Arrest for suspicion of dementia?

[jeager106]

Yes.
When I became a police officer in 1972 I learned we had authority to arrest a person for "suspicion of dementia".
This was a law on the books in Ohio to protect the person suspected of being ill.
For instance: My partner & I took a call reporting a man down on hands & knees lapping water from a pot hole like a dog in the middle of the street.
Think he was off his bean? Yup.
That was the 1st but not the only time I used that law to help a sick person.
We had to arrest/cuff/transport to the e.r. where the person was evaluated by a doctor. If doc agreed with our "suspicion" the doc "pink slipped" the sick person to the State Mental facility 1.5 hrs. away from my town.
WE did the transport, waited to get the person admitted so the person could be examined & treated if need be. (they always did-most para skiz)
This was a long & boring, often dangerous, ordeal for the officers & something we all hated to do.
It did serve a purpose. Too bad the officers in Kali didn't have that law on the books.
By 1974 or 5 that law was taken off the books as the left thought it was
too expensive, too restrictive of the rights of the person, & so on.
We did NOT have mass shooting 45 years ago like we do in the past 45,
maybe 30 years.
No police officer could abuse that law because a doctor would have caught on pretty quick.
Now people diagnosed with boarderline personality disorder ( if I can't have you no one will because I'll kill you) & paranoid schizophrenics can walk into any retailer that sells guns & buy one/ammo, go on a shooting spree & make society pay the ultimate price.
Still the left wants even greater & more restrictive gun control laws.
Sadly, after tragedies, the knee jerk reaction is to agree that the evil gun did something awful.
Do we think that the people that were parents of the murdered children at SandyHook will ever understand that the shooter was menally ill & his mother bought him a gun, it wan't the guns doing! He shot his mum first.
Somewhere, somehow, politicians must tell the truth that seriously mentally ill people were once secure in a hospital like environment where they were treated for thier illness & society was protected from muderous sick people.
It's not palatable, it seems harsh, but is it better to let dangerously mentally ill walk around among us untill they decide murder is the best option for them?

[Tinner666]

The Oppressive Regressives changed so many things like that, nut cases are the norm now.
Took spanking away from the parents too, it seems. Spanking is good, beating is bad, but the difference has faded into obscurity.

[pax]

We did NOT have mass shooting 45 years ago like we do in the past 45,
maybe 30 years....

Yes, we did.

See the excellent statistical analysis by Grant Duwe, titled Mass Murder in the United States. Mass murder has always been with us.

pax

[Slamfire]

I have not studied this in depth, but from what I have heard is that we don't have Insane Asylums anymore. It used to be, you acted crazy enough, you got put up, and locked up! Sometime after WW2, liberal thought was that approach was too harsh, their view is that the mentally ill are just confused by an oppressive society. Now mentally ill people are now free to roam around. I have seen them, and so have you, if you have gone to big city parks, or seen (typically old men) angrily shaking their fists at traffic at intersections. If these disturbed people commit enough crimes, steal enough, get drunk or high, or kill someone, they go to jail. Our society now uses its criminal justice system as a replacement for the old Insane Asylums except, there is little to no mental treatment in jail.

[thallub]

By the mid 80s most mental hospitals were closed. Among others, Ronald Reagan saw no need for them. The June bugs and politicians came up with a plan for "community treatment" and sedation. Yep, that's right they kept former mental hospital patients zonked out of their minds. Many released mental patients committed crimes and went off to prison.

Best summation of the problem i ever heard was by Donald Bordenkircher, warden of the WV maximum security prison. "They took mental patients, Thorazined their ......and reclassified them as behavorial cases." We had a guy in the Huttonsville correctional center who was being fed 400 mg of Thorazine four times a day. He did not even swing his arms when he walked.

[KyJim]

I'm guessing this was prompted by an op-ed piece in the L.A. Times by a professor of psychiatry. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed...527-story.html. The professor's proposal is woefully short of details such as whether there is a necessity for professional evaluation, burden of proof, etc.

