The 1967 Law That Left Rob & Michele Reiner Defenseless Against Their Own Son
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 910 Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
Rob Reiner reportedly told friends he was "petrified" of his own son. Michele Reiner had allegedly grown increasingly worried about Nick's deteriorating mental state. They had money, connections, access to the best treatment in the world — and none of it mattered.
Because in California, families cannot force treatment on an adult who refuses it. They can't initiate conservatorships. They can't compel long-term psychiatric care. All they can do is call 911, watch their loved one get held for 72 hours, and wait for them to be released.
This episode traces how we got here. In 1967, California passed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, ending indefinite involuntary commitment and creating strict criteria for psychiatric holds. The law was a response to real abuses — families locking away "inconvenient" relatives, horrific conditions in state hospitals, patients warehoused for decades without treatment.
But the community mental health centers that were supposed to replace the hospitals were never built. The funding was gutted. And within one year of the law taking effect, mentally ill people entering California's criminal justice system doubled.
Today, fewer than 1,500 Californians are on LPS conservatorships. A 2020 audit found that in LA County, nearly 10,000 people had been placed on at least 10 psychiatric holds — but only 1 in 16 ever resulted in long-term care. The 72-hour hold became a revolving door. And families like the Reiners were left with impossible choices: abandon your sick child to the streets, or become their untrained caregiver and hope today isn't the day it all falls apart.
We dismantled a flawed system and called the rubble progress. Rob and Michele paid the price.
#HiddenKillers #RobReiner #NickReiner #MentalHealthCrisis #LPSAct #Deinstitutionalization #5150 #CaliforniaMentalHealth #TrueCrime #ReinerCase
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:03.2 | Here now, Tony Bruske. |
| 0:07.2 | This is a story I've been wanting to do for a long time. |
| 0:11.5 | In fact, I actually want to do a documentary on this at some point. |
| 0:15.2 | So this is going to be an interesting one. |
| 0:18.0 | You know what they say, or we think sometimes that things always improve with |
| 0:23.1 | time, we get better at what we do, especially in our institutions that, you know, a hospital |
| 0:27.8 | in 1967 is going to be better than it was, better than it was in 1967 today. You know, |
| 0:34.5 | it's improved. New technology, new ways of doing things. |
| 0:40.1 | And in many ways, those things can be true. |
| 0:44.4 | But in some ways, not at all. |
| 0:49.0 | In some ways, some ideas need to come back. |
| 0:54.2 | They can certainly be improved. |
| 0:56.5 | But there's certain ideas, certain systems that we've had in our past, |
| 1:00.4 | that we simply threw our hands up in the air and said, |
| 1:03.4 | we're not going to do this anymore. |
| 1:06.5 | Throw the baby out with the bathwater. |
| 1:10.0 | And rather than improving those systems and updating them to more ethical standards, to put it lately, we just said screw it. |
| 1:21.1 | And in doing so, basically took the problem out of our hands, |
| 1:30.3 | meaning the functioning members of society, |
| 1:33.3 | and have said to those who are not so functioning in society, |
| 1:37.6 | good luck, there's a bridge down the road that provides some shelter. |
... |
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