Thursday, July 26, 2007
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Shooting At Cal State Fresno
Shooting At Cal State Fresno
By: Aleksandra Wojtalewicz
dailytitan.com, 5/9/07 Section: News
A Cal State Fresno student is suspected of shooting one person and wounding two others in an apartment across from the campus late Monday.
The suspect, identified as 19-year-old Jonquel Brooks, allegedly began shooting during a dispute with four men over a Playstation console.
"This is not another Virginia Tech," police spokesman Jeff Cardinale told AP reporters. "This is simply a dispute between one person and a group of individuals."
As of Tuesday morning, the suspect had not been found. According to Fresno police, the suspect's parents were helping law enforcement authorities communicate with Brooks to get him to surrender.
The Fresno campus remained open. Residents of the apartment complex were evacuated to the campus cafeteria.
The Fresno County Coroner's Office identified the dead man as Brant Daniels, 19. He was not a current student at the university. The wounded men, ages 19 and 22, were treated for gunshot wounds. According to the police, one was a current student and the other was planning to enroll.
The university alerted students of the incident by sending a notice to students, faculty and staff Tuesday morning and by posting an announcement on the school Web site.
By: Aleksandra Wojtalewicz
dailytitan.com, 5/9/07 Section: News
A Cal State Fresno student is suspected of shooting one person and wounding two others in an apartment across from the campus late Monday.
The suspect, identified as 19-year-old Jonquel Brooks, allegedly began shooting during a dispute with four men over a Playstation console.
"This is not another Virginia Tech," police spokesman Jeff Cardinale told AP reporters. "This is simply a dispute between one person and a group of individuals."
As of Tuesday morning, the suspect had not been found. According to Fresno police, the suspect's parents were helping law enforcement authorities communicate with Brooks to get him to surrender.
The Fresno campus remained open. Residents of the apartment complex were evacuated to the campus cafeteria.
The Fresno County Coroner's Office identified the dead man as Brant Daniels, 19. He was not a current student at the university. The wounded men, ages 19 and 22, were treated for gunshot wounds. According to the police, one was a current student and the other was planning to enroll.
The university alerted students of the incident by sending a notice to students, faculty and staff Tuesday morning and by posting an announcement on the school Web site.
Cho’s Mental Illness Should Have Blocked Gun Sale
By MICHAEL LUO, New York Times
Published: April 20, 2007
WASHINGTON, April 20 — Under federal law, the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho should have been prohibited from purchasing a gun after a Virginia court declared him to be a danger to himself in late 2005 and sent him for psychiatric treatment, a government official and several legal experts said Friday.
Federal law prohibits anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective,” as well as those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from purchasing a gun.
A special justice’s order in late 2005 that directed Mr. Cho to seek outpatient treatment and declared him to be mentally ill and an imminent danger to himself fits the federal criteria and should have immediately disqualified him, said Richard J. Bonnie, chairman of the Supreme Court of Virginia’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform. A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also said if that if found mentally defective by a court, Mr. Cho should have been denied a gun.
The federal law defines adjudication as a mental defective to include “determination by a court, board, commission or other lawful authority” that as a result of mental illness, the person is a “danger to himself or others.”
Mr. Cho’s ability to purchase two guns despite his history of mental illness has cast new attention on Virginia’s relatively lax gun laws. And since states are supposed to enforce federal gun laws, the sales raise questions about whether Virgina — and other states — fully comply with the federal restrictions.
Virginia state law on mental health disqualifications to firearms purchases is worded slightly differently from the federal statute. As a result, the form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification only addresses the state criteria, which lists two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police — someone who was “involuntarily committed,” or ruled mentally “incapacitated.”
“It’s clear we have an imperfect connection between state law and the application of the federal prohibition,” said Mr. Bonnie. The commission he chairs was created by the state last year to examine the state’s mental health laws.
Mr. Bonnie, the director of the University of Virginia Institute on Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, said his panel would look into the matter: “We are going to fix this.”
He also said he believed similar problems likely exist elsewhere in the country.
“I’m sure that the mis-fit exists in states across the country, and the underreporting exists,” he said.
After a pair of female students complained about his behavior in 2005, Mr. Cho was sent to a psychiatric unit for evaluation and then ordered to undergo outpatient treatment, which would not qualify as an involuntary commitment under Virginia law, Mr. Bonnie said.
“What they did was use the terms that fit Virginia law,” he said. “They weren’t thinking about the federal. I suspect nobody even knew about these federal regulations.”
But Christopher Slobogin, a professor of law at the University of Florida who is an expert on mental health issues, said that under his reading of the Virginia law, outpatient treatment could also qualify as involuntary commitment, meaning Virginia state law should have barred him from buying a weapon as well, an interpretation Mr. Bonnie said he and the state’s attorney general disagree with.
Mr. Slobogin added that the federal statute “on the plain face of the language, it would definitely apply to Cho.”
A spokesman for the Virginia state attorney general’s office declined to comment today, saying only that various agencies are “reviewing this situation.”
Richard Marianos, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, would only say today that federal and state officials were looking into the question, studying the court proceedings and testimony.
