I blame the axe manufacturers.

People don't kill people. Axes do.

In my experience, circa 1999, it's not uniformly true in WA that its impossible to involuntarily commit someone. I had a friend who it later turned out was a previously diagnosed OCD and bipolar case. He always seemed just enthusiastic enough to make my spider sense tingle, but never specifically. His behavior gradually degraded into very manic and OCD symptoms, concluding with my taking him to St Josephs ER in Bellingham. They observed him for several hours and did take him, I believe involuntarily, for a week. Later turned out to be a undiagnosed rapist to, and died-falling off a roof, which was likely better than he deserved. True story-that's why we wore onions on our belts-it was quite the fashion at the time.

"undiagnosed rapist"

I fail to understand the meaning of these two words when put together.

It's a great follow-up. Mr. Umland, thanks for talking about your experience. Involuntary commitment is very tough to convince a judge to sign off on, and no panacea once one's in place, either.

Involuntary commitment is possible, but only usually for a short period of time, long enough for someone with schizophrenia to become distracted, respond to medication, or say that they're fine so they can out of there.
It's not a workable system. I have someone close to me who has schizophrenia and he can't take care of himself let alone be around others without freaking them out.
He is a danger to himself and others, but until that danger becomes a specific disaster, there is literally nothing that can be done legally.
Does anyone know of an action group that works specifically to change mental health protocols to protect people with mental illness from themselves, police, and also society from their actions (without endangering their civil liberties)?
Let me know.

Its pretty simple, we all have a right to personal freedom in this country, its in the whole constitution thing we keep hearing about the TSA wiping its ass with.

If peoples individual freedoms could be taken away by cops or doctors against their will it causes problems with the notions of freedom. Who gets to decide when you lose yours?

STFU, Will.

@2,

Yes, for a *week*. Temporary involuntary commitment would have done nothing to prevent this tragedy.

It seems to me that violently unstable people who refuse to take their meds are committing reckless endangerment every time they leave the house. Since long-term involuntary commitment seems practically impossible to achieve until after someone's been murdered, maybe it's time for law enforcement to get involved. La Rosa supposedly refused to take his meds because he didn't like the side effects. Might he have taken them if the side effect of refusing them was a prison sentence?

I feel bad for Umland. He's right... what the hell could he do? You can't hold an adult against their will, even if you know they're not mentally stable. And the police have too much else to do besides follow any particular person around to ensure they don't become violent.

Our society is almost entirely reactive based when it comes to crime and to behavior like LaRosa's. "He's a potential danger to himself or others? Well, I'm sure it'll all be fine, don't worry." And now what, will they send him to prison? One person dead and another locked away in absolutely the wrong institution. What a complete fucking failure of the system.

@8 - I seriously doubt it. That's not enough to stop mentally healthy people from committing murder, why would it stop someone already unstable? It's a catch-22.

This is a recurring theme for Umland: frustration with how difficult it was to try to help his brother and exasperation at what it takes to get someone like his brother detained by authorities.

“Basically, you have to wait until he’s a harm to somebody before you do anything," Umland told me.

This is a classic case of trying to balance the rights of the individual with the interests of society. If we locked up everyone who seemed like a potential threat it would undoubtedly save the lives of some innocent people. But, on the other hand, most of the people locked up probably wouldn't go on to harm anyone. It's difficult-to-impossible to know which potentially threatening people are going to end up murdering someone with a hatchet, or end up murdering their former girlfriend in her office at the UW, or end up mowing down 32 fellow students at a Virginia university.

@11 two murders by insane people on the same street in less than 3 years should tell you that something is seriously fucked up on a very local level. I don't buy that it's just a tragic coincidence.

@10,

Mentally sound people have their own reasons for committing murder. Schizos like La Rosa commit murder because they are unstable and they refuse treatment. Imprisoning them for refusing to take their meds would at least minimize their opportunities for harming others.

