Can you believe this?

Fox News says we family and friends of people who are acting strange/making threats/giving away stuff should call police and give a warning--save lives that way!

Being a person who has called and reported such activities TIME AFTER TIME, it is futile. The police/social services/mental crisis line/whoever will tell you the same thing. The person has to do something before they can act.

Meaning, they get to kill/maim before law enforcement can protect.

The situation reminds me of the stalkers before stalking became a crime. A person could follow you everywhere, call you multiple times, yell at you in public places and wasn't considered to have "done" anything criminal.

If you see something, say something does not apply to pre-shooting-spree mental cases. No wonder we have such an increase in the desire of sickos to go out with a bang and get the notariety all over social media--taking the innocent with them.


Kathleen Waters

It's Faux News channel, did you expect them to have much sense?

OMG Dealt with this up close and personnel the last few months. Seventeen year old daughter working as a cashier at a local grocery store...older, male, mentally disabled guy from a group home two blocks away gets fixated on her.

Comes to the store 7-8 times a day when she works..buying nothing..wandering around...sometimes standing two feet from her...staring..for twenty minutes or more.

She would go to the back room to get away from him and he would stand in the area of the door and wait for her to come back out.

He figured out what car she drove...once when she had mine he asked where her car was. Knew her name from them paging her to her register if she was doing something elsewhere in the store, he starting calling her by her name.

He was in the parking lot one day when she pulled in for work...he starting walking towards her car and she had to run into work.

He would stand outside along the rail when she would take people's groceries out..to the point customers wold tell her they would wait until she got safely inside before they woulod leave the parking lot.

MANAGEMENT TOLD HER SHE HAD TO DEAL WITH IT!!!


Got the police involved and they said owners had to put in writing he couldn't come into store so they could site him for trespassing if he came in.

OWNER F*ING RFEFUSED TO DO IT...saying he was harmless.

Needless to say..me and my daughter both walked out of our jobs that night...and I'd been there for years.

Yeah..lots of people out there are considered harmless until they kill someone.

K...rant over **phew** can ya tell I'm still pissed!!!

I was harassed and persecuted at church, not once, but on different occasions. The group was highly dysfunctional. BP said "people make mistakes, that's how we grow." In other words, this spineless, do-nothing, self-righteous, narcissistic loser called BP meant, get over it. I did and more, I resigned. They did me a favor. They showed me the hate in the morg in a way that I had not seen before. Existing is the best solution. It is key to distance yourself as far as you can from the offending party because it will only get worse. You cannot reason with people who are mentally ill or narcissistic or BPD, etc. They need an object to attach their pathology, hate or addiction to.

I spoke to several lawyers over three months and wanted to sue as there was a history of abuse and I was not the first victim. No lawyer would take the case. They all said, it doesn't rise to the level that is actionable in a court. The law says that people say bad things and do mean things. That is life. It has to be severe, or going on for a long time, or for-see-able or preventable or meeting the criteria for negligence. Even though I have a solid case with two binders of evidence, and witnesses of the harassment, etc., lawyers wanted money up front. Because even if they win a judgment in court, good luck getting paid. It's a racket and that is why the abuse is out-of-control. And no one in the morg, including the folks in charge allow it to happen. At times, they are the ones creating the conflicts to begin with.

Exiting, not existing is the best solution.

Many folks in charge in the morg have their heads in the sand and allow the abuse to happen. For example, on my mission I was stalked by a woman who by all intents and purposes came across as a Uber TBM, you know, who was a gospel scholar and taught seminary for 30 years. Not so, she preyed on girls and stalked me on my mission and for a year after via the mail. I would get several mailings each week. Even though I notified her bishop when I was on my mission and after I came home, his response was, just get on with your life. The fact that some men in the morg have sexually violated children is something that has been reported, but not crazy women doing it. When I informed the bishop, she was released from her seminary calling, but nothing else happened.

I was hoping that you would end your post that she quit her job. The employers were douchebags. That's absolutely unimaginable why an employer wouldn't protect his staff. Don't underestimate his ability to find out where you live, her schedule, etc. Continue to be vigilant and careful - I'm sure you are though. At minimum, do you have those door and window alarms on your home that you can purchase for cheap at Home Depot. Tell you daughter to always be mindful of her surroundings. Before she exits her car, or goes out any door, get in the practice of scanning her surrounding for strange vehicle, people, etc. Carry pepper spray.

She actually would have grounds for a "hostile work environment" suit. The owners should have knocked themselves out seeing to her safety.

anagrammy is so right!
This has happened to me many times! The police DO NOTHING unless and until the person does something serious (in the FELONY category) before they will do anything!

And when you know that the person needs a psychiatric hospital for a 72 hour lockup for not taking their meds, the police still say they have to wait until the person does something serious.

I've been in this situation too many times. Then the court system is even worse. Once the mentally ill person is arrested, they go through the court system like they were anyone WITHOUT a mental illness and go on probation etc.