But he added: “If he was adjudicated as a mental defective by a court, he should have been disqualified.”
Federal authorities apparently have not noticed Virginia’s failure to comply with federal guidelines restricting gun sales to the mentally ill. Dennis Henigan, legal director at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said the oversight on the federal law in Virginia has probably been occurring for some time.
“They may have been doing this for years, just basically assuming, if the guy’s not disqualified under state law, then we don’t have to send anything to the state police,” he said. “It’s a failure to recognize the independent obligation to the federal law.”
Most states do not follow the letter of the federal law when it comes to the mental health provisions, said Ron Honberg, legal director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group.
“I suspect if we look at all the requirements that exist for the states, there’s probably a whole lot of them that don’t implement them,” he said, explaining the gap often comes from a lack of resources but also because no one is enforcing them. “When something like this happens, then people start to pay attention to this.”
Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat, has been pushing a bill that would require states to automate their criminal history records so that computer databases used to conduct background checks on gun buyers are more complete. The bill would also require states to submit their mental health records to their background check systems and give them money to allow them to do so.
Currently, only 22 states submit any mental health records to the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Thursday. Virginia is the leading state in reporting disqualifications based on mental health criteria for the NICS system, the statement said.
According to gun control advocates, however, the mental health information submitted is often spotty and incomplete, something Ms. McCarthy’s bill is designed to address.
Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat and former member of the National Rifle Association’s board of directors, is co-sponsoring the bill, which has twice passed the House only to stall in the Senate, with Ms. McCarthy. According to congressional aides, he is negotiating with pro-gun groups to come up with language acceptable to them.
“The NRA doesn’t have objections,” he said in an interview. “There are other gun organizations on this that are problems.”
A spokesman for the NRA declined to comment Friday on the legislation, but Mr. Dingell said the measure could prevent future tragedies: “It resolves some serious problems in terms of preventing the wrong people from getting firearms
Published: April 20, 2007
WASHINGTON, April 20 — Under federal law, the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho should have been prohibited from purchasing a gun after a Virginia court declared him to be a danger to himself in late 2005 and sent him for psychiatric treatment, a government official and several legal experts said Friday.
Federal law prohibits anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective,” as well as those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from purchasing a gun.
A special justice’s order in late 2005 that directed Mr. Cho to seek outpatient treatment and declared him to be mentally ill and an imminent danger to himself fits the federal criteria and should have immediately disqualified him, said Richard J. Bonnie, chairman of the Supreme Court of Virginia’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform. A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also said if that if found mentally defective by a court, Mr. Cho should have been denied a gun.
The federal law defines adjudication as a mental defective to include “determination by a court, board, commission or other lawful authority” that as a result of mental illness, the person is a “danger to himself or others.”
Mr. Cho’s ability to purchase two guns despite his history of mental illness has cast new attention on Virginia’s relatively lax gun laws. And since states are supposed to enforce federal gun laws, the sales raise questions about whether Virgina — and other states — fully comply with the federal restrictions.
Virginia state law on mental health disqualifications to firearms purchases is worded slightly differently from the federal statute. As a result, the form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification only addresses the state criteria, which lists two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police — someone who was “involuntarily committed,” or ruled mentally “incapacitated.”
“It’s clear we have an imperfect connection between state law and the application of the federal prohibition,” said Mr. Bonnie. The commission he chairs was created by the state last year to examine the state’s mental health laws.
Mr. Bonnie, the director of the University of Virginia Institute on Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, said his panel would look into the matter: “We are going to fix this.”
He also said he believed similar problems likely exist elsewhere in the country.
“I’m sure that the mis-fit exists in states across the country, and the underreporting exists,” he said.
After a pair of female students complained about his behavior in 2005, Mr. Cho was sent to a psychiatric unit for evaluation and then ordered to undergo outpatient treatment, which would not qualify as an involuntary commitment under Virginia law, Mr. Bonnie said.
“What they did was use the terms that fit Virginia law,” he said. “They weren’t thinking about the federal. I suspect nobody even knew about these federal regulations.”
But Christopher Slobogin, a professor of law at the University of Florida who is an expert on mental health issues, said that under his reading of the Virginia law, outpatient treatment could also qualify as involuntary commitment, meaning Virginia state law should have barred him from buying a weapon as well, an interpretation Mr. Bonnie said he and the state’s attorney general disagree with.
Mr. Slobogin added that the federal statute “on the plain face of the language, it would definitely apply to Cho.”
A spokesman for the Virginia state attorney general’s office declined to comment today, saying only that various agencies are “reviewing this situation.”
Richard Marianos, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, would only say today that federal and state officials were looking into the question, studying the court proceedings and testimony.
But he added: “If he was adjudicated as a mental defective by a court, he should have been disqualified.”
Federal authorities apparently have not noticed Virginia’s failure to comply with federal guidelines restricting gun sales to the mentally ill. Dennis Henigan, legal director at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said the oversight on the federal law in Virginia has probably been occurring for some time.
“They may have been doing this for years, just basically assuming, if the guy’s not disqualified under state law, then we don’t have to send anything to the state police,” he said. “It’s a failure to recognize the independent obligation to the federal law.”
