The Hatchet
The Scariest Thing About the Alleged Capitol Hill Hatchet Murderer Is That a Lot More People Like Him Are Going to Be on the Streets—Without Help—Soon
Kelly O
SCENE OF THE CRIME The alley where police found the suspect just after the murder, his clothes splattered with blood.
Tools
The first time Paul Umland tried to have his brother Michael LaRosa involuntarily committed was several years ago in Florida. It was the Fourth of July. LaRosa was eating some pasta salad that Umland's girlfriend had made and suddenly became convinced the pasta was poisoned, so he took a sample of it to the neighbors with a note asking them to call the police. The police arrived, and Umland explained that his brother was schizophrenic and asked them to commit him. The police declined. LaRosa had to be a threat to himself or others first.
A few weeks later, LaRosa said that he had swallowed a watch battery and the poison was leaking out inside of him. Umland took him to a hospital and asked them to evaluate him in hopes that he could be involuntarily committed, but again he was denied. When the evaluating doctor told him that LaRosa was not a threat to himself or others, Umland asked: "How many times do you expect a person to imagine people coming after him and not defend himself?"
Stranger Personals
Shortly thereafter, LaRosa met a woman on the internet and decided to move to Seattle to live with her. "We didn't want him to up and leave to Seattle," Umland remembers, "but we couldn't tie him down. We would've been the ones arrested for that."
By the winter of 2008, the woman LaRosa had moved to Seattle to be with had filed a restraining order against him, saying LaRosa had threatened to kill her. A poem called "I Ruined Your Face" that turned up in documents relating to the restraining order reads in part:
I ruined your face, I ruined your face
I hit it with a bat and, blood went all over the place
I ruined your face, I ruined your face
I beat it with a bomb and, blew up your brains
In a separate incident, police charged LaRosa with misdemeanor assault, saying he'd bitten and attacked a security guard at Swedish Medical Center on Cherry Hill. Umland called LaRosa's probation officer in Seattle and, again, made a request for involuntary commitment. "She was like, 'Oh, he's in Mental Health Court and they're going to take care of all that,'" Umland recalls. "I said, 'If these things keep happening, why do they keep letting him go back into society?'" She told Umland that LaRosa would be put in jail if he reoffended.
"I said, 'Jail's not going to help him—that's not what he needs to go to.'"
On the morning of November 22, Joseph LaMagno left his friend's Capitol Hill home, where he was given a room in exchange for doing the housekeeping and taking care of the dogs, and headed for the grocery store. Snow was beginning to cover the city. He wanted to stock up.
The 1400 block of East Union Street, which LaMagno would soon return to with his groceries, is bisected by an alley notable for a structure called the "Gallery d'Alley"—a maroon garage covered with original oil paintings of various sizes, like a 19th-century salon turned inside out. Since he was a heavy smoker who always stepped outside to light up, LaMagno had become the guardian of this alley. "He'd go out the back gate and smoke in the alley several times a day," says Sean Carlson, who lives directly across the alley and operates the Gallery d'Alley. "We had a very cordial relationship, never an ill word. Not to suggest he was always cheery, but if not, he pretty much kept it to himself." Over time, Carlson says, "he became the sentinel of the alley, often chatting with passersby, of which there are a lot."
Part gallery tour guide, part neighborhood news source, and part urban watchman, LaMagno would tell owners of the houses abutting the alley what had happened while they were off at work. Once, when an alley Dumpster caught fire, endangering the gallery, he put out the flames himself using a bucket and hose.
"I think what he represented," Carlson says, "was an especially present connection in what makes a neighborhood a lovely place to live—the guy who hangs around just because for whatever reason he can, and he chooses to and is a reliably benevolent and auspicious force."
LaMagno had been diagnosed with schizophrenia earlier in his life, just like LaRosa had. It's a hard diagnosis to live with, characterized in the psychological literature by poorly functioning thought processes and frightening delusions. No one knows for sure what causes schizophrenia, and as evidenced by the cases of LaMagno and LaRosa, no two people manifest schizophrenia in the same manner or live with it the same way. Also evident from the cases of LaMagno and LaRosa: Not all people who suffer from severe mood disorders are violent, though some—a very small minority—do end up committing extremely violent crimes.
