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I’m Okay, You’re So-So
First of all, I would like to thank @ctlaw for bringing this story to my attention. Second of all he is not responsible for my opinions in this essay.
The refusal to deal with the mentally ill, other than lip service, is creating problems in the United States. Some of these problems involve the homeless issue, drug addiction, and in its most serious form, violence. Violence that includes random attacks, as well as targeted attacks such as school shootings, collective haters (name the group or cause), and political violence across the Left and Right spectrum.
As a former police officer, I’ve dealt with individuals who were mentally ill. One individual who stabbed his roommate to death, another who was a 19-year-old jumper. There were others who threatened to commit acts of violence on public transit or members of their families, as well as threatening me.
Now I know I’m going to offend some with my observations from being on the street. Psychiatry, Psychology, and Therapy is an art form; it is not a science. Most police calls involving the mentally ill only come when someone is in a complete breakdown. A five-alarm breakdown.
There are times when you go on a call and find everyone standing on the front porch as the subject is busy destroying the interior of the house, and they tell you, we just want you to talk to him because he’s not dangerous. That begs the question, if he’s not dangerous, why is everyone standing on the front porch?
The following incident includes some of my front porch scenario. There are not enough police officers to stand on every front porch, but there are times when questions should be asked, and a closer look at someone who is mentally ill is necessary.
On November 19, 2022, at approximately 2357 hours, Anderson Lee Aldrich allegedly shot five people to death and injured 18 at ClubQ.
Police have identified the suspect in Saturday night’s deadly attack on an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado as Anderson Lee Aldrich, a 22-year-old with previous run-ins with the law.
Aldrich is accused of firing on patrons at Club Q in Colorado Springs, killing at least five and injuring at least 18. He had previously been arrested in June 2021 for making multiple bomb threats and refusing to surrender to police.
Police received reports from Aldrich’s mother on June 18, 2021, stating that Aldrich was “threatening to cause harm to her with a homemade bomb, multiple weapons, and ammunition,” according to the El Paso Sheriff’s Department.
2021
His mother, who police did not identify by name, told authorities she was not sure where her son was. Police investigated and discovered he was holed up inside a nearby home. They contacted Aldrich by phone, but he refused to surrender.
Officers were eventually able to get Aldrich to comply, however, and he walked out of the home into police custody. Officers searched both his mother’s home and the home Aldrich had been in but found no evidence of explosives.
Aldrich was charged with two counts of felony menacing, and three counts of first-degree kidnapping for the incident. The El Paso Sheriff’s Office, which handled his arrest, did not release a mug shot from the incident and did not immediately respond to inquiries from Fox News Digital.
Aldrich has now been taken into custody for the shooting at Club Q. Colorado Springs Police Chief Adrian Vasquez says at least two “heroic” patrons were able to subdue Aldrich just before police arrived. He has since been transferred to a local hospital for treatment.
I have not been able to find any trial record or convictions from the 2021 incident. Did the 2021 charges go to trial? Was there a psych hold? When was the rifle purchased? Was it after the 2021 incident? Did Mr. Aldrich purchase the weapon; if not, who did?
The justice system involves the police, the prosecutor’s office, and the court. Reporting crimes and prosecuting crimes to enter the appropriate data into the NCIC, and NCIS database system to prevent purchasing a firearm from a licensed FFL gun dealer is critical.
Published in Policing
Maybe I should rethink Colo. Springs as my next stop. Still probably fewerr crazies there than in any California city. Cannot understand why the DAs, who main job is to keep violent criminals away from folks, can’t get these idiots convicted.
It’s not quite as bad as the People’s Republic of California yet, but it’s on the way, and why go through the hassles and costs of moving to get the hell out of California just to have to do it again in a few years to get the hell out of Colorado?
Colorado, especially the housing and property taxes, is so much cheaper. Wife rejected Texas because of the heat. Don’t like hurricanes so no Florida. Will see.