Most states do not follow the letter of the federal law when it comes to the mental health provisions, said Ron Honberg, legal director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group.
“I suspect if we look at all the requirements that exist for the states, there’s probably a whole lot of them that don’t implement them,” he said, explaining the gap often comes from a lack of resources but also because no one is enforcing them. “When something like this happens, then people start to pay attention to this.”
Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat, has been pushing a bill that would require states to automate their criminal history records so that computer databases used to conduct background checks on gun buyers are more complete. The bill would also require states to submit their mental health records to their background check systems and give them money to allow them to do so.
Currently, only 22 states submit any mental health records to the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Thursday. Virginia is the leading state in reporting disqualifications based on mental health criteria for the NICS system, the statement said.
According to gun control advocates, however, the mental health information submitted is often spotty and incomplete, something Ms. McCarthy’s bill is designed to address.
Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat and former member of the National Rifle Association’s board of directors, is co-sponsoring the bill, which has twice passed the House only to stall in the Senate, with Ms. McCarthy. According to congressional aides, he is negotiating with pro-gun groups to come up with language acceptable to them.
“The NRA doesn’t have objections,” he said in an interview. “There are other gun organizations on this that are problems.”
A spokesman for the NRA declined to comment Friday on the legislation, but Mr. Dingell said the measure could prevent future tragedies: “It resolves some serious problems in terms of preventing the wrong people from getting firearms
Cho Didn't Get Court-Ordered Treatment
By Brigid Schulte and Chris L. Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 7, 2007; A01
Seung Hui Cho never received the treatment ordered by a judge who declared him dangerously mentally ill less than two years before his rampage at Virginia Tech, law enforcement officials said, exposing flaws in Virginia's labyrinthine mental health system, including confusion about the law, spotty enforcement and inadequate funding.
Neither the court, the university nor community services officials followed up on the judge's order, according to dozens of interviews. Cho never got the treatment, according to authorities who have seen his medical files. And although state law says the community services board should have made sure Cho got help, a board official said that was "news to us."
It is impossible to know if the treatment, ordered in December 2005, would have prevented the massacre last month, which left 32 students and faculty dead before Cho killed himself. But interviews with state and university officials, lawmakers, special justices, attorneys, advocates and mental health agencies across the state made clear that what happened with Cho is not unusual in cases of "involuntary outpatient commitment" -- Virginia's name for the kind of order issued by Cho's judge.
Cho, they said, slipped through a porous mental health system that suffers from muddled, seldom-enforced laws and inconsistent practices. Special justices who oversee hearings such as the one for Cho said they know that some people they have ordered into treatment have not gotten it. They find out when the person "does something crazy again," in the words of one justice -- when they are brought back into court because they are considered in imminent danger of harming themselves or others.
"The system doesn't work well," said Tom Diggs, executive director of the Commission on Mental Health Law Reform, which has been studying the state mental health system and will report to the General Assembly next year.
Involuntary outpatient commitments are relatively uncommon in Virginia, officials said, because those in the system know they are not enforced. They are almost an act of faith.
"When I let the person go outpatient, I always put on the record, 'I hope I don't read about you tomorrow in the paper. . . . Don't make me look like the foolish judge that could have stopped you,' " said Lori Rallison, a special justice in Prince William County. "And knock wood, that hasn't happened. But it can."
Cho's case is a classic example of some of the flaws in the outpatient treatment system.
By 2005, Cho, an English major at Virginia Tech, had frightened teachers and classmates with his macabre and violent writings. He referred to himself as Question Mark, never made eye contact and rarely spoke. But it wasn't until two undergraduate women complained that Cho sent instant messages and left cryptic lines from "Romeo and Juliet" on their dry-erase boards that Cho came to the attention of police. Although the girls decided not to press charges, police met with Cho on Dec. 13 and warned him to leave the women alone.
That night, Cho e-mailed a roommate saying he might as well kill himself. The roommate contacted police, who brought Cho to the New River Valley Community Services Board, the government mental health agency that serves Blacksburg.
There, Kathy Godbey examined Cho and found he was "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization," according to court papers. That was enough to have Cho temporarily detained at Carilion St. Albans Behavioral Health Clinic in Christiansburg, a few miles from campus, until a special justice could review his case in a commitment hearing.
New River Valley's Mike Wade maintained that the community services board's responsibility ended there.
"Unless, out of the commitment hearing, the judge issued outpatient treatment specific to our agency, that's where it ends with us," said Wade, the board's community liaison. "Since we weren't named the provider of that outpatient treatment, we weren't involved in the case."
A day later, on Dec. 14, 2005, Paul M. Barnett, the special judge, decided that Cho was an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness and ordered him into involuntary outpatient treatment. It is a practice that Terry W. Teel, Cho's court-appointed lawyer and a special judge himself, said they use "all the time" in Blacksburg. Special justices such as Barnett are lawyers with some expertise and training who are appointed by the jurisdiction's chief judge.
Teel said he does not remember Cho or the details of his case. But he said Cho most likely would have been ordered to seek treatment at Virginia Tech's Cook Counseling Center. "I don't remember 100 percent if that's where he was directed," Teel said. "But nine times out of 10, that's where he would be."