I first saw this mentioned in a story on the ABA Journal's website. It also refers to an article soon to be published in the Indiana Journal of Law by Mary Fan. I did not read the entire article carefully, too much of a hit piece for my taste as evidenced by how the abstract begins:

Recent mass shootings at Navy Yard, Newtown, Aurora and elsewhere have jolted Congress and the states into considering gun violence prevention. More than 1,500 gun-related bills have been introduced since 2013, after the slaughter in Newtown of twenty elementary school children and six adults. Current legislation and debates are shaped by the specter of a heavily armed, mentally ill individual hunting in public places such as schools, businesses, and workplaces.

However, cutting to the chase, the author simply proposes giving some money to the police to encourage them to encourage victims of domestic violence to take advantage of domestic violence restraining orders. I doubt many people would quibble about encouraging victims to take advantage of these restraining orders, though some might not approve of throwing cash at the problem.

[jimbob86]

By the mid 80s most mental hospitals were closed.

This.

It was in the mid to late 80's when I first heard the term "off his meds" ...... someone who used to be crazy enough to be locked away in a facility, but was now just "medicated" ...... but with no one monitoring whether they actually took their medication ........ until they casued a problem and were found not to have taken their meds .....

[rwilson452]

The Oppressive Regressives changed so many things like that, nut cases are the norm now.
Took spanking away from the parents too, it seems. Spanking is good, beating is bad, but the difference has faded into obscurity.

Some time ago when I worked closely with Cal. PD ( LA and Orange county} The cops had a problem. If a child called 911 the LEO was required to respond and if the child told the LEO on site the parents struck them they were required to arrest the parents and have the child or children over to Juvenile authorities.

Finally the cops on their own decided If the child couldn't show any marks the little angel lied and they walked away.

[jeager106]

Quote:
We did NOT have mass shooting 45 years ago like we do in the past 45,
maybe 30 years....
Yes, we did.

See the excellent statistical analysis by Grant Duwe, titled Mass Murder in the United States. Mass murder has always been with us.

Nooooooo. We didn't.
I've read Duwe & found little analysis & subsequent correlation between mass PUBLIC shootings & the lack of recognition, treatment, & confinment of the dangerously mentally ill.
To say that "mass murder has always been with us" paints the issue with a very, very, broad brush.
I will define the topic at issue that should concern us all.
MASS + PUBLIC + RANDOM murders.
These 3 elements are what the media focuses on & they should
MASS as defined by the F.B.I. mean more than 4 victims.
Also victims NOT related by family, ergo not a nut killing the entire immediate family the whacking ones self.
PUBLIC means the general populace, people not personally known to the shooter.
RANDOM means the unfortunate victim that simply was present in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It's been my personal experience that once a shooter begins a rampage it matters not who the victims are.
The shooter my start out with specific "targets" but once the shooting start it matter not who gets attention.
I personally experienced such a case in or about 1971-72 when a diagnosed
mental patient employed at the Chrysler Twisnburg Oh, stamoing plant went on a murderous rampage. This sicko had a list with 40 individual names on it that he wanted to murder.
Once he shot the 1st person he began shooting people at random, people that never knew him at all.
He shot at ME at a distance of about 4 feet, shot the guy beside me, shot another man in the guts, then blew his brains out.
Total shot including himself? 13.
Random, public, mass. These kinds of shootings are modern, occuring in recent decades, all attributed to menally ill people.

[Mike38]

Mass murder has always been with us.

And it always will be. No matter how many laws made, be they anti-gun or otherwise, the mentally ill will find a way to kill others. Best one can do is be aware of what’s happening around you and avoid potential problems. Not 100%, but better than going through life with blinders on.

[pax]

Right. Totally new thing and getting worse.

Only -- it's not, and it isn't.

Here's about the "getting worse" part of the equation:

http://www.ktre.com/story/25635541/g...ricans-unaware

And here's about the "totally new thing": it isn't. Mass, public, random murder has always been with us. The tools change, the thing itself does not. It's pretty much a constant, with minor swings, and its prevalence almost exactly mirrors the overall crime rate. Whether you look at the Bath School Disaster or Virginia Tech (Mass. Public. Random. With a twist of nutcase...), it's not new.

And because it mirrors the overall violent crime rate, guess what that means for how common it is today versus how common it was in 1972?

pax

[thallub]

Here's about the "getting worse" part of the equation:

Sadly, very few people look further than the sensationalistic media stories that dwell on a mass murder events until they are overtaken by the next sensationalistic media event.