On a sidewalk near the corner of 15th Avenue and Union Street, around 10:30 a.m. that morning, the two men crossed paths. LaRosa had just gone to a grocery store as well, only to discover that he'd forgotten his food stamp card. Because he was homeless and it was freezing, he'd spent the previous night riding Metro buses and sitting in a Denny's to stay warm. According to what LaRosa would later tell police, he didn't remember whether he saw LaMagno at the store, but he remembered feeling physically ill upon leaving, and he remembered walking on the sidewalk next to LaMagno, who was carrying his groceries. He remembered hearing LaMagno say: "I gave your sister herpes, without having it!"
As LaRosa's brother would point out, this is not an unusual type of thing for LaRosa to hear. According to a detective's report, LaRosa "hears voices in his head and the voices state that people are giving him and his family diseases. He stated he hears the voices whether he is on medication or not."
LaRosa had an ax in his hand. He would later tell detectives he had it "because he was tired of staying at shelters and he was going to camp in the woods in the area." Instead, police and prosecutors say, he used it on LaMagno—in broad daylight, under falling snow, in front of kids from a nearby school and riders on a Metro bus—and LaMagno ended up dead on the ground, bleeding into the snow with at least 10 hatchet wounds to his head.
When police arrested LaRosa after a series of terrified 911 calls, he was in the alley that LaMagno used to guard. LaRosa's clothes were spattered with blood, and according to police, he later admitted to the crime, saying: "I don't know what came over me because I've never done murder, you know."
Seattle has relatively few murders—less than two dozen last year. Partly because of that, and partly because of the attention they draw, the murders committed by mentally unstable people who randomly attack others stand out. In 1997, retired Seattle Fire Department captain Stanley Stevenson was leaving a Mariner's game with his family when he was stabbed to death by a mentally unstable man who'd recently been released into the public after a Seattle municipal court found him incompetent to face misdemeanor theft charges. On New Year's Eve 2007, a 31-year-old Sierra Club worker named Shannon Harps was stabbed to death by a mentally ill offender as she was entering her apartment not far from the scene of LaMagno's murder. And in the summer of 2009, a man who'd been in and out of the mental health and criminal justice systems allegedly climbed into a South Park home through a bathroom window and raped the two women inside, slicing both of them repeatedly with a knife and killing one of them.
In 1999, in response to that unprovoked stabbing of Captain Stevenson, Seattle opened its Mental Health Court—one of the first courts in the nation created specifically to deal with mentally unstable offenders. The point of Mental Health Court is to connect the psychologically troubled with treatment, rather than send them off to jails that can't help them or directly back into a freedom that they're not ready to handle. It's become a critical part of the region's social safety net and has a clear record of success, with studies showing that people who participate increase their use of mental health services and commit fewer crimes after they're done.
For the most part.
"We are looking at community safety," says Jennifer Johnson Grant, an assistant city attorney who supervises the prosecutions at Mental Health Court. "We make the best decision we can with the information we have in front of us."
On a recent day at Mental Health Court, the kinds of challenging situations that judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys routinely face were on full display. One defendant who wanted to fire his lawyer—a common occurrence—announced that he takes eight pills a day and said he believed his upcoming mental health evaluation would be conducted by a nuclear physicist. In his defense, he offered: "Millions of quadrillions of years and I never rip off nobody!" Another man was pronounced by his probation officer to be doing well—"Leveling out," the officer said—and received words of praise from the prosecuting attorney, the defense attorney, and the judge. Collaboration and support are the key themes in this kind of courtroom, rather than argument, judgment, and punishment.
Judge Edsonya Charles was presiding, and showed a leniency toward contempt of court that one rarely sees in normal proceedings. She listened calmly as one man told her he couldn't wait for her to be off the bench (Charles recently lost her reelection effort but is serving out the remainder of her term), and she showed sympathy for a defendant who had been too depressed to make it to his required individual therapy ("Other than that, he's doing quite well," his probation officer said). She praised a man on finishing a year of sobriety and listened to an incoherent monologue from another man who, between nonsensical words, appeared to be saying that smokers in his building were subjecting him to humanitarian violations. There was a man who kept sticking out his tongue involuntarily, like a lizard, and another who contended that his doctors were making him take pills because "they want to keep me confused."