And there, he said, ended the court's responsibility. The court doesn't follow up, he said. "We have no authority."
Virginia Tech mental health officials declined to discuss Cho's case because of privacy laws. But they said they are never informed when a person is referred to their facilities by the court.
"When a court gives a mandatory order that someone get outpatient treatment, that order is to the individual, not an agency," said Christopher Flynn, director of the Cook Counseling Center. The one responsible for ensuring that the mentally ill person receives help in these sorts of cases, he said, is the mentally ill person. "I've never seen someone delivered to me with an order that says, 'This person has been discharged; he's now your responsibility.' That doesn't happen."
Virginia law says community services boards -- the local agencies responsible for a range of mental health services -- "shall recommend a specific course of treatment and programs" for people such as Cho who are ordered to receive outpatient treatment. The law also says these boards "shall monitor the person's compliance."
When read those portions of the statute, Wade said, "That's news to us."
In fact, the law even says that when a dangerously mentally ill person ordered into treatment doesn't show up, as was the case with Cho, he or she can be brought back before the special judge, and if found still in crisis, can be committed to a psychiatric institution for up to 180 days.
None of that happened in Cho's case.
Community service boards saw 115,000 mentally ill people in Virginia in 2005, at a cost of $127 million.
Virginia is one of only eight states in the country to require that people be an "imminent" danger to themselves or others before they can even be brought before a judge. Advocates argue that that is such a high standard that only the most dangerous cases are considered and involuntary hospitalization is usually required.
When involuntary outpatient treatment is ordered, officials say they often have no idea what happens to the mentally ill person once they leave the courtroom.
Tom Geib, director of Prince William's Community Services Board, who also serves on the Mental Health Law Reform Commission Task Force studying outpatient commitment, blames the lack of follow-up on a lack of resources. Caseworkers at his agency may make calls or write letters if someone ordered into involuntary outpatient treatment doesn't show up for appointments. "But in terms of going out and trying to find them, we don't have the resources to do that," he said.
Mary Ann Bergeron, head of the Virginia Association of Community Services Boards, which represents the 40 agencies within the state, said the boards are responsible for a person committed to outpatient care only "if he seeks treatment. But we can't give him treatment if he refuses it."
But advocates and some special justices disagree.
"The services board job is not to say, 'We tried, and they don't want treatment.' Their job is to report back to the court," said Mark Bodner, a special justice in Fairfax County. He said that in his six-year tenure, that has happened only once.
Staff writers Jerry Markon and Sari Horwitz and researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
Seung Hui Cho never received the treatment ordered by a judge who declared him dangerously mentally ill less than two years before his rampage at Virginia Tech, law enforcement officials said, exposing flaws in Virginia's labyrinthine mental health system, including confusion about the law, spotty enforcement and inadequate funding.
Neither the court, the university nor community services officials followed up on the judge's order, according to dozens of interviews. Cho never got the treatment, according to authorities who have seen his medical files. And although state law says the community services board should have made sure Cho got help, a board official said that was "news to us."
It is impossible to know if the treatment, ordered in December 2005, would have prevented the massacre last month, which left 32 students and faculty dead before Cho killed himself. But interviews with state and university officials, lawmakers, special justices, attorneys, advocates and mental health agencies across the state made clear that what happened with Cho is not unusual in cases of "involuntary outpatient commitment" -- Virginia's name for the kind of order issued by Cho's judge.
Cho, they said, slipped through a porous mental health system that suffers from muddled, seldom-enforced laws and inconsistent practices. Special justices who oversee hearings such as the one for Cho said they know that some people they have ordered into treatment have not gotten it. They find out when the person "does something crazy again," in the words of one justice -- when they are brought back into court because they are considered in imminent danger of harming themselves or others.
"The system doesn't work well," said Tom Diggs, executive director of the Commission on Mental Health Law Reform, which has been studying the state mental health system and will report to the General Assembly next year.
Involuntary outpatient commitments are relatively uncommon in Virginia, officials said, because those in the system know they are not enforced. They are almost an act of faith.
"When I let the person go outpatient, I always put on the record, 'I hope I don't read about you tomorrow in the paper. . . . Don't make me look like the foolish judge that could have stopped you,' " said Lori Rallison, a special justice in Prince William County. "And knock wood, that hasn't happened. But it can."
Cho's case is a classic example of some of the flaws in the outpatient treatment system.
By 2005, Cho, an English major at Virginia Tech, had frightened teachers and classmates with his macabre and violent writings. He referred to himself as Question Mark, never made eye contact and rarely spoke. But it wasn't until two undergraduate women complained that Cho sent instant messages and left cryptic lines from "Romeo and Juliet" on their dry-erase boards that Cho came to the attention of police. Although the girls decided not to press charges, police met with Cho on Dec. 13 and warned him to leave the women alone.
That night, Cho e-mailed a roommate saying he might as well kill himself. The roommate contacted police, who brought Cho to the New River Valley Community Services Board, the government mental health agency that serves Blacksburg.
