imported post
By ROBERT L. JAMIESON JR.
P-I COLUMNIST
DON'T BLAME the gun. Blame the psychologically unhinged man who pulled the trigger.
Blame a mental heath system that allows people of unsound mind to walk free to hurt themselves -- or others, as Tuesday's horrific shooting spree in Skagit County shows.
The suspect, 28-year-old Isaac Zamora, has an extensive criminal record and a history of mental illness. His family said they did what they could to get him help, even as he self-medicated, became homeless, lived in the woods, and drifted in and out of psych-ache.
What sparked the shooting rampage that killed six and injured four isn't yet known -- and may never be. But we've come to know such deadly outbursts. The names and places may change. The bodies pile up.
At Northern Illinois University in February, a former grad student who was taking anti-anxiety drugs and anti-depressants shot and killed five people and wounded more than a dozen before turning the gun on himself.
In the Virginia Tech campus massacre last year, an English major who had been declared mentally ill hunted down classmates, killing 32 people before committing suicide. The rampage is the deadliest by a lone gunman in U.S. history.
Closer to home, Naveed Haq, a man with a history of mental trouble, ranted against Israel before going to the Jewish Federation offices in Seattle in 2006. He shot and killed one woman, and injured five others.
Guns played a role in these incidents, but they just happened to be the tools of choice. A similarly deranged person could walk onto a packed bus with a machete -- and swing. Or get behind the wheel and slam into a crowd.
The deeper question, one that often goes unaddressed or gets pushed aside in a knee-jerk clamor for a gun crackdown, is this: How do we handle unquiet minds before the violence?
The arc of the problem goes back decades, when there was a push to close mental institutions, leaving the emotionally distressed to fend for themselves.
Some now end up on the streets. And because the government is either unable or unwilling to wrestle with the matter, guess who often ends up dealing with it? The cops.
In Seattle, like many other U.S. cities, police on the frontlines also must don social worker hats, dealing with out-of-control minds.
Seattle police developed special crisis intervention teams to soothe those suffering from psychosis. They've adopted less lethal weapons such as bean-bag guns, to prevent a repeat of what happened in the city eight years ago: David Walker, a mentally ill man wielding a knife and gun, was shot and killed by a uniformed officer in Lower Queen Anne.
But police shouldn't have to shoulder the mental health burden. They shouldn't have to grapple with the revolving door that takes mentally ill offenders from street to jail and back again.
A 2000 report by the National Institute of Justice said that once a mentally ill person is arrested for disorderly behavior, that person is tagged a criminal and is likely to be arrested when acting out in the future instead of getting treatment.
This approach has got to change.
More beds for mentally ill people in treatment facilities would help. As Dr. Linda Teplin of Northwestern University told Newsweek in July, today's chronic shortage of beds results in fewer, shorter stays and the reality that "you have to be extremely mentally ill" to get one of them, she said.
More specialized housing is needed as well -- not the dismal warehousing of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," but well-funded, safe facilities.
This is not to say strict laws shouldn't be on the books to keep guns from dangerous people.
But the main focus has to be broader, addressing the illness fueling the behavior.
Committing seriously mentally ill people to institutions isn't just a matter of public safety. It protects them as well, because the sad truth, as Newsweek pointed out, is that they are most often the victimized -- not the victimizers. A 2005 study that Teplin worked on at Northwestern University suggests that people with serious mental illness are 11 times more likely than the general population to be victims of violent crime, Newsweek said.
Unfortunately, the plight of the mentally ill grabs public attention when they are the perpetrators -- when they do what James Anthony Williams was arrested for this year on Capitol Hill: fatally stabbing Shannon Harps in front of her condo.
Or when they go on a terror spree as Zamora did before getting arrested.
Flipping through Zamora's criminal history reveals a man in distress, a man whose actions were cries for help.
He's got our attention now. Painfully late.
P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. can be reached at 206-448-8125 or robertjamieson@seattlepi.com.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/377672_robert04xx.html
He is right...... Good article
By ROBERT L. JAMIESON JR.