Some of them went free on probation, with appointments to come back and report on their progress soon. Some stayed in custody because they caused concerns. And others stayed in custody because—due to state budget constraints—no one had yet found time to evaluate their competency, and thus they had to sit in jail a few more days, another week, maybe several weeks, their troubled mental states making them far more vulnerable to harm and suffering than the average inmate, until a state psychiatrist became available.
The available records show that LaRosa was a challenging case for Mental Health Court. At times he had to be held in custody because he was creating fears about other people's safety, or not taking his medication, or causing people to believe he needed a new mental health evaluation, or failing to comply with the terms of his probation. Ultimately, he was "revoked"—or removed—from Mental Health Court for failing to comply with a requirement that he abstain from drugs and alcohol. He was known to self-medicate with marijuana, methamphetamine, and alcohol when he decided to go off his prescribed psychiatric medications, according to a person familiar with the case, and apparently he continued to do so. The court, while uniquely supportive, does not have limitless patience.
From there, LaRosa went back into the regular criminal justice system, which jailed him for 60 days, released him early for good behavior, then jailed him again, in early August, on a misdemeanor charge of violating his ex-girlfriend's restraining order. He stayed in jail for roughly another 60 days and was released in mid-October—under the supervision of a probation officer, and on strict conditions that included his continuing his mental health treatment.
Those who directly handled his case won't talk about it, either because of attorney-client privilege or medical privacy rules, and records related to his recent probation and monitoring are not being made available by authorities despite a public records request. But it's safe to assume that if LaRosa was free to wander the streets of Capitol Hill on November 22, it's because someone—or multiple people—connected to his supervision thought he was doing well enough to be allowed that kind of freedom.
If LaRosa is found guilty of the hatchet murder, or even if an examination that was ordered by a King County judge on December 7 ends up finding LaRosa incompetent to stand trial on murder charges, there will be pressing questions about why LaRosa was allowed to remain free before the killing and just how effective the social safety net was in this case.
Those questions will come at a time when that safety net, frequently portrayed by critics as an expensive sop to the sensitivities of bleeding-heart liberals, is already being slashed in order to deal with a state budget shortfall that now runs into the billions of dollars. But, even if critics don't say so, the fact is that this safety net represents far more than altruism. It's also defensive, intended to prevent someone like LaRosa from decompensating—to use psychiatric language—and turning from just an extremely troubled man with a record of three misdemeanor charges into an extremely troubled man who's going grocery shopping one minute and then, suddenly, allegedly, bludgeoning an innocent man's head with a hatchet.
"There needs to be more funding for these people," says Jennifer Johnson Grant, the city attorney who supervises Mental Health Court prosecutions. "They're very fragile; they're very needy."
Johnson Grant is one of the people who's prohibited from speaking directly about LaRosa's case, but she's a firm believer in the importance of Mental Health Court, is well aware of the additional cuts that may be coming to her corner of the safety net soon, and was willing to say this to those who are concerned about the killing of Joseph LaMagno and what it may say about our criminal justice and mental health systems: "I can't imagine what we're going to be dealing with next year."
The state's budget has been hit hard by the economy, and the Department of Social and Health Services is proposing to cut $84 million in mental health spending over the next two years. Included in those proposed cuts: $65.6 million taken away from community- based mental health treatment (of the kind that both LaRosa and LaMagno accessed), a cut that would have the effect of reducing or eliminating mental health services for up to 26,000 clients statewide. Also proposed: taking $8.3 million away from the budget of Washington's largest mental hospital, Western State, a cut that would cause the hospital to shut down an entire 30-bed ward next year. Over at the Corrections Department, which handles dangerously mentally ill offenders, the program to monitor such offenders after their release from prison—rapists, murderers, arsonists—is slated to be cut from five years of monitoring to two and a half. "I'm very concerned that we will not have the mental health services that people desperately need," says Democratic state representative Mary Lou Dickerson of Seattle, who has worked on mental health issues for some time in the state legislature.