There, Kathy Godbey examined Cho and found he was "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization," according to court papers. That was enough to have Cho temporarily detained at Carilion St. Albans Behavioral Health Clinic in Christiansburg, a few miles from campus, until a special justice could review his case in a commitment hearing.
New River Valley's Mike Wade maintained that the community services board's responsibility ended there.
"Unless, out of the commitment hearing, the judge issued outpatient treatment specific to our agency, that's where it ends with us," said Wade, the board's community liaison. "Since we weren't named the provider of that outpatient treatment, we weren't involved in the case."
A day later, on Dec. 14, 2005, Paul M. Barnett, the special judge, decided that Cho was an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness and ordered him into involuntary outpatient treatment. It is a practice that Terry W. Teel, Cho's court-appointed lawyer and a special judge himself, said they use "all the time" in Blacksburg. Special justices such as Barnett are lawyers with some expertise and training who are appointed by the jurisdiction's chief judge.
Teel said he does not remember Cho or the details of his case. But he said Cho most likely would have been ordered to seek treatment at Virginia Tech's Cook Counseling Center. "I don't remember 100 percent if that's where he was directed," Teel said. "But nine times out of 10, that's where he would be."
And there, he said, ended the court's responsibility. The court doesn't follow up, he said. "We have no authority."
Virginia Tech mental health officials declined to discuss Cho's case because of privacy laws. But they said they are never informed when a person is referred to their facilities by the court.
"When a court gives a mandatory order that someone get outpatient treatment, that order is to the individual, not an agency," said Christopher Flynn, director of the Cook Counseling Center. The one responsible for ensuring that the mentally ill person receives help in these sorts of cases, he said, is the mentally ill person. "I've never seen someone delivered to me with an order that says, 'This person has been discharged; he's now your responsibility.' That doesn't happen."
Virginia law says community services boards -- the local agencies responsible for a range of mental health services -- "shall recommend a specific course of treatment and programs" for people such as Cho who are ordered to receive outpatient treatment. The law also says these boards "shall monitor the person's compliance."
When read those portions of the statute, Wade said, "That's news to us."
In fact, the law even says that when a dangerously mentally ill person ordered into treatment doesn't show up, as was the case with Cho, he or she can be brought back before the special judge, and if found still in crisis, can be committed to a psychiatric institution for up to 180 days.
None of that happened in Cho's case.
Community service boards saw 115,000 mentally ill people in Virginia in 2005, at a cost of $127 million.
Virginia is one of only eight states in the country to require that people be an "imminent" danger to themselves or others before they can even be brought before a judge. Advocates argue that that is such a high standard that only the most dangerous cases are considered and involuntary hospitalization is usually required.
When involuntary outpatient treatment is ordered, officials say they often have no idea what happens to the mentally ill person once they leave the courtroom.
Tom Geib, director of Prince William's Community Services Board, who also serves on the Mental Health Law Reform Commission Task Force studying outpatient commitment, blames the lack of follow-up on a lack of resources. Caseworkers at his agency may make calls or write letters if someone ordered into involuntary outpatient treatment doesn't show up for appointments. "But in terms of going out and trying to find them, we don't have the resources to do that," he said.
Mary Ann Bergeron, head of the Virginia Association of Community Services Boards, which represents the 40 agencies within the state, said the boards are responsible for a person committed to outpatient care only "if he seeks treatment. But we can't give him treatment if he refuses it."
But advocates and some special justices disagree.
"The services board job is not to say, 'We tried, and they don't want treatment.' Their job is to report back to the court," said Mark Bodner, a special justice in Fairfax County. He said that in his six-year tenure, that has happened only once.
Staff writers Jerry Markon and Sari Horwitz and researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Virginia Tech Shooter Turns Campus Into Pearl Harbor of School Violence
By James E. Shaw, Ph.D. April 17, 2007
On Monday, April 16, 2007, the unspeakable happened at Virginia Tech University, reminding us all that murder at school has “graduated” from the campuses of high school to the hallowed halls of university. Thirty-two students went to school to get educated and, instead, got executed. The shooter, one Cho Seung-Hui, shared his pain and suffering, purportedly from being jilted by his girlfriend. He employed two handguns, one a 9mm semi-automatic, to kill 32 other students on the campus of one of the nation’s notable universities. There are no logical answers for why an adult university student would suddenly go berserk and plan and vent his outrage by randomly killing innocent people all around him, picking them off like they were plastic, rotating ducks at the country fair. The questions we have, and the ones that are yet to come, are almost more than we can bear. They assault the mind relentlessly; they come randomly yet with reason. Why didn’t he simply move on after the relationship soured? In what manner did his girlfriend allegedly end their affair? Was he a batterer? How long had he owned the handguns? Did he buy them after his girlfriend jilted him and, specifically, to vent his rage upon others in murderous pre-meditated acts? How could one person kill so many people with just a couple of handguns?
