3 Local Officers shot last night

[chasfm11]

This story made the national news. I'm not going to post the link because I don't want to talk about the story itself but about the social media reaction to it.

These are the high level details. At 7pm last evening, police responded to a residence because a wife called saying that her husband was suicidal. By 8pm, three officers had been shot, two taken to a local hospital for non-life threatening injuries and one apparently treated at the scene. A standoff with SWAT ended at 5:45am with the suspect taken into custody.

Based on community agreement, I've already purchased and dropped of gift cards at the PD to help the families of the wounded officers. Prayers continue for the complete recovery of the officers

But here is the story that most won't see because it is on a closed group in social media. The details came out that the suspect has had previous suicide attempts dating at least back to 2017 so this is not a new problem. There is a wife, an ex-wife and children, one of which is in a local high school. Social media is calling for compassion for them.

The comments run the expected range of compassion for the suspect due to his ongoing mental illness to insistence that the man be charged with attempted capitol murder. The debate furiously raged with neighbor against neighbor so that it deteriorated into name calling for those who held different opinions about the situation and a range of accusations all around

So what's my point? As someone who has a mentally ill family member, I have more than a little empathy for the family of the suspect. The daughter is about the same age as our granddaughter who goes to the same school. But we cannot ignore the problems with mental illness and try to sweep them under the rug. Three public servants could have lost their lives last night. Our jails are full of people with mental issues. And our society, through our misguided "representatives" is working hard to create more people with mental instability. In a weekly breakfast meeting, I was speaking with a 8+ year retired veteran police officer. I asked him about suicides. He said that he had responded to many calls where people were successful in their attempt to take their own lives. But he was surprised at the rash of situations where people seem more than willing to share their own misery and try to end the lives of others, too. My conclusion in reading the social media comments related to this incident was that such a feeling seems to be only slightly below the surface for too many people. Somehow we've got to try to turn this around. I'm at a loss to suggest how to go about that turnaround.

[OldChap]

I keep an eye on the forum, but I don't get on here much anymore - retired. I read your post and thought I would respond - for what it is worth.

In addition to serving as a pastor for 40 years, I served 10 years as a sworn police department Chaplain. I witnessed a lot of suicides, attempted and carried out. I will forever remember most. I have been out of that for almost 10 years now. Most of the incidents I remember were single person loss of life, but a few were horrifically dangerous. I worked one call where a SWAT sniper had to end the threat because the actor came storming out of the house with a gun after we had tried to talk him out peacefully for several hours. Another call I remember well was a disturbed young man who charged us with a butcher knife. We managed to subdue him with a less lethal weapon. I spent a lot of tense hours trying to talk down people who were bent on destruction.

We lost the ability to institutionalize actors about the time I started as a PD Chaplain. In my opinion, things have gone badly ever since. As you said, suicide leaves a terrible burden on the family of the victim. I spent a lot of time trying to help and arrange other professionals to help with those family members who bore that burden. I still don't understand why some tried to take others with them. You are absolutely correct in that we are creating more and more people who will be a problem in years to come. I wish I knew how to solve the problem. I have some strong feelings that people who thought they were "helping" by stopping court-ordered institutionalization were merely trying to make themselves feel good about the issue rather than actually help.

I try to help in the only way I know - by praying for those families and victims I remember. It is going to take someone smarter than I to solve the issue.

[howdy]

I retired at 55 years old and decided to start a second career as a Paramedic. I got my EMT then I went to TEEX (at Texas A&M) to get my Paramedic. I ran 911 with a local EMS outfit in my home town with upper middle class to upper income residents. We didn't see a lot of gunshot type calls but we did see lots of drug OD's and LOTS of suicides. The suicides were mostly college age kids with a few middle age adults. It is amazing the creativity people use to kill themselves. As horrible as the dead person was, the surviving family members were worse. They were destroyed emotionally. Many times one of them had to be transported to the ER for chest pains, faint and fall accidents and general emotional breakdown. I couldn't wait to get out of the home. People who council suicide survivor families are gifts from God. It takes a very special person.

[philip964]

For some reason I have more experience than most seeing people in my life with mental illness.

I have seen suicide devastate families. It is especially hard on the children. Everyone close feels so responsible.

The brain is a complicated organ. When it has an issue it is bad.

Mild cases can be treated. But many can not be managed.

Society seems to put it on a back burner, hoping it will just go away. The cost of housing for life people with untreatable mental illness is substantial.

I have seen guards literally push an insane person out of a county run mental facility on to the street, telling them not to come back.

I don’t know the answer. More funding would help.

I wish people who did want to end their lives would not try and take others with them. But again they are not in their right mind, so reasoning does not work.

I noticed the last time I visited a doctor in a high rise medical tower that all the parking garages I could see out the window had tall fences around the top floors of the all their garages.

I had lunch one time with a professional person. I asked if the services are covered by insurance. The answer was yes, but everyone paid in cash. No one wanted a record.

[BigGuy]

As a Security Officer at a public library that had become a defacto homeless shelter, I've had more than my fair share of experience with the mentally ill. I felt bad about having to evict them, but I couldn't let them stay. This was a library, not a homeless shelter or mental facility. In the early days I searched and begged for a number I could call in such cases. Never got anything. I worked the county jail right before taking the job at the library. I was amazed at how much of the clientele from the former I interacted at with the latter. "Hey Boss," they'd call as they came in. "I wondered where you went."
I know it sounds simple minded, but we need to punish (or lock up) the evil, help the ill, and protect the innocent. My brief, and tangential, experience with law-enforcement gave me no comfort that either is common in our system.
Don't misunderstand me. I still whole heartedly support the COs and POs on the front lines. I'm saddened at the politicians in uniform at the top, leading us further and further from a workable solution.

[chasfm11]

Social media testimonials have been posted about the 60 year old suspect. Paraphrased, they read like this "he is a wonderful person when he is taking his medications." For those who have never seen that problem first hand, please allow me to add two facts. 1) the medications (SSRI, MAOI) come with significant side effects. Those who need the drugs often stop taking them because of those side effects. 2) psychiatric drugs don't have a consistent effect even on the same person. Some can be on a specific drug for several years and it suddenly becomes ineffective. A lapse in use can also result in a previously successful use of a drug to terminate its effectiveness. As a result, it is more art than science is prescribing these medications. It is all be impossible (IMHO) for a regular doctor to prescribe them since they lack the daily exposure to a broad base of mental patients to observe the effects, good and bad, on a daily basis.

I am convinced that it possible to isolate the recidivist criminals. There are some who commit crimes who can be rehabilitated because they have a good enough moral base on which education can be based. Others are amoral and there is nothing that can be done to help them understand how to live in society.

I'm also convinced that, at least today, some mental patients are beyond the reach of today's psychiatric treatments. They might experience periods of normalcy but there is no good monitoring program to determine when the boundaries of that normalcy have been exceeded. The past problem is that we turned these people over to government run people warehouses and those facilities, un-monitored, turned into nightmare scenes of abuse and neglect. It would be expensive to create a better, more humane environment for these mental patients. But it would be far less expensive than what we devote to the criminal justice mechanisms that deal with them today. I cannot see how a politician could ever be left in control of such an environment.

I've been unable to get the details or confirm any facts but there is a rumor than this suspect had his guns taken away previously in a "red flag" type action. It is unclear if that is true, how or under what conditions his guns were returned. Someone who is really interested in protecting society from abuse of guns would be interested in pursuing this case instead of trying to ban AR-15s.