The media; be it CNN, ABC, Fox, or Worldnetdaily, routinely neglect to inform their audiences that homicide rates have declined drastically over 30 years and that mass murders acccount for about one percent of US homicides.

[Sierra280]

On the flip side, modern mental health care and medical technology has likely prevented many public massacres.

Since this has always been happening, the case that comes to mind is Charles Whitman. He actively sought mental health care but was unable to get proper treatment or even diagnosis at the time. That's not to say modern medicine could have saved him, but adequate diagnosis and modern pharmaceuticals may well have prevented what he did.

[gyvel]

See the new thread I just posted about California's new law regarding "Gun Violence Restraining Orders"

Title: "Oh, it gets better yet..."

[Uncle Buck]

I honestly believe some of the problems today is everyone is a winner and gets a gold star, blue ribbon and a trophy.

If you are not allowed to fail and have an adult there to guide you through the failure, let you know and understand that others have tried and failed, and that life goes on, you end up with a warped sense of self.

It has been quite awhile since I really studied the theories on human brains and emotion, so the thinking may have changed. But empathy, rationalization and self worth all play a very important part in the development of any normal person. I do not know if good discipline would have stopped any of these shootings or if there was something else going on in their heads.

[jimbob86]

I honestly believe some of the problems today is everyone is a winner and gets a gold star, blue ribbon and a trophy.

If you are not allowed to fail and have an adult there to guide you through the failure, let you know and understand that others have tried and failed, and that life goes on, you end up with a warped sense of self.

+1.

The most recent incident in California is a prime example of this, if you ask me.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

The California shooter had a long history of psychological problems from childhood. All the behaviors we are discussing are problem the surface outcomes from an underlying pathology. It is probably true that the parents tried various things and some seem to be overly indulgent.

They were probably not causal in his actions. It might be the case that his meds interacted with his behavior.

This is a discussion among trained folk who are gun friendly the other day.

It is nice to posture about strong discipline but up against severe disturbance with a physiological basis, that might not do it.

[jimbob86]

Glenn, if he had such a serious "underlying pathology" that he had to be medicated, why was he allowed to purchase/possess guns, and why when the people in his life that alledgedly cared about him were worried about his mental state did the police not know about this "underlying pathology" ..... or his youtube rants?

You're in the mental health business, IIRC, and have all these professional terms to impress those not in the business (a Conspiracy Against the Unimformed) .....


.... correct me if I'm wrong (I probably am- I don't have the proper skoolin' to use the five dollar words like "underlying pathology") ..... but do I know what a Sociopath is, and from where I'm sittin' the perp in the recent California incident was just that ...... most of the rest of us have another word for him: crazy.

[CowTowner]

why was he allowed to purchase/possess guns

Because a judge had not declared him to be unfit to own firearms.
All the doctors in the world can agree on a patient's diagnosis, but until the gavel sounds, all rights belong to the citizen.

[Double Naught Spy]

MASS as defined by the F.B.I. mean more than 4 victims.
Also victims NOT related by family, ergo not a nut killing the entire immediate family the whacking ones self.

Interesting. Everything I find on it says that MASS is defined as 4 OR more victims not including the shooter. Also, the FBI doesn't specify that the family not be related.

http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/pu...l-murder-1#two

Generally, mass murder was described as a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders. These events typically involved a single location, where the killer murdered a number of victims in an ongoing incident

However, if you have other FBI sources that say differently, I would be interested to read the links.

What you seem to be focused on is not mass murder or mass shooting, but mass rampage as noted by Collins.
http://sociological-eye.blogspot.com...lers-deep.html

In mass rampage killings, the killers are not aiming at particular individuals at all. The victims are anonymous, representatives of a collective identity that is being attacked. Hence mass attacks generally take place in institutional settings: mainly in schools, or work places, although recently also in exercise gyms and in churches.