Individuals that commit crimes have an advocate. Their advocate is a defense attorney.
true. But the usual conviction rates for District Attorneys is over 90% as guilt is usually pretty obvious if the police and the detectives do their jobs right. Which almost all do. Maybe its the no-bail crazy that allows this kind or craziness.
Northern Texas doesn’t get that warm. Amarillo, Lubbock…
Or so it was once.
But crime-committing individuals now have the entire liberal agenda as their advocate.
As our liberal leaders are convinced that other things need to be considered before a person’s actual criminal status is judged.
Hence the fact that citizens in San Francisco were recently asked to weigh in on how it might be a good idea to create a penalty for any citizen, who as a victim of a crime, decides to identify the race or ethnicity of their mugger. (I never found out if this local proposition passed or not.)
Much of this is done under the excuse that “the US prison system has disproportionately come to house more people of color than white people.”
The fact that those people of color most likely had to act in a criminal manner, get caught, then sit at a trial with their defense, and then also be found guilty does not give our liberal leaders pause at all.
I’ll bet the 2021 report was not the first “incident.” I’ll bet there were many more events that stayed in the family. In all the big news worthy incidents, the perpetrator was known to all around him as a problem for a long time. Relatives, teachers, public people in the neighborhood. Everyone knows the kid who is troubled or a problem over time. But I was challenged hard at a recent school board meeting when I said We don’t have a weapons problem, we have a mental health problem schools won’t acknowledge and address. (I also think we have a medication of little boys problem but that’s a different gripe.)
Teachers and admin want to hire a law enforcement equivalent staff for safety. But they couldn’t say the risk they wanted to address and the approved actions in case risk arrived. (Would they authorize an armed officer and allow shooting a known youthful intruder carrying?) The school has 185 kids K-8 and a budget you wouldn’t believe. Teachers are afraid of disciplinary actions and conversations with parents about behaviour problems. I think few parents want to admit their child is really troubled. They will fight like mad to get an IEP so the child gets extra time on tests they don’t study for, but they don’t want to help a damaged kid.
People who have those criteria fall in love with East Tennessee. Especially if they like some modest hills around them.
The problem is, we only treat the acute cases, and there is no pathway at all to contain someone on a trajectory to devastation.
What I have seen help in communities is mental health workers hand in hand with the police with dedicated case loads.
So many things are not in favor of good mental health for youth:
I hear what you are saying in this post loud and clear and see it every day in the news and it is tragic.
I wonder if the official attitude toward involuntary commitment needs adjusting. Even a caring, supportive family is often left with no way to deal with a troubled and troublesome loved one.
Here in the City of Angels, we have a homeless problem.
Me and some other neighbors went down to the Hollywood Station of the LAPD during a couple roll calls to show support during the riots and give them coffee and donuts and then pizza and soft drinks.
What the LAPD officers told us is that they were ordered by downtown to not arrest a homeless person unless that person was attacking another, otherwise all other crimes were off limits. You can forget that Constitutional thingy.
In LA County the current County Sheriff Alex Villanueva who just lost his election for being too honest, publicly said that of the homeless population, 30% are seriously mentally ill, 70% are serious drug addicts and as a result only 30% can be effectively dealt with by social services. LA County btw over the last ten years has spent over $6 billion, yes billion, on the homeless, and almost all of that was on social services which won’t be effective with 70% of the homeless. Our tax dollars at work!
As far as the mentally ill, in California it is very difficult to hospitalize the mentally ill no matter how sick they are, so dealing with this vast amount of mentally ill homeless is very difficult. One way that I think could work is that if the powers that be would pull their collective heads out of their butt, and arrest the homeless for the crimes they are committing, it would be possible to hospitalize all these mentally ill homeless as part of their conviction sentence for mental illness. Then they could be treated!
As far as California goes, the major urban cities and counties like LA and San Francisco have DA’s who don’t like, being hard core commies, to prosecute criminals for the crimes they commit, so these areas are a real mess. But there are other counties like Orange County , which are conservative , where the police and DA’s follow the law and keep law and order, so California is not all bad. One just has to pick the right area.