She has concerns about the threat to public safety, too, of course, and wonders whether new information-sharing provisions that she helped add to the state's involuntary-commitment law might have prevented LaRosa's alleged crime. But she believes that in the end, the best way to prevent such crimes is a robust safety net. "No matter what laws you have on the books, you are going to have these terrible incidents," Dickerson says. "But the hope is that, through smart laws and adequate treatment, the number of instances will be small." Amnon Shoenfeld, the director of King County's mental health treatment programs, agrees. "No matter what we do in the law, we will never get to 100 percent, where there will never be a bad outcome."
Here in King County, which has been receiving about $40 million in state mental health funding each year, officials are preparing to lose about $8 million annually. "Over 20 percent of our state funding is being cut," says Shoenfeld. As a result, about 325 people a year will lose their outpatient mental health treatment. Set to be cut entirely: next-day crisis appointments for people who show up at emergency rooms with severe psychological disturbances and don't meet the high standards for involuntary commitment, but nevertheless need immediate follow-up. (Cutting these next-day appointments will leave people in crisis to either help themselves, which is unlikely, or to spiral further downward, which is more likely.) The county's involuntary-treatment facility will lose beds. Residential-treatment beds will be cut, too. And with fewer beds available, some people in severe psychological crises are just going to have to be strapped to beds in hospitals and held there until, at some point, a treatment or involuntary-commitment bed opens up somewhere.
The irony, Shoenfeld adds, is that a lot of the programs that will be cut actually end up saving money in the long run by diverting mentally ill people from jails and hospitals, where it's expensive to house them and where they can't be effectively treated and rehabilitated anyway, to community-based treatment programs that have the aim of reintegrating them back into the community (if such a reintegration is possible without jeopardizing public safety).
Nick Metz, a deputy chief of the Seattle Police Department, made a similar point back in January when he testified before the state legislature on behalf of preserving the part of the safety net that offers state-funded disability payments—the kind of payments that people suffering from schizophrenia often end up receiving, the kind of payments the legislature just cut by $12 million during a December 11 special session. "When we think of crime prevention, and when we hear that term 'crime prevention,' many times we envision in our mind, 'Well, we need better lighting, we need better locks, we need a better alarm system, we need more cops," Metz said. What a lot of people don't realize, he continued, is that the safety net—including regular, taxpayer-subsidized payments that help make unstable people a little less financially desperate—is "a form of crime prevention," and to the extent that it keeps them away from criminal behavior, it also keeps public money from having to further fund "jails and other correctional facilities."
One other example of state cuts that may not get a lot of attention but that end up gumming up the public safety apparatus: LaRosa is currently a suspect in a second murder, committed in the International District the night before the hatchet murder, but due to cuts in funding for the state crime lab, it likely will be many weeks before anyone can say whether LaRosa's hatchet was the weapon used in that attack.
The rules about involuntary commitment might seem backward to LaRosa's brother—during an interview, he asked: "Why don't you skip the part where someone gets killed, even if you have to lock him up?"—but 2,400 people are already detained each year in King County under the state's involuntary-commitment statute. Though dentention didn't happen in LaRosa's case, it does happen, quite frequently, when authorities investigate and deem citizens a threat to public safety (or themselves) under strict state guidelines.
That's why Shoenfeld and others see the looming budget cuts that will pull tens of millions of dollars in mental heath funding out of Washington's safety net as an imminent threat to public safety. For example, Shoenfeld reminds us that even at the rate that involuntary commitment happens now, he doesn't have enough beds for all of the involuntarily committed in King County—and he'll have even fewer if expected cuts go through.
The Service Employees International Union, which represents over 2,500 mental health workers in this state, recently issued a white paper calling crimes such as the hatchet murder "siren warnings of a state mental healthcare safety net in deepening crisis" and calling on state legislators to avoid further cuts. Few expect they'll be able to. "They don't have a lot of options," says Shoenfeld.