I will NEVER call the police again! The person can kill me and I will not call the police. It is much worse than anything you can imagine. Completely useless.

My rant is over now too. I am also still pissed.

Some of the worst decisions we make personally and corporately come on the heels of tragedy. We're hurt and offended by senseless violence, and we want to insure that it never happens again.

If I'm hearing you guys correctly, some of you are upset that we need to wait until someone commits a crime to arrest them. And you think it's bad advice to alert police if we hear someone making threats. Since both of these actions fail to prevent some violent acts, we should abandon them as good advice for any occasion.

Are you concerned at all about the alternative that seems implied? : Arrest people before they break the law, and ignore threats we may hear from those around us?

Actually I think it is commentary on the sad state of our mental health services in this country. More needs done for some, and that would help alleviate some of the recent tragedies.

Ex post facto seems to be the rule of law now. Color of law, maxims, and other legal terms seem to rule the day. But, law enforcement (seemingly) are no longer Public Servants but janitors, who clean up the mess we humans make of our lives and others lives. It's sickening to watch Utah news items and then watch national or global news sources and realize that we are living 40 years in the past when it comes to social, economic, and moral issues according to our news sources.

"...It's interesting when people die, give us dirty laundry." -Don Henley- Dirty Laundry

Cake

Anagrammy,

Are you the same Kathleen Waters who attended Hillcrest Elementary, whose mother ran a daycare (my little brother attended,) and who I may have known in my youth?

Just wondering. :)

No, sorry

My name when I lived in Utah was Kathleen Meyers. I was one of those super moms who gave seminars telling everybody else how to "have it all." I had a business called "Goldentime" and was on the speaker circuit for ladies Stake "Self-Esteem" day.

All makes me sick to think of it.

My ex is there in Utah, the worst excuse for a person I've ever known, living in Orem with the new wife and male children he prayed for.


Kathleen Waters

Thanks for getting back to me on that.

The Kathy Waters I know is from Idaho, and still lives there in fact. She has been a third grade teacher for the past 35 years in the same school district we grew up in.

:)

Read Gavin De Becker's "The Gift of Fear."


http://gavindebecker.com/resources/book/the_gift_of_fear/

You can't lock up everyone who is odd, narciccistic, or mentally ill. That'd be literally millions of people, just in the U.S. The overwhelming majority of them do not go around shooting people.

As I mentioned in my other post, don't you think brainwashing gone awry could lead to incidents like these?

"If we hear or see signs of danger, it is of utmost importance that we act. Although the mental health system in the United States often fails both patients and society, it is still the case that in most states people can be hospitalized against their will when there is clear evidence either from their words or deeds that they intend to commit violence."

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/25/health/raison-violence-signs/


The key here is if they're making threats of violence--either against others or themselves. I'm not sure what jurisdiction you're in, but in the U.S., most states will allow precautionary commitments in these cases.

we have here in America a " knee jerk" reaction to life: not gonna do anything until something really, really needs to be done.

Instead of action we have a reaction with everything.

Sad and very dysfunctional

What we actually want to see is a nation where the same attention is given to a report of a crazy threatening person as it is to an unattended bag at an airport.

When I called the police and said my son said he wanted to kill strangers with a gun so they would "quit laughing at him", the police said young men say shit like that as bravado.

He later started cruising the streets beating people up. I reported that too and they said I didn't have enough specifics, like his location. The fact that he fractured someone's skull wasn't enough because the victim was to afraid to finger him.

And they wouldn't believe me that he did it, even though he told me, because I wasn't there.

I don't think mentally ill people deserve less attention than unattended bags.


Kathleen

The fact is, none of us can get help for our adult mentally ill loved ones if they don't want the help. Do you know how helpless one feels, to have to wait for their loved one to do get arrested or worse, hurt someone?

Something needs to change.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2015 09:45AM by wine country girl.

Anything to avoid talking about stricter gun laws

The news station company should have hired a security firm for about five years to watch over their field reporters. As the monster walked out the day he was fired, he threatened all of them - and that justified extra precaution and measures especially while he continued to stay in the city. These days we should all be vigilant against anyone who appears disturbed, angry, and threatening. Those poor babies were just beginning their lives...feel so sorry for them.

...thinking outside the box here.

Since gun control and pro-active treatment of mental health issues are not likely to happen soon, I would suggest making some SSRI's and aprazolam available "over the counter".
I can't think of any other "preventive" measures.
The shooter admitted he was a powder keg waiting to go off.

I do remember an incident in Utah a couple years back when a man held up a pharmacy for some anti-depressants. I don't know why he didn't feel like he could ask his doctor for some.

Maybe we should give people ability to self medicate for depression/anxiety with drugs that are shown to work. (as opposed to self medicating with alcohol).

In my school district, they've made it nearly impossible to get emotionally disturbed kids into special placements. Special programs can do wonders for such kids, but in the name of "least restrictive environment," we are shutting kids out of them.