It is this last question that hits us between the eyes and sends us reeling. The shooter’s 9mm semi-automatic handgun apparently (according to some high school-age gangbangers incarcerated for homicide and other violent acts in a juvenile jail to which I give my time weekly) had a “banana clip” capable of holding up to 36 bullets. With such sustained firepower, he never had to re-load. For good measure, he had ammunition belts strapped on. That he mercilessly killed 32 innocent people tells us yet another awful truth: Our gun technology far exceeds our technology for making us better, compassionate, understanding, more loving and forgiving human beings. The perpetrator of this unspeakable carnage apparently planned his acts, acquired “full capacity” firepower, chain-locked his students in separate hallways at different campus locations, one-quarter of a mile apart, and, with the precision of an assassin, committed his demonic deeds. Why didn’t he invest similar efforts in patching up his differences with his girlfriend? Why didn’t he seek immediate counseling for the raging anger taking over his life? Why didn’t somebody notice his change in mood and other telltale signs? Why was he able to methodically kill his first set of victims, then wait for the lapse in security that lifted the campus lockdown and march to the other side of the university and slay his second set of victims? Why? Why? Why?
Unable to tolerate being rejected in love, he decided to make war--and to hell with the human-victim collateral damages. The desire to wantonly kill is such a drastically extreme decision, and yet it is this apparently well-planned and methodically-executed “triumph” that compels our attention. I have spent years in state youth prisons interviewing males and females who have killed. All of them told me the act was not as difficult as they first thought it would be. With simple planning, they got the job done. And that’s where part of the problem lies. We perhaps think, especially at the university level, that taking the life of another is too difficult—either emotionally-wrenching or physically-arduous—to accomplish and, therefore, impossible to achieve. Yet, students who are otherwise mentally sound, but capsizing beneath their emotional, perfect storms, manage to conceive of effective, deadly ways to vent their rage and frustration, and take a whole lot of people down with them in a blaze of gunfire. Remember the Columbine High School shooters? How do we identify and isolate such people without making the school campus a locked-down armed and occupied detention camp for the rest of the student body? That is a question that faces us as we systematically attempt to re-evaluate and make more secure our campuses nationwide, without making prisons of our universities, the exception being that the latter award advanced degrees.
Media pundits are spending lots of air-time brainstorming about whether the “good students” (their term, to thus differentiate them from the bad Mr. Cho) should have had guns with which to face Cho. That presents a unique set of other problems. Let’s consider some of them: Who, among us, is able to adjudge a student “good” and therefore worthy of carrying a loaded gun on campus? Which of the “good” students can be adjudged “better” that other merely-good students for withstanding the various stressors of university life (homework assignments, exams, lab projects, late tuition, late rent, love-life stresses, parent and other family problems) without resorting to acts of violence? Which of the “good” students is both astute and courageous enough to know when his time has come to thwart and vanquish evil on campus—and do all that without injuring other students, good and otherwise? We must remember that “good” police officers, in the pitch of battle, have accidentally shot a fellow officer. And let us not forget that the military coined the term “friendly fire” to differentiate those rare but horrific occasions when a soldier dies from a bullet fired by a comrade. The idea of “good” students with guns is just as ludicrous as Santa Claus sitting in the White House as President. How would the “good” students track down, identify, or otherwise “know” the student who, because of “suspicious” behavior, needs to be reigned in? And just what is “suspicious behavior” on campus? Hanging out alone? Writing dark and moody poems? Uttering a curse word or two while sauntering through the commissary? I see no clear reason why “good” students (whoever they are) ought to be entrusted with the 40-ton weight on their back of
While we are planning and strategizing to make our schools safer, we can start now by building into all our curricula—from middle school to university—required courses in non-violent social behavior grounded in law and ethics, as well as courses that engage the mind in problem-solving of cases designed around personal, psychological, and social conflicts and consequences. Students, from middle school to college, need violence education and prevention courses, focusing on their personal responsibilities, the same focus propelling the Driver’s Education and Training courses they gleefully took, to qualify for their drivers’ licenses before entering university. “Driving” one’s life through its infinite, complex highways is as important as driving one’s motor vehicle safely, without accident or injury to self or others. If we can have driver’s education courses, then we also must have violence education and prevention courses. Using this driver education/life education example, let’s look at the stark behavioral contrast: One student meticulously plans a vacation after final exams to drive for days through the beautiful countryside to visit family and friends downstate. Excitement builds as the days of the country fair, rodeo classic, and country music shindigs approach. Square dancing steps are dutifully practiced so a missed call won’t invite the scold, “You been upstate in school too long.” Another student (Cho) plans with equal meticulousness his own pre-summer “event.” He buys two different handguns, waits out the registration period, gets cleared, and completes the purchase and picks them up. Enamored of hyperbole and gross exaggeration in the English language, he writes a manifesto condemning “rich country club kids,” who are “living off their trust funds” and engaging in “acts of debauchery.” Then he rants and raves it is they who have created him; and proclaims they, therefore, must stand in judgment and receive their just punishment. This punishment must be meted out by him. Part of his meticulous planning includes producing a graphic, almost obscene, video clip and mailing it to a major news organization in New York City. His hope is that they will air it on the nightly news and thus facilitate his goal to go out in a blaze of glory. The news organization airs the tape. Cho Seung-Hui killed himself at Virginia Tech after he had already massacred 32 others. In his highly-demented mind, he became a “tragic hero.” I am saddened that, while he felt his cause legitimate enough to inform a news organization about, he never sought out anybody on campus who might have helped him; he never explored the feelings or situations of others; he never contributed himself, his talent, tithe and treasure to helping anybody else. Perhaps he did; the current evidence, however, suggests otherwise. What I am getting at is that he lived alone and died lonely.