It's a problem that's being replicated, in one form or another, across almost all areas of public mental health services.
"I really don't know what's going to happen," Shoenfeld says. "We have to cut some really critical programs. This really is the limit." 
Matt Luby and David Trujillo contributed research to this article.
This article has been updated since its original publication.
hell i'd do the job for minimum wage as a tax write off. theres no cure for this crap , and wasting millions on these shit for brains idiots is just fuckin stupid . and yes you will all whine and complain and call me names for saying this , but when one of these idiots crawls through your window and rapes you and torture kills you . or your daughter or mother . you will come around to my point of view . oh yes you will !
4
When I read this part I thought, you've got to be shitting me:
"LaRosa is currently a suspect in a second murder.. but due to cuts in funding for the state crime lab, ..."
7
9
Some people need extra care beyond what's possible in the community. We need to maintain or increase mental health funding but also turn a cold hard look at what practices are actually improving the quality of life for the mentally ill, their families, and their communities and which practices feel good but don't actually work.
10
There was a man who kept sticking out his tongue involuntarily, like a lizard, and another who contended that his doctors were making him take pills because "they want to keep me confused."The tongue motion may very well have been tardive dyskinesia, a side effect of many antipsychotics. The confusion the other man felt could also be related to his meds: The side effects of antipsychotics are brutal, which partly explains the frequent lack of drug compliance.
11
Not worth the savings.
12
@10 is correct. A lot of people on meds get overdosage, and the doses are based on the concept they won't also do alcohol and other drugs ... which, of course, they do. And they don't take them as prescribed, which gets them really wacky.
If I hadn't had the support of my loved ones and a roof over my head, I wouldn't have kept trying new medications until I finally found the right ones. I can't imagine how hard it would be for someone with more important things to worry about, like eating and not freezing to death. Then add the cost of medication and you can see why those in that situation would be unwilling to spend years feeling like shit while doctors throw pills at them.
First, the irony of this news story is that Mr. LaMango's tragic fate is the real risk of further budget cuts to the safety net. People with mental illnesses are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crimes.
Yet, the emphasis of the news story is on Mr. LaRosa and his actions.
Second, he headline of this story is shameful (especially, the hard copy) and doesn't reflect what ends up being some strong investigative reporting within the body of the news story. Journalists don't write the headlines, why not? Can't they provide input on them? I suspect Mr. Saunders doesn't like the headline of the news story very much.
Third, this news story is based on a false premise that presumes there is a strong link between mental illness and violence. One thing I liked about this story is that Mr. Saunders provides additional context for other factors that may have contributed to Mr. LaRosa's horrific act in addition to his mental illness including substance abuse, poverty, incredible sleep deprivation and perhaps fear (perhaps from living on the streets or due to symptoms).
The facts are that the vast majority of people living with mental illnesses
are not violent (as Mr. Saudners acknowledges), and that the reasons for violent acts are complex (also implied in the story). While
mental illness can sometimes play a role, it is inaccurate to simplify the
role of mental illness in violence down to a sensational headline. This is where the news story ultimately fell down because the overarching message readers are left is the headline.
Alternative headline: A Lot of People will Needlessly Suffer due to State Budget Cuts. With this new headline/ framing, new directions for news coverage can be opened up.
Fourth, there is growing consensus within the mental health community that it is unethical to be arguing for the preservation of mental health services based on scare tactics. (Not that the mental health community is above this kind tactic as the recent SEIU 1199NW White paper demonstrates).
The real risks of a breakdown of the mental health safety net is that people
with mental illnesses who will lose services will be at greater risk for
being homeless, for becoming unemployed, for being incarcerated and for
facing other kinds of setbacks in their recovery. Communities will be
stretched thin to fill in the gaps. There will be many more people on the
streets and in higher-cost and less-effective settings such as jails and
hospitals.
The concluding comments by news sources that discuss this point were a strength in this news story and Mr. Sauders should be praised for seeking them out.