[doofus47]

I'd like to point out that the pro-active method of 'arrest for suspicion of dementia' treads dangerously close to a lot of legal and cultural toes. What happens when a theoretical cop arrests some theoretical grad student from the local art academy waddling around in public in a dirty diaper while making clucking sounds as a method of "performance art" and the theoretical city gets sued for 8 million dollars for violating first amendment rights? I'm just pointing out that there's a chance of honest mis-application that would make cities shy away from such a law.
Additionally, there's a chance for abuse from the top down as well if the authorities should decide that head-banging rock n' rollers, cheek-pierced hipsters, or just hazel-eyed people need to be scooped up and evaluated.

We all wish that the police officers in California had made a different call when they were interviewing the kid, but we're all only human. The police didn't think that the kid was crazy when they talked to him, so even had they been enabled to 'arrest for suspicion of dementia,' it wouldn't have helped in this scenario.

Unrelated thought:
What would interest me would be the impressions of his roommates. Were they at all worried before this kid went off? Too late to tell now, but it always seemed that I ended up accidentally knowing more about my roommates than either of us ever wanted to know. Has anyone looked at their facebook pages, tweets, etc to see if there was a general impression that their roommate was losing his marbles?

[jeager106]

That imaginative college student "performing" art is a huge stretch there doofus. A really huge stretch.

There have been at least 61 mass murders in the U.S. since about 1982, about the time the last mental hospital closed.
Now can someone tell me how many mass murders occured in the U.S. in the 30 years prior to 1982??????
So are are mass, public, murders, rates going up or down?
I don't know, ergo the question.
I became a police officer in 1972, thus became very much more aware of crimes like mass murders, don't recall these horrific crimes from 1972 to 1982.
Not to say that's correct, I just don't recall events such as these in that time frame, not so many of them anyway.

(double naught: yes, 4 OR more is correct, I miss quoted)
(if victims are family then I'm guessing it's not public murder, don't know)
So are posters here saying that mass, public murders are going DOWN in occurances, that such crimes have little to do with dangerously mentally ill persons being free to buy weapons and committ murder?
My thoughts are that there are corrolations between the dangerously mentally ill being free in society & free to committ mass public murders.
Note these are thoughts, feelings, suppositions, not facts. I'd like to see some statistics.
I don't see a corrolation between mass public murders and the availablility of firearms.
Firearms have always been available, more available prior to about 1968 than post 1968.
"Gun control laws" are more strict now than ever before in our culture.

[jimbob86]

"Gun control laws" are more strict now than ever before in our culture.

I'm not so sure about that...... prior to the tidal wave of CCW laws, it was not legal for pretty much anybody except for LEOs to Carry ....... Now the vast majority of Americans are able to get a permit to go about their business armed.

[jeager106]

Let me refine what I said a little.
Being able to purchase firearms has gotten much more restrictive.CCW is a relatively new phenominum.

Re:Grant Duwe. People need do a bit more reading. Perhaps one might conclude that Duwe's opinions are in the minority & his statistics are questionable.

A post or two back I asked if anyone had statistics on the 30 years PRIOR
to about 1982 on the number of mass, public, random, murders.
Has anyone found evidence to support the claims that mass, public, random, murders have always been with us on the scale we've seen in the past 30 odd years?
Note that mass, public, random murders do not include murder of an entire family.
That kind of murder has always been with many societies for various alleged reasons.

[doofus47]

jeager106:

That imaginative college student "performing" art is a huge stretch there doofus. A really huge stretch.

ohh, I don't know. I just made that example up off the top of my head, but just now I googled "performance art and diaper" and there's a few doozies in there already. What about Gaga and her meat dress? If it weren't first done by a celebrity on TV, I might be a little spooked by sitting next to someone wearing that in public. Well, no. Probably I'd still be spooked by that in real life.
As usual, Shakespeare was right:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

Point being: There's crazy and nowadays there's a lot of people who are just trying to get attention and sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

Trying to control outcomes is always fraught with unintended consequences. Sometimes those costs are colossal, sometimes merely managerial. Maybe society would be willing to pay the monetary and social costs of enacting a law that enabled police officers to "arrest for suspected dementia" but recent history shows that this society isn't.

Scary thought for the day:
Maybe, deep down, a lot of people find these occurrences of monstrous and/or bizarre behavior to be the best form of 'reality entertainment' from which they don't want to be deprived.