And the mentally ill are capable of making rational decisions. I've seen it plenty of times where mentally ill people in public (whether homeless or not) harass women, children, and the elderly while leaving the meatheads alone. What is that except a rational decision to avoid fucking with people who might lash out?

La Rosa made a rational choice not to take his meds, and I suspect he might have made a different choice if he had suffered consequences for that decision.

It seems that the police around here are extremely reluctant to get involved in any threat or crime that involves the homeless or mentally ill. I've heard it's actually on orders from their supervisors to not even bother with the homeless or mentally ill because it takes up too much of their resources.

LaRosa and Umland grew up together in Florida, but not long ago LaRosa moved to Seattle to be with a woman he'd met online. (She's the one, Umland said, who later filed for a restraining order against LaRosa over his violent and unstable behavior.)

While LaRosa ended up murdering a stranger, he certainly could've murdered this woman. Rebecca Ann Griego, the woman who was murdered at the UW by her former boyfriend, had taken out a domestic-violence protection order against him. And according to a co-worker, he left messages at her office including threats to kill her. I imagine that, of all pissed-off ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands who make death threats, a certain percentage (1%? 2%? 5%?) follow through on their threats, just like this asshole did. But how do we know which ones are likely to do it? I doubt there's any way to tell. So, that leaves us with a choice: (1) lock up all these guys (or even just the guys who seem most likely to murder), which would be unfair to most of them but save the lives of some innocent women, or (2) don't lock them up because they haven't committed an actual crime and accept the fact that some women are going to be killed. And, as a society, we've made the collective decision to choose #2.

Same thing with drunk drivers. We could be much more hardass regarding people's civil liberties when it comes to driving and undoubtedly save numerous lives every year. But we don't, and won't, do that.

@15: I don't think this quite compares with driving. Driving is not a civil liberty, it's a privilege granted to you after you pass a test proving that you can do steer 2000 lbs of metal at 30+ mph without maiming your fellow citizens. The bar is pretty low at the mo, which is why people seem to forget this.

Stowe, a person doesn't have an unmitigated right to drive (they have to pass a test, as you noted), but once you pass that test and are allowed to drive, it doesn't mean you give up your Fourth Amendment rights.

From Wikipedia: "The Supreme Court also held that individuals in automobiles have a reduced expectation of privacy, because vehicles generally do not serve as residences or repositories of personal effects. Vehicles may not be randomly stopped and searched; there must be probable cause or reasonable suspicion of criminal activity."

Wikipedia also says that the Michigan Supreme Court had found sobriety roadblocks to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment but that, in a 6-3 decision in Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz (1990), the United States Supreme Court found properly conducted sobriety checkpoints to be constitutional. Furthermore, it says that "while acknowledging that such checkpoints infringed on a constitutional right, Chief Justice Rehnquist argued the state interest in reducing drunk driving outweighed this minor infringement."

It goes on to say that the dissenting justices argued that the Constitution doesn’t provide exceptions. "That stopping every car might make it easier to prevent drunken driving...is an insufficient justification for abandoning the requirement of individualized suspicion", dissenting Justice Brennan insisted.

It also says: "Although the U.S. Supreme Court has found sobriety checkpoints to be constitutionally permissible, ten states have found that sobriety roadblocks violate their own state constitutions or have outlawed them."

Thanks for the comments and additional context, Paul. It's not clear to me how this could have been prevented without the benefit of hindsight, or without a major sacrifice of civil liberties.

Most mentally ill people do not commit murder. A few do. It's extremely difficult in most cases to predict which group a given person will fall into.

@8: "Might he have taken them if the side effect of refusing them was a prison sentence? "

Perhaps, but how much are we willing to pay to sustain the kind of medical probation system required to make sure he's taking his meds every day? This would require both law enforcement and medical personnel. How long does probation last, the rest of his life? And still, the guy can just stop showing up one day, destabilize, and kill someone a few days later.

