I call BS on that one:

What is BETA?

The Behavioral Assessment and Threat Assessment Team (BETA) is a new resource at the University of Colorado Denver that can provide resources and information to faculty, staff or student community members who are confronted with individuals who may be threatening, disruptive, or otherwise problematic. The Team provides guidance and consultation and may make referrals to appropriate campus or community resources.

I think UC is in full CYA mode right now.

Similar to Loughner, the schools seem inclined to abdicate if the worrisome pupil leaves their orbit. I agree there needs to be some sort of 'handoff' to LE/mental health representatives for the general population. While at present I can't see such a 'handoff' actually being effective in preventing such an incident, the system ought to at least try.

Has anyone given a thought to establishing a nationwide volunteer corps specifically aimed at this issue? It would need funding and training of course. How many such BETA referrals are there, nationwide, per year? Of those, how many do, or would, proceed to actual intervention? And of those interventions, how many are suspended at the university gates when the student withdraws or graduates?

Of course, such volunteers might be on the firing line themselves. Dunno. Just brainstorming.

Probably just when society gets it right with 20-somethings, the pattern for mass killings will shift back to 50-something postal workers, or 30-something vets, or something else.

I think the professionals do poorly enough at it that handing it off to amateurs might would result in targeting of innocent people. Gladys Kravitz comes to mind.

Gladys Kravits

I remember her!

After Tarasoff and its progeny, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have a duty to warn potential victims of threats of future violence.

Unfortunately, it is not always so clear who represents a legitimate threat and who is just blowing off steam. The vast majority of people who say something that could be disturbing are not going to become mass shooters. Mass shootings, as spectacular as they are and as much news coverage as they get, are extremely rare statistical anomalies.

The problem seems not to be that universities and other such institutions don't aggressively pursue every single remotely threatening comment. It is that they often seem to miss an escalating pattern of disturbing behavior. A lot of different people may have witnessed something that is only disturbing in the later context of a catastrophic rampage, when people compare notes and realize that someone was, in retrospect, a ticking time bomb.

One offhand comment like "Sometimes, I just wanna kill that guy" is probably not indicative of a threat of actual violence. A persistent pattern of such conduct, though, accompanied by threatening conduct and signs of mental instability, especially when it appears to be escalating and the potential threat is decompensating, shown by signs like suddenly dropping out of school or strange outbursts, should trigger some kind of warning system.

What is needed, though, is some kind of objective metric. If these situations are studied, perhaps there are some kinds of behaviors, or degrees of behavior, that are quite common with people who become an actual threat, but are rare with people who do not. Otherwise, you run the very risk of persecuting innocent, non-threatening people, or even worse, provoking someone into violence who might otherwise have moved on or recovered. You have to catch the people who are actually threats, but not start discriminating (illegally I might add) against people with mental illness of some sort or who are just seen as "weird."

Unfairly branding someone as a "dangerous nut" is the kind of thing that can destroy a reputation for life and, if done without legal justification, open the institution to a very high damages defamation suit, in addition to the moral harm of destroying an innocent person's reputation.

After reading through so many reports, I am having difficulty trying to sort a timeline matter.
Did Holmes start seeing the psychiatrist before he began stockpiling weapons? How long did he spend purchasing his cache?

Yes. And those of us who are advocates for family members on the mentally ill side of society really really want people to remember this. The mentally ill population isn't small and it's already very stigmatized.

(Not addressing the logistical questions around the doctor's responsibilities and the school's obligations. I'm just talking about it from a personal standpoint.)

We don't know yet how long he'd been seeing the psychiatrist Edit to add: She contacted members of the BETA team in the first 10 days of June


Not sure when he started ordering things online, but he bought the guns in late May at Bass Pro Shop and Gander Mountain. He dropped out of school June 10th.

It is not just lack of communication among people who have some responsibility to act on escalating patterns of disturbing behavior. It is also that many of the people who witness the disturbing behavior are completely out of the loop. A resident of the same apartment house or dorm, a McDonald's cashier, and a man walking his dog in the park may all have seen or heard something that worried them, but that never gets back to a campus threat assessment team. The number of people on a campus who are properly trained and supposed to watch for such things is surprisingly small, probably too small. In today's large classes, the chance that a faculty member will perceive anything amiss is low. Absenteeism is often the only clue.

