone who he considered a threat. Why wasn't he in an institution?
Quoting the mother:
What happened to the peacock was "tragic," she said, but "At least it wasn't a person. Now he can get the help that he needs."
Does that mean that she hasn't been able to get the appropriate help for him?
#2 - Potts first attacked the bird with a baseball bat before he started beating it. The peacock never had a chance.