P-I COLUMNIST
DON'T BLAME the gun. Blame the psychologically unhinged man who pulled the trigger.
Blame a mental heath system that allows people of unsound mind to walk free to hurt themselves -- or others, as Tuesday's horrific shooting spree in Skagit County shows.
The suspect, 28-year-old Isaac Zamora, has an extensive criminal record and a history of mental illness. His family said they did what they could to get him help, even as he self-medicated, became homeless, lived in the woods, and drifted in and out of psych-ache.
What sparked the shooting rampage that killed six and injured four isn't yet known -- and may never be. But we've come to know such deadly outbursts. The names and places may change. The bodies pile up.
At Northern Illinois University in February, a former grad student who was taking anti-anxiety drugs and anti-depressants shot and killed five people and wounded more than a dozen before turning the gun on himself.
In the Virginia Tech campus massacre last year, an English major who had been declared mentally ill hunted down classmates, killing 32 people before committing suicide. The rampage is the deadliest by a lone gunman in U.S. history.
Closer to home, Naveed Haq, a man with a history of mental trouble, ranted against Israel before going to the Jewish Federation offices in Seattle in 2006. He shot and killed one woman, and injured five others.
Guns played a role in these incidents, but they just happened to be the tools of choice. A similarly deranged person could walk onto a packed bus with a machete -- and swing. Or get behind the wheel and slam into a crowd.
The deeper question, one that often goes unaddressed or gets pushed aside in a knee-jerk clamor for a gun crackdown, is this: How do we handle unquiet minds before the violence?
The arc of the problem goes back decades, when there was a push to close mental institutions, leaving the emotionally distressed to fend for themselves.
Some now end up on the streets. And because the government is either unable or unwilling to wrestle with the matter, guess who often ends up dealing with it? The cops.
In Seattle, like many other U.S. cities, police on the frontlines also must don social worker hats, dealing with out-of-control minds.
Seattle police developed special crisis intervention teams to soothe those suffering from psychosis. They've adopted less lethal weapons such as bean-bag guns, to prevent a repeat of what happened in the city eight years ago: David Walker, a mentally ill man wielding a knife and gun, was shot and killed by a uniformed officer in Lower Queen Anne.
But police shouldn't have to shoulder the mental health burden. They shouldn't have to grapple with the revolving door that takes mentally ill offenders from street to jail and back again.
A 2000 report by the National Institute of Justice said that once a mentally ill person is arrested for disorderly behavior, that person is tagged a criminal and is likely to be arrested when acting out in the future instead of getting treatment.
This approach has got to change.
More beds for mentally ill people in treatment facilities would help. As Dr. Linda Teplin of Northwestern University told Newsweek in July, today's chronic shortage of beds results in fewer, shorter stays and the reality that "you have to be extremely mentally ill" to get one of them, she said.
More specialized housing is needed as well -- not the dismal warehousing of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," but well-funded, safe facilities.
This is not to say strict laws shouldn't be on the books to keep guns from dangerous people.
But the main focus has to be broader, addressing the illness fueling the behavior.
Committing seriously mentally ill people to institutions isn't just a matter of public safety. It protects them as well, because the sad truth, as Newsweek pointed out, is that they are most often the victimized -- not the victimizers. A 2005 study that Teplin worked on at Northwestern University suggests that people with serious mental illness are 11 times more likely than the general population to be victims of violent crime, Newsweek said.
Unfortunately, the plight of the mentally ill grabs public attention when they are the perpetrators -- when they do what James Anthony Williams was arrested for this year on Capitol Hill: fatally stabbing Shannon Harps in front of her condo.
Or when they go on a terror spree as Zamora did before getting arrested.
Flipping through Zamora's criminal history reveals a man in distress, a man whose actions were cries for help.
He's got our attention now. Painfully late.
P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. can be reached at 206-448-8125 or robertjamieson@seattlepi.com.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/377672_robert04xx.html
He is right...... Good article