Last week, I was threatened, attacked, and injured by a ward of the court school where I give my time twenty days a month. Paramedics rushed me to the hospital and informed me that I had lost a lot of blood and to keep my eyes open until we arrived at the emergency ward. As doctors began stitching together my bad damaged jaw, onlookers kept asking would I return to the juvenile jail, was I going to file a criminal complaint against the youth who attacked me, and other allied questions. As an expert witness in gangs, juvenile violence and homicide, and school safety, I cannot turn my back on a youth simply because in his deranged way he thought he was correcting part of his life by “re-arranging” part of mine (my face). Yes, working in a court school is often a thankless job; the wards would ridicule teachers there to serve them than express gratitude for the talents many of us bring to them. I have already said I am not interested in pursuing the state youth prison for this kid. The powers-that-be and I are negotiating, deliberating, communicating—doing a painstaking ballet without stepping on each other’s shoes—positively and earnestly. I only wish that the 32 Virginia Tech students slain by Cho Seung-hui had the opportunity to negotiate, deliberate, and communicate with whatever power that seized him on that fateful Monday, April 16, 2007. Though I was unconscious for a period of time, I came back. Each day, I am getting stronger. I cry when I think those unfortunate students didn’t. And they can’t.
# # #
James E. Shaw, Ph.D., is a Superior Court-certified Expert Witness, and
author of the best-seller, Jack and Jill, Why They Kill. Much in demand as a national speaker, he is currently writing a new book, GANGrene: Youth Terrorism USA. He can be reached at (310) 678-6950. His web: www.expertincourt.blogspot.com.
On Monday, April 16, 2007, the unspeakable happened at Virginia Tech University, reminding us all that murder at school has “graduated” from the campuses of high school to the hallowed halls of university. Thirty-two students went to school to get educated and, instead, got executed. The shooter, one Cho Seung-Hui, shared his pain and suffering, purportedly from being jilted by his girlfriend. He employed two handguns, one a 9mm semi-automatic, to kill 32 other students on the campus of one of the nation’s notable universities. There are no logical answers for why an adult university student would suddenly go berserk and plan and vent his outrage by randomly killing innocent people all around him, picking them off like they were plastic, rotating ducks at the country fair. The questions we have, and the ones that are yet to come, are almost more than we can bear. They assault the mind relentlessly; they come randomly yet with reason. Why didn’t he simply move on after the relationship soured? In what manner did his girlfriend allegedly end their affair? Was he a batterer? How long had he owned the handguns? Did he buy them after his girlfriend jilted him and, specifically, to vent his rage upon others in murderous pre-meditated acts? How could one person kill so many people with just a couple of handguns?
It is this last question that hits us between the eyes and sends us reeling. The shooter’s 9mm semi-automatic handgun apparently (according to some high school-age gangbangers incarcerated for homicide and other violent acts in a juvenile jail to which I give my time weekly) had a “banana clip” capable of holding up to 36 bullets. With such sustained firepower, he never had to re-load. For good measure, he had ammunition belts strapped on. That he mercilessly killed 32 innocent people tells us yet another awful truth: Our gun technology far exceeds our technology for making us better, compassionate, understanding, more loving and forgiving human beings. The perpetrator of this unspeakable carnage apparently planned his acts, acquired “full capacity” firepower, chain-locked his students in separate hallways at different campus locations, one-quarter of a mile apart, and, with the precision of an assassin, committed his demonic deeds. Why didn’t he invest similar efforts in patching up his differences with his girlfriend? Why didn’t he seek immediate counseling for the raging anger taking over his life? Why didn’t somebody notice his change in mood and other telltale signs? Why was he able to methodically kill his first set of victims, then wait for the lapse in security that lifted the campus lockdown and march to the other side of the university and slay his second set of victims? Why? Why? Why?
Unable to tolerate being rejected in love, he decided to make war--and to hell with the human-victim collateral damages. The desire to wantonly kill is such a drastically extreme decision, and yet it is this apparently well-planned and methodically-executed “triumph” that compels our attention. I have spent years in state youth prisons interviewing males and females who have killed. All of them told me the act was not as difficult as they first thought it would be. With simple planning, they got the job done. And that’s where part of the problem lies. We perhaps think, especially at the university level, that taking the life of another is too difficult—either emotionally-wrenching or physically-arduous—to accomplish and, therefore, impossible to achieve. Yet, students who are otherwise mentally sound, but capsizing beneath their emotional, perfect storms, manage to conceive of effective, deadly ways to vent their rage and frustration, and take a whole lot of people down with them in a blaze of gunfire. Remember the Columbine High School shooters? How do we identify and isolate such people without making the school campus a locked-down armed and occupied detention camp for the rest of the student body? That is a question that faces us as we systematically attempt to re-evaluate and make more secure our campuses nationwide, without making prisons of our universities, the exception being that the latter award advanced degrees.
