PROVIDENCE – Noel Dandy has been on an odyssey since last May, taking him from the Warwick Motel 6 to the Rhode Island State Psychiatric Hospital, where he was kept for five months and 23 days – a full month longer than he should have after a doctor declared him competent.
And it started when a police officer asked him his date of birth.
Dandy was on his way to work security at the Mathewson Street United Methodist Church when the officer stopped him outside the Motel 6, where he was living in a shelter run by OpenDoors. There was a warrant out for his arrest – on a previous assault charge – and Dandy was taken into custody.
That case was ultimately dismissed, but Dandy was kept at the Adult Correctional Institutions on a warrant for a separate 2021 case, where he was accused of biting a man at Crossroads Rhode Island. Dandy insists it was self-defense and that the other man had grabbed him by his face.
The legal trouble thrust Dandy into a system and process that is kept largely out of the public eye, where people can be held, and even given medication, without their consent.