OUT ON A LIMB: Gov. Gavin Newsom: ‘There’s no compassion stepping over people in the streets and sidewalks.’

California’s governor proposed a plan Thursday to offer more services to homeless people with severe mental health and addiction disorders even if that means compelling some into care, a move that many advocates of homeless people oppose as a violation of civil rights.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a press conference that he has no intention of rounding people up and locking them away. Instead, he said his plan would offer a way for people to get court-ordered psychiatric treatment, medication and housing, preferably before thnewsoey are arrested.

Under the plan, which requires approval by the Legislature, all counties would have to set up a mental health branch in civil court and provide comprehensive and community-based treatment to those suffering from debilitating psychosis. People need not be homeless to be evaluated by a court.

But if approved, they would be obligated to accept the care or risk criminal charges, if those are pending, and if not, they would be subject to being held in psychiatric programs involuntarily or lengthier conservatorships in which the court appoints a person to make health decisions for someone who cannot.

“There’s no compassion stepping over people in the streets and sidewalks,” Newsom told reporters at a briefing at a mental health treatment facility in San Jose. “We could hold hands, have a candlelight vigil, talk about the way the world should be, or we could take some damn responsibility to implement our ideals and that’s what we’re doing differently here.”

Good to see California finally going back to the future: We Shut Down State Mental Hospitals. Some People Want to Bring Them Back. Is “mental illness” a fraudulent concept for locking up social deviants? Or does forced treatment free the ill “from the Bastille of their psychosis?”

Related: It’s mental health, stupid: How Team Biden misunderstands homeless crisis.