16
It was only when my parents had him arrested for breaking some windows and destroying a bunch of stuff around their house that he was involuntarily committed, and even then it was only for two weeks and only because Western State Hospital actually had an open bed for once. Our mental health "safety net" was already stretched pretty thin, and we're only screwing ourselves further by cutting a huge chunk of its funding.
Finally, I probably shouldn't bother responding to such obvious trolls, but @2/3 - kindly go fuck yourselves. I sincerely hope you never have to deal with a mentally ill family member.
17
I'll agree that the headline is tacky as hell though. It's a shame too, it's an otherwise interesting article.
You are clearly more mentally disturbed than Michael LaRosa ever was. At least he has a profound neurological condition to explain his actions. What's your excuse?
Well, the problem CAN'T be dealt with. Accept it, try to understand, be kind, be vigilant, and protect yourself if you have to.
22
23
Try again fuck face.
25
Evn patients who were actively hearing voices telling them to kill me, until the pateint actually tried to kill someone, they are free to try to ignore the voices. involuntary committment would have stopped the voices. saved a life, perhaps.
26
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/op…
28
Fuck you, The Stranger.
These "loons" you are talking about are people. They are people with a real illness who cannot control their actions. Calling them loons, even the ones who are decompensating, is like calling a practicing homosexual a faggot. Unfortunately the mentally ill are seen as the lowest of the low. They are seen as deviants, crazies, psychos, rapists, and murderers. The clients I work with who have real mental health disorders are some of the best people I have met in my life. If you were to see them in public, which all of you have, you would have no idea that they were living in a half-way home for Schizophrenics. You would have no idea they were "loons".
Let me emphasize this: these mentally ill people are people. Real people with real emotions. People who get offended by comments in "Seattle's Only Newspaper" which categorizes them as medicated loons. People who get hurt when they read comments like "could save millions here really easy , a box of .45 cal shells is about 20 bucks". People who cry when someone they love dies. People who want to get better.
Unlike a broken arm, mental illness is something that you will never be "cured" of. The medications do help but eventually the body becomes used to them and changes are in order. Now I'm not saying that every person with mental illness takes their medications, which is a whole other topic for another time and another day, but if the funding was there facilities like the one I work at could have more rooms, take more clients, and monitor more outpatients.
As for the person complaining that scientists need a better way to medicate these people; where is the funding to do so? Because every mental illness is different there is no possible way to simply diagnose and treat. This is why having a mental illness is so difficult.
Lastly, the building where I work is literally one block away from where this incident happened. This could have been one of my clients murdered. I am very thankful that my clients were safe that day.
But by all means, keep allowing people like Fifty Two Eighty and Will in Seattle to post their thoughts on literally every single subject Slog posts about, 24/7/365. God forbid anyone miss out on their pearls of wisdom.
Sheesh. With advocates like these, who needs Frenemies? Or Stranger-allies? Or Both?
What I was saying was that disadvantaged people with mental illness won't have the motivation or conviction to try to get help when the available treatments are so imprecise. The scientific community and drug researchers need to start treating mental illnesses the same way as other chronic conditions. They need to develop more accurate empirical standards to define these illnesses and focus more research into actually understanding how these drugs work in the brain, rather than saying "It does something with serotonin and is slightly more effective than a placebo. Let's put it on the market, where it will be used off-label in situations that we didn't investigate in our FDA trials." It's not the psychiatrist's fault that there aren't medications with clear effects; they're trying to work with what they have. Psychiatrists are trying to help us and I can't and won't blame them for using every medication at their disposal. Patients are desperate and oftentimes trying another new med is the only option the doctor has.
The blame for this isn't with people like you, who actually have compassion and empathy for those with mental illnesses, and I'm sorry if it came off that way. It's the problem with big pharma and lack of actual understanding of psychiatric disorders and neurology. It's hard to blame people who don't take their medications or stop treatment when it's so emotionally draining to try a dozen meds with negative side-effects without tangible positive improvement in their lives.
37
I am well aware of the budget cuts. But who can blame state for the cuts when even our local newspaper -a newspaper who is supposed to be liberal and pro-diversity, calls these people "unmedicated loons"? We need to change ourselves from ground level up. We need to stop the stigma of those with mental illness.
