Topic: Shooting in a Colorado Theater (Read 6151 times)

Rico · « **Reply #80 on:** July 24, 2012, 07:59:49 AM »

Just from seeing the composition of the headline, "Suspect's ties to sex website, Match.com examined", I wonder if the LA Times editor has a Match.com profile and a hard time getting dates. That is some slimy writing.

Thad · « **Reply #81 on:** July 24, 2012, 09:11:45 AM »

It's unfortunate but I think it's a pretty standard example of headline composition, between the terseness and comma placement. I don't see any malice there, just a more unfortunate version of the kind of shit Leno's been making fun of for the past couple of decades.

Büge · « **Reply #82 on:** July 24, 2012, 04:27:46 PM »

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_21142159/gun-sales-up-since-tragedy

oh boy, here we go

Brentai · « **Reply #83 on:** July 24, 2012, 05:38:21 PM »

Natural selection in action.

Joxam · « **Reply #84 on:** July 24, 2012, 05:42:50 PM »

In a bit of OK news about this whole ordeal, Christian Bale did go visit the victims and the memorial that was set up for the dead. Good on him.

Royal☭ · « **Reply #85 on:** July 25, 2012, 06:16:43 AM »

For the ultimate in America: Victim of Colorado shooting has over $2 million in medical bills and is uninsured

Give guns to people, refuse to help others shot by those guns.

Büge · « **Reply #86 on:** July 26, 2012, 06:18:02 PM »

http://gawker.com/5929208/oof-broom+hilda-strip-inadvertently-makes-tasteless-joke-about-aurora-theater-massacre

This was a rather unfortunate coincidence.

Friday · « **Reply #87 on:** July 26, 2012, 06:32:25 PM »

You can almost always find such things if you look hard enough.

Thad · « **Reply #88 on:** July 26, 2012, 08:12:37 PM »

Yeah. Somebody should have caught it and swapped in another strip -- I hear the guy has a pretty huge stockpile of strips so it wouldn't be too tough to put in a new one, never mind rerunning an old one or just sticking in an "In light of the tragedy in Aurora, we have decided to postpone today's strip to a later date" message -- but as fuckups go it's a pretty minor one. Something like that was bound to happen somewhere; it's an unfortunate coincidence but nothing more.

Miss Cat Ears · « **Reply #89 on:** July 27, 2012, 05:53:47 AM »

Quote from: Constantmean on July 25, 2012, 06:16:43 AM

For the ultimate in America: Victim of Colorado shooting has over $2 million in medical bills and is uninsured

Give guns to people, refuse to help others shot by those guns.

Maybe it makes me a bad person, but I kind of hate donating to causes like this - where there's a set amount they're trying to raise, and no indication of how much money they have raised so far. ~~(I didn't look too hard though, maybe there's a counter or whatever on their site that I missed)~~

The idea that this guy might need 2 million, and get 6 million instead, kind of bothers me because I worry about the charitable things that extra money could have gone to.

Oh, duh, I see it now. So my post here is pretty much invalid. Ignore me.

Shinra · « **Reply #90 on:** July 28, 2012, 07:00:05 AM »

Oh, what the FUCK

Who would fucking copycat this? At least the shooter this time was double extra attention hungry/incompetent.

Mongrel · « **Reply #91 on:** July 28, 2012, 09:41:28 AM »

Oh god... he was wearing the Happy Gilmore shirt?!

Shinra · « **Reply #92 on:** August 05, 2012, 07:52:34 AM »

So it turns out Holmes' psych thought he was a danger to others, told the people she was supposed to tell these things, and they never bothered to follow up or notify authorities.

Hurray for beauracracy!

edit: It looks like a few of the members of the threat assessment team had "conversations" with holmes rather than formally meeting and reaching a consensus, and then he dropped out of school shortly after, rendering them, quote, "powerless".

This tells me that he realized they knew he was planning something and dropped out precisely to prevent them from acting against him before he could carry out his plot. This also tells me that a lot of lives could have been saved if people had taken reports from his psych a little more fucking seriously in june.

also, while they certainly couldn't have had him committed, maybe when the unstable guy who might be a danger to himself or others drops out when you start talking to him about his problems, you call the fucking police or his parents or somebody?

Thad · « **Reply #93 on:** August 05, 2012, 11:59:29 AM »

I'm willing to wait until more information is in, but yeah, it sure SOUNDS bad, especially since we've all got a story of university staff failing to report something to the police fresh in our minds.

There are always questions of doctor-patient confidentiality to consider, and that's something that needs to be stressed in ANY conversation about mental health -- we can't treat EVERYONE who sees a psychiatrist as a potential mass-murderer. Which of course is an obvious point, but stories like this CAN make people with legitimate but benign mental illness feel like people are coming for them with pitchforks and torches.