Media pundits are spending lots of air-time brainstorming about whether the “good students” (their term, to thus differentiate them from the bad Mr. Cho) should have had guns with which to face Cho. That presents a unique set of other problems. Let’s consider some of them: Who, among us, is able to adjudge a student “good” and therefore worthy of carrying a loaded gun on campus? Which of the “good” students can be adjudged “better” that other merely-good students for withstanding the various stressors of university life (homework assignments, exams, lab projects, late tuition, late rent, love-life stresses, parent and other family problems) without resorting to acts of violence? Which of the “good” students is both astute and courageous enough to know when his time has come to thwart and vanquish evil on campus—and do all that without injuring other students, good and otherwise? We must remember that “good” police officers, in the pitch of battle, have accidentally shot a fellow officer. And let us not forget that the military coined the term “friendly fire” to differentiate those rare but horrific occasions when a soldier dies from a bullet fired by a comrade. The idea of “good” students with guns is just as ludicrous as Santa Claus sitting in the White House as President. How would the “good” students track down, identify, or otherwise “know” the student who, because of “suspicious” behavior, needs to be reigned in? And just what is “suspicious behavior” on campus? Hanging out alone? Writing dark and moody poems? Uttering a curse word or two while sauntering through the commissary? I see no clear reason why “good” students (whoever they are) ought to be entrusted with the 40-ton weight on their back of
While we are planning and strategizing to make our schools safer, we can start now by building into all our curricula—from middle school to university—required courses in non-violent social behavior grounded in law and ethics, as well as courses that engage the mind in problem-solving of cases designed around personal, psychological, and social conflicts and consequences. Students, from middle school to college, need violence education and prevention courses, focusing on their personal responsibilities, the same focus propelling the Driver’s Education and Training courses they gleefully took, to qualify for their drivers’ licenses before entering university. “Driving” one’s life through its infinite, complex highways is as important as driving one’s motor vehicle safely, without accident or injury to self or others. If we can have driver’s education courses, then we also must have violence education and prevention courses. Using this driver education/life education example, let’s look at the stark behavioral contrast: One student meticulously plans a vacation after final exams to drive for days through the beautiful countryside to visit family and friends downstate. Excitement builds as the days of the country fair, rodeo classic, and country music shindigs approach. Square dancing steps are dutifully practiced so a missed call won’t invite the scold, “You been upstate in school too long.” Another student (Cho) plans with equal meticulousness his own pre-summer “event.” He buys two different handguns, waits out the registration period, gets cleared, and completes the purchase and picks them up. Enamored of hyperbole and gross exaggeration in the English language, he writes a manifesto condemning “rich country club kids,” who are “living off their trust funds” and engaging in “acts of debauchery.” Then he rants and raves it is they who have created him; and proclaims they, therefore, must stand in judgment and receive their just punishment. This punishment must be meted out by him. Part of his meticulous planning includes producing a graphic, almost obscene, video clip and mailing it to a major news organization in New York City. His hope is that they will air it on the nightly news and thus facilitate his goal to go out in a blaze of glory. The news organization airs the tape. Cho Seung-Hui killed himself at Virginia Tech after he had already massacred 32 others. In his highly-demented mind, he became a “tragic hero.” I am saddened that, while he felt his cause legitimate enough to inform a news organization about, he never sought out anybody on campus who might have helped him; he never explored the feelings or situations of others; he never contributed himself, his talent, tithe and treasure to helping anybody else. Perhaps he did; the current evidence, however, suggests otherwise. What I am getting at is that he lived alone and died lonely.
Last week, I was threatened, attacked, and injured by a ward of the court school where I give my time twenty days a month. Paramedics rushed me to the hospital and informed me that I had lost a lot of blood and to keep my eyes open until we arrived at the emergency ward. As doctors began stitching together my bad damaged jaw, onlookers kept asking would I return to the juvenile jail, was I going to file a criminal complaint against the youth who attacked me, and other allied questions. As an expert witness in gangs, juvenile violence and homicide, and school safety, I cannot turn my back on a youth simply because in his deranged way he thought he was correcting part of his life by “re-arranging” part of mine (my face). Yes, working in a court school is often a thankless job; the wards would ridicule teachers there to serve them than express gratitude for the talents many of us bring to them. I have already said I am not interested in pursuing the state youth prison for this kid. The powers-that-be and I are negotiating, deliberating, communicating—doing a painstaking ballet without stepping on each other’s shoes—positively and earnestly. I only wish that the 32 Virginia Tech students slain by Cho Seung-hui had the opportunity to negotiate, deliberate, and communicate with whatever power that seized him on that fateful Monday, April 16, 2007. Though I was unconscious for a period of time, I came back. Each day, I am getting stronger. I cry when I think those unfortunate students didn’t. And they can’t.
# # #
James E. Shaw, Ph.D., is a Superior Court-certified Expert Witness, and
author of the best-seller, Jack and Jill, Why They Kill. Much in demand as a national speaker, he is currently writing a new book, GANGrene: Youth Terrorism USA. He can be reached at (310) 678-6950. His web: www.expertincourt.blogspot.com.
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