What we miss is usually not the homicidal maniac; it is the suicidal student. Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among college students. It is said that 18-24 year-olds think about suicide more often than any other age group, but how often does anybody know about that? Over a 45-year career, I can probably remember every student who told me about such thoughts -- not many. [Car accidents are the leading cause of death, but I have long believed that some of those accidents are the result of suicidal thinking.]

^^^^^^THIS

I don't know if Holmes has schizophrenia or some other mental illness. AFAIK there hasn't been a professional diagnosis (and personally it distresses me that there are many people online and the media who are willing to make a diagnosis by distance even without Bill Frist's medical experience). I would only like to say that though such incidents are thankfully rare, they do have a lot of influence on public perception.

A lot of people are unaware that people with schizophrenia are no more violent statistically than adult males. Harming ourselves though (though thankfully I haven't really ever gone done that route), is much, higher than the population average. Something like 1 in 10 of those with schizophrenia do take their own lives.

I'll tell you the hardest thing I ever had in accepting my illness was my own perception of what a "schizophrenic" was in my mind. When I heard my diagnosis and I was told I shouldn't do school anymore, it was like a court passing a death sentence on me. I learned later, perhaps in a harder way than I had to, that maybe I couldn't do anything about the sentence, but whether I accepted the sentence was an entirely different thing. I will tell you though that I have met with people who are very afraid to talk about their mental health and even get professional help because they are quite scared that people will think of them like Jared Loughner.

WESTLAKE -- A 37-year-old North Ridgeville man was charged Monday, after police say he walked into the Regal Cinemas at Crocker Park in Westlake, carrying a satchel full of weapons.

Police have identified the man as Scott Smith.

Westlake police say Smith bought a movie ticket for the 10 o'clock showing of "The Dark Knight Rises" Saturday night.

A keen-eyed theater manager and off-duty Westlake police officer, who was working security, stopped Smith shortly after he sat down in his theater seat. The officer asked to search his bag, and Smith complied, without incident. Inside the bag were a loaded 9 mm Glock handgun, two additional loaded magazines and two knives.

Another knife was found hidden under the man's clothes.

http://www.wkyc.com/news/article/255119 ... and-knives

Officer Jeremiah Bullins, an off-duty Westlake Police officer who was working security, and the theater manager noticed the beige satchel Smith was carrying and became suspicious.

Smith was the first and only person inside that movie theater at the time. Westlake Police say he sat in the center seat in the back row, a place with "tactical advantage."

"His back was to the wall. Basically, if he chose to do something there, all his potential victims were in front of him, and he would have an advantage over them," said Lt. Ray Arcuri, with Westlake Police.


http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/story.as ... yid=255163

What state is Westlake in?

Ohio



Per Google...

It looks like Ohio, the Lorain County region near Cleveland, nearly on the Michigan border.

Thanks. Although it wouldn't have surprised me if it was Westlake, LA.

I live about 8 miles from Westlake, Ohio. Westlake is a suburb to the west of Cleveland (about 10 miles). It's between Avon & Rocky River. North Olmsted is to the south. The Cuyahoga Valley National Park is about 25 miles southeast of Westlake.

I've seen movies in that theater.

*not lately though, cause it's not very handicap accessible.

Gorgeous area.

He was just trying to protect himself



http://www.cleveland.com/westlake/index ... th_br.html

Afraid of going to the theater, seems like Option 1 would be... Don't go.

But that would mean having to wait for the DVD.

Anyway, I believe his explanation. I'm not excusing him but he just sounds like some paranoid gun nut.

The guy was carrying a glock. Even I know that's for spraying fire not for accurate shooting, If he had tried to use it he would have probably hit everyone around the perp and not hit him at all. Bullshit.

By the way I'm waiting for the DVD.

Just wait - we will find that this guy didn't break any laws, yet...so - we'll just have to let him and his arsenal go free...America, What A Country...

He was carrying a Glock 9mm handgun.

Where do you get that's for "spraying fire" and not accurate shooting? Granted, if he were to open fire he may indiscriminately point and fire, but that doesn't equate to your statement above.

Glocks are used by a high percentage of U.S. LE.