I sure think it does. People who are clearly unable to take care of themselves long term need help. There are ways we could build adequate safeguards into place to protect rights. It has to be better than what we have now.
And our daughter loves Nashville. Maybe why my wife doesn’t want to move there. Just kidding. She thinks us old folks might be a burden on her and her 4 bedroom house.
San Francisco recalled its Soros DA. New doing ok so far.
Sorry, this is ignorant. Colorado is still more libertarian than Left, with all the positives and negatives that come with libertarianism.
Our governor, for whom I’ve never voted is as close as you’ll ever come to a Democrat Ron DeSantis on COVID. He’s had an even handed response to this incident, which occurred 3 miles from my house and 2 miles from my church. We even suspect he called the NYT and got them to edit their inflammatory remarks about the Springs being a hotbed of right wing (Christian also implied) mass shootings. The Democrats would be genius to run him in 2024.
Now, there are other reasons not to move here — we’ve been discovered and are the 2nd best place to live in the country according to recent news — so we’re growing and getting crowded. We longtimers are bummed.
But in fact, North Texas isn’t hot.
Do you know why you don’t hear about many mass shootings in Oklahoma?
Return fire.
Can recall one many years ago. I think it was at an Edmond, Okla. post office. Hence the term “going postal”. Don’t remember any recent ones. But guess not too many gay bars in OKC or Tulsa. At least don’t recall seeing one on my few trips back.
Back in 2018, someone stood in the door of the Louie’s Grill and Bar next to Lake Hefner in OKC and started shooting. He hit three people inside. Two passersby ran back to their cars and got their guns. The original shooter ened up dead.
I had been to that Louie’s. Good food.
Now remember that one. One mile from my old home. Okies are pretty good shooters. Check out Chuck Norris.
Our prison system disproportionately houses criminals and I like it that way.
This is one of the only changes that will reliably help.
I like stories with a happy ending.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/11/22/colorado-gay-nightclub-shooter-non-binary-they-them-pronouns/
Thank you for fighting the good fight. Given the state of affairs in our nation these days, you are a hero for doing this.
The huge problem you face, EOD mom, is that those parents who agree with you are pulling their kids out of the public school system on a weekly basis.
Sometimes it is due to all the attention the special needs children are getting – although with a large enough budget, a school could have one aide per each such child.
And mentally ill kids are not the only problem. Out and out bullies from “good families” seem to be the other problem.
Things are so bad that they have even crept into remote and rural Lake County Calif. Bullies recently beat up one child while his close friend and protector was at home ill with a cold.
The bullies faced a three day suspension from school. (Imagine if you can, any bully anywhere crying over not being able to go to school for 3 days!)
The bullies were back int their classrooms before the beaten up child had recovered from his injuries. And yet this leniency is not addressed.
We love Knoxville- it’s like NH but without the 2+ months of very cold. Knoxville my size of “city.”
Those are exactly the issues here: 50% of the education budget goes to “special” ed- last year 1 child’s “tuition” was $100k. Transportation is off the charts. Families are coached on how to petition for an IEP. It’s less the attention than the diluted curriculum and having already crept in sexualization and ideology. SEL and CRT are money making machines for vendors. If parents can, children are removed. The pastor for the church across the street from the school was happy to read my letters to the School Board as announcements, but was honest that all his parishioners have their students at nearby Christian school. He’s been there his entire ministry and the relationship used to be very positive and collegial. Now the principal doesn’t return his calls about scheduling for the town Common they both use.
I’m not even a parent – our son is a grownup and went to private schools his whole career. But I am a taxpayer and a thinking adult and the public schools are bankrupt. And they seem led by morally bankrupt adults. Parents are too easily intimidated and the school board seems to think they report to the district admin, not the other way around. They all forget who lays their salaries. I recently got my first actual response to a letter from the chair of the board. They are directed to listen but not respond.
If any parent asks – they should NOT consent to their child taking anything styled as nor sounding like a Holistic Student Assessment – not any “survey” at all at this point. They are nothing more than consent to collect data on your child, and the parents if they can.
Ask me how I really feel.