Assuming this very expensive system could work, we what percentage of murders would this actually prevent? Maybe 1%? I'm guessing we'd get a lot more bang for the buck by focusing on more common homicidal scenarios.

IMHO, at some point, you have accept reality - there will always be risks when living in a free society.

God, what a shit sandwich all 'round.

@13 - Agreed, generally. It's going to be tough dealing with the logistics (and legality) of what you propose, however.

A few other related thoughts re: rationality. How educated are mentally ill people about the potential for their own illness to control them? Wouldn't a rational person take their meds if they realized they might kill someone and end up in jail? If we can identify that they are dangerous enough to penalize for eschewing medication, can they be identified as irrational and incarcerated?

Again, very similar to the spontaneous murder 3 winters ago by schizophrenic in same area of capitol hill:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/lo…

I just re-read this, both are cases of 'not enough was done'. But we had something to learn from previous incident, instead it went repeated a week ago today. Very aggravating! I assume this will just remain a problem. Has mayor McGinn said anything about this? We can't just count on the next time bomb's relative to prevent violence or murder

15
Good metaphor:
Drunk drivers typically can't drive for very extended periods of time.
Schizophrenics who are unable to care for themselves are pushed out after a week to streets that don't want them, or group homes that can only provide minimal care. They get a case worker who can maybe keep in touch with them.
We certainly shouldn't hold the mentally ill responsible for their actions in the same fashion that we do drunken public offenders, but we owe them as much, if not more diligence and protection.

And, if the state did take charge of some individuals (as in long term hospitalization), we can take steps to insure that people who are not in fact a danger to themselves or others are not wrongfully stewarded. It's not the fifties anymore and we know quite a bit more about social, political, and business ethics, as well as the brain and mental illness (although investment in research to learn much more would be great).

Someone with schizophrenia can literally threaten to kill people or themselves, and they will be hospitalized. And then, when they seem more responsive and balanced, they will be quickly and quietly released. They may do well for a while. They may not. This is a problem for people who are ill who repeatedly stop taking medication or for whom meds don't really work but are on drugs like lithium that just stupefy them.

I'm real sorry Mr. Umland, I know how it is and it isn't your fault. It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a whole lot more to care for a low-functioning paranoid schizophrenic.

15
"accept the fact that some women are going to be killed"
Ok, what's your acceptable percentage of lady-murders?
Can't we ladies just die the olde fashioned way? (childbirth and boredom)

And no one is talking about just locking up people who just seem violent or getting those psychics from Minority Report to predict future murders. They're talking about using actual science, research, and good planning to address a serious issue that currently benefits no one.

Ok, what's your acceptable percentage of lady-murders?

Yonson, as a society, because of the emphasis we place on civil liberties for the individual, we have effectively decided that we are going to accept a certain number of murders of women by their enraged ex-boyfriends or ex-husbands (or murders of people by strangers: see Isaiah Kalebu - South Park as well as the recent case of Michael LaRosa.) In the same way, we have effectively decided, as a society, that we are going to accept a certain number of people killed by drunk drivers every year.

As seandr said @ 19, "IMHO, at some point, you have accept reality - there will always be risks when living in a free society. Or, to put it more another way, every year a certain number of innocent people are going to have to sacrifice their lives in order to preserve the freedoms and civil liberties we all enjoy and value.

@19: "Medical Probation" already exists, so that's not the solution to this problem.

It's called med monitoring. It's a service offered by the Sound Mental Health system, who I believe he's already involved with. They have a staff nurse who makes sure patients take their medications, as well as Adult Day Services including counseling and other activities. Attending day treatment can be a condition of receiving SSI benefits or a part of sentencing after a mental illness/drug abuse crime.

@23 Not to split hairs - and this really isn't the point of this thread - but lithium isn't uniformly stupefying, or even stupefying for the vast majority of people who take it. It's much more common to have that effect from other drugs prescribed in high doses to people with schizophrenia, like klonopin or seroquel. Just saying.