Ideally? The Stranger should keep this article, change the cover description on the hard copy (too late, I know), and The Stranger should put numbers of our State Government to contact and email addresses of those in power positions so that we can attempt to get this reversed. What is more important, spending a bunch of money on another over-expensive tunnel or giving money to those whose lives are on the line?
38
Finding that middle ground would be good but, even there, judgment calls are going to be involved: is a person too much of a danger to others, too much of a danger to themselves? And, unless you err on the side of caution and keep everyone who even seems to be a threat away from the public, some innocent people -- like LaMagno, Shannon Harps and the woman in South Park -- are almost certainly going to be killed.
39
Yes, it is that. But anyone who's read it for any length of time knows that it also can be provocative, offensive, politically incorrect, in-your-face, flip and snarky. The Kumbaya Stranger it's not.
40
It is absolutely mortifying to hear that tunnels and park turf renovations and certain other budget allowances are chosen over people. These people need us to stand up for them because they cannot stand up for themselves. As a gay man, I know I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for people who were not gay standing up for me. I really want to believe that Seattle and its Seattlites are better than this.
41
I just want to say thank you for your comments. They've made me stop and consider.
I don't know what the solutions are to our social problems, but I know that one of the mistakes we as a society continually fall prey to is that of conveniently forgetting the humanity of groups of people for some reason or another. Being reminded that these people are feeling human beings never hurts.
It seems that many acts of cruelty, callousness, or violence are preceded with some reasoning as to why the target is less than human, less than worthy of human compassions. Why do we continue to fall into this trap I don't know.
Thanks for your words of compassion. An important message.
46
I work in the Mental Health field and have made several referrals for involuntary commitment. While sometimes the standards for involuntary commitment are frustrating, I agree with them. There used to be a time when it was possible to commit someone that had an odd personality trait or simply didn't fit into what society deemed "normal" (Francis Farmer is a high-profile example). Basically, we all have the freedom to be bat-shit crazy, which is the way it should be. Unfortunately this means the occasionally someone slips through the cracks, but it's better than the alternative.
I try not to read SLOG comments because they pretty much make me lose faith in humanity and further depress me about our educational system. However, I've been following this story closely because I live less than a block from the crime scene, witnessed the aftermath of this murder and knew the victim.
I just want to thank you for being a voice of reason and kindness. I want to thank you for the work you do with people suffering from chronic mental illness. Your clients are lucky to have you in their corner.
I too have spent time working with this population and have found them to be some of the sweetest, most brilliant and empathic people ever to touch my life. Yes, very rarely someone suffering from mental illness becomes violent. However, if we look at rates of domestic violence, child sexual abuse, homicide and assault these crimes are almost always committed by people (well, mostly men - but god forbid we add a gender analysis to this - the morons on SLOG will go ape shit) who are considered "sane."
People, you are much more at risk in the presence of an angry, entitled "average" dude with an empathy deficiency (exhibit a: ERIC CARTMAN and other idiots on this forum) than the vast majority of people suffering from mental illness.
52
53
That's not an attack, I just think it's dangerous to idealize or demonize. Mentally ill people are people: Not "dangerous monsters" or "beautiful minds." They're people. We need to help them and help them help themselves and not let our liberal or conservative ideologies get in the way of treatment.
54
My mug shot made me look as if I had just ejaculated as at that moment I knew I had made it to the sweet loving arms of the Federal prison and all my problems would be made good.
I can and do sympathize with all the victims and anyone who has wrongfully killed anybody knows you can run but you cant hide from yourself
every hour of every day some one kills some one some how in some fashion from melamine to faulty car breaks to neglect to freak accident.
we need to forgive and forget those who are worthy of forgiveness and terminate with extreme prejudiced the few who are truly in need of another world.
the unpremeditated Killing of one person dose not deem you a threat to society in any form.
the most advanced creation on earth and the vast majority of space sits on top of all of our necks and so when the most advanced creation in the vast majority of all of space gos haywire we realize just how little we understand about our selfs and realize all those X-spurts and sigh-n-tists were just good for taking your money and getting more people killed.