Basically: I think we'll see an investigation here. And it'll clear up whether the case was dropped simply because it became Not Our Problem Anymore, or because the psychiatrist and staff ultimately decided that whatever he told her in confidence did not rise to the level of contacting the police. Either way, they failed to stop a tragedy, but the distinction between the two REASONS for it is a pretty damned important one.

(Related: my knowledge of the Tucson case -- that teachers, students, and administrators were UNCOMFORTABLE with the killer but ultimately did not find anything to suggest that he was violent or dangerous -- suggests that they did their jobs and exercised reasonable judgement and, unfortunately, he turned out to be far more dangerous than his weird outbursts suggested.)

There's always going to be a tension between erring on the side of public safety and personal privacy, between false positives and false negatives. False negatives can lead to far worse outcomes, but false positives happen far more frequently (look at any given story in the TSA thread). Determining when it's appropriate to call the police because somebody told a doctor something in confidence can be a tricky decision to make, and it's definitely relevant to find out why they made the decision they did in this case.

But you're right -- if it WAS just because "Hey, he's not our problem anymore" then that's pretty fucked up.

A² · « **Reply #94 on:** August 05, 2012, 12:51:27 PM »

Quote from: Thad on August 05, 2012, 11:59:29 AM

Which of course is an obvious point, but stories like this CAN make people with legitimate but benign mental illness feel like people are coming for them with pitchforks and torches.

Stories like this & people believing that all mental illness people are two steps short of this at all times has been the background noise of my life for a while now.

When I was a kid a woman told me to my face the world would be better off if I was "taken away from everyone else."

Actually a bunch of this can probably go in a new thread so to keep it on topic: He sounds like he had some kind of psychotic break and wanted, in his mind, to play some twisted game. In the coming weeks/months there's a decent chance of him getting to be less smug and sure of himself as he finds out the fantasy aftermath he concocted in his head doesn't line up to reaity.

Shinra · « **Reply #95 on:** August 05, 2012, 01:24:26 PM »

I still don't believe it was a psychotic break. I think we're not hearing enough about the psychological profile of this dude and I just don't buy it. Way too much planning went into this.

for the record, I am a dude with a mental illness who had a very unstable period in high school. I was given the choice of dropping out or getting expelled, so that shows you where I was at the time. The psych in charge of his case was concerned enough about him as an individual to send him to threat assessment on the grounds he was potentially at risk of harming himself or others. She was the one in the best position to make that judgement. Presumably, she did not go to the police because of the risks of violating confidentiality. It was the job of threat assessment to make sure he wasn't a threat to others, and at least from the limited pool of information that we have, it's safe to assume that some or all members of the threat assessment team did not perform due diligence in following up.

I am not advocating treating the mentally ill like they're all mass-murderers waiting to happen (where did either of you even get that impression?) I am advocating that when your psych thinks you're a danger to yourself or others, and believes so enough that she's telling her bosses about it, maybe somebody should pick up the phone and call somebody about it. Patient confidentiality is SUPPOSED to go out the window in these situations.

Thad · « **Reply #96 on:** August 05, 2012, 04:33:02 PM »

Quote from: Shinra on August 05, 2012, 01:24:26 PM

where did either of you even get that impression?

Speaking for myself: I certainly didn't. You're doing that thing where you take something personally and get defensive again; please don't.

I brought up confidentiality and the importance of not assuming the mentally ill are dangerous for precisely the reason I said: because I think it needs to form the backbone of any conversation about monitoring the mentally ill.

I don't know what happened here, whether protocol was followed or not, or why anybody made the calls they did. As I said: I think this sounds pretty bad. But it's also coming from the network whose initial coverage of the massacre involved Googling the dude's name and mixing him up with a Tea Party member.

There are questions here that need answering; they haven't been answered to my satisfaction yet. It's probable that somebody, several somebodies, really blew it. But it's not certain.

Shinra · « **Reply #97 on:** August 05, 2012, 04:56:16 PM »

Wasn't trying to get defensive, I just felt like I might be being misinterpreted.

Yeah, CNN's journalistic integrity is not on a high right now, granted.

Shinra · « **Reply #98 on:** August 13, 2012, 10:35:52 AM »

Gun ownership is getting harder for me to defend every god damn day.

Büge · « **Reply #99 on:** August 16, 2012, 07:12:15 AM »

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/08/16/megadeths-dave-mustaine-obama-staged-batman-massacre

Go to hell, Dave Mustaine.

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Author Topic: Shooting in a Colorado Theater (Read 6151 times)