The Trouble Brothers, 15 years later

One of the blog tags is "Trouble Brothers" for a pair of kids who used to come into my original library and cause chaos. Since I don't work at that library anymore I thought maybe I could re-use the tag for two adults who I think are related and who take trouble to the next level. Hopefully this will be the only instance of the resurrected tag though, since I had to ban them...

There are two men about my age who I think are related (maybe they aren't actually brothers, but they do look alike) who have been coming in lately and have kind of taken over one of the alcoves with tables in it (who designs a public library with alcoves!? aargh!). They seem to be maybe schizophrenic, or otherwise unwell in a paranoid sort of way. I know that mental illness is really tough to deal with, especially in a state like Texas where there is basically no social safety net, so I've really been trying to give them every chance, but they've been bothering other patrons on a pretty regular basis. The problem is that since they are paranoid, other people's perfectly normal behavior, like walking past their table more than once, or browsing the shelves near them, or looking at them because they are constantly muttering fearfully is interpreted as 'stalking' them or 'staring' at them or 'harassing' them.

Today, one of our teen volunteers went to sit at a nearby table and play on his phone while he waited for his ride after his volunteer shift had ended. About 30 seconds later, he came back looking afraid and was like "There are two guys over there who say I am trying to start something with them! They were getting in my face!" I went over there and told the brothers that they were making other patrons uncomfortable and they needed to stop doing things that made other people afraid to be in the same space as them. Of course, instead of apologizing and changing their behavior, they got defensive and insisted that our teen volunteer, who is like 15 years old and about as intimidating as a rabbit, had been hassling them. I ended up having to call the police to make them leave. The entire time I was trying to hustle them out the door they were insisting that the teen volunteer had been stalking them for weeks and was part of a conspiracy against them--they only finally left when I told them that if they weren't gone by the time the police arrived, I would ask the police to cite them for trespassing since they were banned from the library.

After they finally left I went back to the teen volunteer to make sure he was okay. Fortunately he is tougher than he looks and he was fine. I asked if he had had trouble with them in the library before or maybe elsewhere in the neighborhood, since they had been claiming that he followed them around at the grocery store, and had thrown stuff at them out of his car (he doesn't drive) so I was worried maybe they had been a problem for him in the neighborhood too. He looked at me in confusion and said "I have literally never seen those guys before in my life."