55
56
The day this issue became available, I spent the day interviewing consumers of mental health services as part of a fidelity review of an evidence based practice at a local mental health center.
All four consumers have a serious mental illness and all four were employed. They were enjoying the same affiliation and accomplishment from their work that I derive from mine.
Their hard work and resilience have helped them get to where they are.
More people will be having trouble getting the care they need as a result of the state budget cuts. This will not turn them into murderers. Shame on the Stranger for promoting stigma and discrimination. I expect better.
Recovery from mental illness happens. We can all be a part of that change.
WHAT are these people contributing? To ANYTHING? How much trouble are they really worth if they're seriously legitimate menaces to society? What good is it doing us spending millions of dollars on these people?
Now before you start saying that I'm a troll as well, and I know that would sound like the obvious thing to do, I'm in no way saying we should just go "oh, well, guess we're going to just kill them all, they have no worth to society, and clearly, having no worth to society means death," I'm saying that we need to figure out a way, and we need to figure one out NOW, to keep those people who represent significant threats to society, off the streets. I may not advocate death for them, they are human, after all. But I am in no way comfortable with the idea of people with dangerous, violent histories and mental illnesses (that we KNOW about) being out on the streets with little or no monitoring.
And it's true that they're clearly a big budget strain. Now I could give a shit about the taxpayer, we're all hurting and we're going to continue to hurt and we're going to have to get used to that. But I have to wonder how we're going to deal with the dangerously insane, who clearly certainly exist and are existing among us, and that scares the bejeezus out of me, I won't lie. I'm not going to pretend I know what it's like to have a family member or a close friend be batshit insane, so I'm not going to just say "Oh, sure, kill 'em," not by a long shot, that's ridiculous and barely less insane than what we fear these people might do. But then WHAT are we doing with these people?
62
I read this article and I didn't have the impression that it was broadbrushing all people with mental illness, not at all. I'm sure most of us know or have known family members, friends, etc with mental illness/abnormality of some kind, and that we know not all in this category are murderers.
So, the shocking attacks by schizophrenics off their meds in Seattle, cited in this article- do you think this is something we should NOT take a hard look at? Or not discuss?
64
So ethically it's bad to paint people as dangerous when they need help, but you could make the argument the other way around, that when crazy people don't get the help they need they stay crazy and sometimes hurt others. But it would just be better to focus that people in need of help, NEED that help and taking it away starts a chain reaction for the worse.
65
Mostly I just wanted to put my two cents in about the front headline being absolutely tacky and insensitive. Using fear to support the need to fund community mental health only works to uphold the BS stigma put on mentally ill individuals and helps no one. This kind of crap only further labels and shames an already marginalized group. Do you really think furthering the social isolation of severely mentally ill people is going to help anything?? While the stranger isn't exactly known for tact, this is actually pretty disappointing.
66
It's sickening to use this argument, to be sure, but that's how sick our society is today. If it's the only way that we can fund the social safety net, so be it.
Mentally ill people who need to treatment to remain in and interact comfortably with society are not bad people, but they do need treatment to remain in and interact comfortably with society. Of course there will be some impact to others when those people lose their treatment. Some of it might be violent; some of it might be in terms of having to come up with scarce resources to support a family member or friend cut off from aid; some of those people who lose treatment are likely to be unable to continue in their jobs, and are going to wind up on more public assistance or on the streets.
Bad things are going to happen, to a lot of people, because of all of these state funding cuts. Let's not pretend that is not the case because we're concerned that somebody might be offended. Better that than we pretend there isn't a serious problem and more people's lives are destroyed because they or someone else couldn't get the treatment they needed.
70
Whoso thou be that passeth by;
Where these corps entombed lie:
Understand what I shall say,
As at this time speak I may.
Such as thou art, sometime was I,
Such as I am, such shalt thou be.
I noticed that in your latest rapid-fire response, you got so rattled that you turned on the All Craps---OOOPS!---"ALL CAPS" button again.
Everybody look out, Crapman's got an itchy trigger finger.....
RSS
Twitter
Comments (75) RSS