Morunful News

[ezrablu]

Sad indeed...a good person had to loose his life and no doubt that mentally ill woman will now get the help everybody knew she needed but didn't get. When mentally ill people aren't able to seek help for themselves, they get put on disability and shuffled aside. So many times it ends just like this with people reporting it to social services/authorities and nobody does anything until it's too late. This is doubly sad.

[Headache]

This is a very tragic and horrible situation on so many levels.

Mental illness is severely stigmatized, so much so that rational thinking people fear it, lawmakers sweep it under the rug and those who are mentally ill may never get the help they need as what happened here.

It wasn't just Reaganomics that did in mental institutions. It was also grass roots efforts nationwide that sealed the deal in getting them closed because of the enormity of human rights violations and heinous criminal activity being committed against patients.

Rather than overhauling the system(which would have taken decades and billions of dollars while more abuse of patients occurred) the quickest and most cost effective route was to close the mental hospitals and literally drop patients off on the streets.

There is also another gray area that will never be defined in a way that will be fair to all who are diagnosed as mentally ill.

Just how ill is "ill"?

Schizophrenia is the "worst" of them all and yet there are many diagnosed with it that are able to live and work among the populace with no threat to anyone and without having to be institutionalized. There are people such as Nathanial Ayers who was depicted by Jaime Foxx in the movie "The Soloist". Despite treatments his condition became worse until he ended up on Skid Row. He was largely ignored until an L.A. Times columnist took enough interest in him, built up a friendship and trust and was able to help him get off the streets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Ayers

Sadly mental illness isn't much different than any other disease, the longer you go without viable treatment the worse it gets. This can make it hard for others to recognize how "bad" someone is really getting because the deterioration takes time and people "get used to"(for lack of a better description) their strange behavior.

Situations like this add more fuel to the fire of misunderstanding yet this isn't even the worst of it. The worst is the disdain as well as apathetic ignorance that mentally ill people are treated with.

It is unfortunate that the government and it's constituents aren't moved to act until there is a large enough body count. Since tragedies such as this one occur so infrequently it will be many years before something sincere is even alluded to in helping these victims of the system thus sparing innocent lives such as Sharkey's friend.

[Stealth Camper]

This is a sad story that plays out way too much in this country. (Arizona Giffords lunatic shooter, et. al).

In spite of that, it looks to me like Eugene must be a pretty good place to live. (I saw a census number of about 150,000 people in 2010. We (Tulsa) have about 350,000 and since 1917 we have lost 40 officers in the line of duty, about 25 of them by attack from criminals.)

Even one is too much, as in this case. But I may have to look at the area as a place to live, at least part time.

[graydawg]

A couple months ago we lost a police supervisor, he was in the parking lot of a Circle K convenance store, talking with the lady that was working there. a young fellow about 20 something pulled up and shot him, he was wearing a bullet proof vest and at close range showed up and started shooting. they claim they didn't know each other, but his dad was a high ranking police officer on the same city police. They supposedly don't know each other. The shooter is in jail still.
James in da GRAYDAWG

[Headache]

Mental rejects, nut case, lunatic. It's terminology that furthers the disdain and stigma toward people diagnosed as mentally ill.

All my life I was tagged as being "difficult" and "contrary" and it wasn't until 3 years ago that I was diagnosed with mental illness. It took that long because I am higher functioning and I was able to do many things that so many others cannot such as drive, work and yes, use firearms.

Since it took so long for a diagnoses, I became worse until the death of my mother lead to a break down and my trying to find out what the hell was going on in my head.

And that's the bad part; it usually takes some tragedy before seeking help or getting help for someone because most people do not know many of the symptoms(the ignorance I mentioned previously) of mental illnesses. It was certainly not in my family's vocabulary.

Initially it was hard for my Dad, he sometimes felt that there was something he did wrong or could have done differently to ensure a different outcome for me. He's doing better now in realizing there was really nothing he could do and he didn't cause it.

So now you have the catalyst as to why I want to embark on this busing adventure. I want to spend as much time as I can with my Dad before he goes, unlike not getting to my Mom in time and being crushed by the guilt. Were going to prepare me together for when he's gone.

[splummer]

i can relate to the guilt part. working many years in this field and having met many parents.
this is a topic that i would not feel comfortable posting. thanks steve

[Sharkey]

This might be getting a bit tedious, but I want to make a record of the news articles about this. If no one replies to this latest posting, I'll edit further links into this post so that it falls off the list of recent topics.

Weapon found:

http://special.registerguard.com/web/up ... n.html.csp

Editorial:

http://www.registerguard.com/web/opinio ... h.html.csp

Shooter confesses:

http://www.registerguard.com/web/newslo ... r.html.csp

Memorial Honors:

http://www.registerguard.com/web/newslo ... e.html.csp

Instead of naming that (ugly) stretch of highway after Chris, a broadcast engiennering associate of mine is suggesting instead that the new police station, which is under remodelling construction right now, be named in his honor. A much more fitting memorial, in my opinion. Links that that if/when it comes to be, he's kicking it up the chain of command today.

Witness details chase:

http://www.registerguard.com/web/newslo ... k.html.csp

Emergency vehicle procession for memorial service:

http://www.registerguard.com/web/newslo ... e.html.csp

Records detail suspect’s confession:

http://www.registerguard.com/web/newslo ... t.html.csp

Associated Press on Memorial:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/ ... TE=DEFAULT

Memorial service:

http://www.registerguard.com/web/newslo ... r.html.csp

Memorial procession:

http://www.registerguard.com/web/newslo ... s.html.csp

Shooter's mental condition:

http://www.registerguard.com/web/update ... e.html.csp

[Mark R. Obtinario]

They recently renamed the stretch of US 30 that goes through Rainier, OR after the police chief that was murdered a few months ago.

The problem of naming a stretch of highway or a bridge after someone is it usually is never called by the new name.

How many people know that the I-205 bridge between Vancouver, WA and Portland, OR is named after Glen Jackson? For that matter, who was Glen Jackson?

Naming a cop shop after a fallen cop would seem to me a better epitath than a stretch of road.

[GoodClue]

Sharkey, how does one respond to insane acts?

The Mennonite community who lost their children to an aberrant act of insanity? The community forgave the perpetrator and took his wife into their families ...

My 2nd to the last serious relationship was a multiple personality with a pension for cutting ... her doctors finally scared me by saying "We don't know why she only hurts herself ..." I never slept after that ... and left when she did start lashing out at others ...

Most all of us have lost someone we knew and loved to acts of insanity ... part of the human condition ... as hard as it is I do believe this is a school where hopefully we learn to rise above ...

I was born in Germany, 1949, to a US Army family stationed after the war ... we lived in Dachau in the former SS quarters ... the concentration camp was my back yard ... Just being there as a child after the fact indelibly affected and altered my thinking ... I had horrible dreams of being one of the Jews who survived by burning the bodies ... past life or psychic experience, it doesn't matter, I've been a lifelong pacifist because of it.

Possibly, like the Jewish community saying after WWII ... Forgive, but never forget.

[Headache]

I agree in that it would be a more fitting honor for a precinct to be named in memory of the downed officer rather than a stretch of asphalt.

I wish I could be of more help or to be able to offer some comfort to those of you who have been affected by someone struggling with mental illness. Sadly I cannot.

What I can hope for you is in understanding that a person truly afflicted did not ask for it and if they had the capacity I'm sure they would not want it, as I do not. I sometimes consider those worse off than me to be the "lucky" ones because they will never truly realize the torture of trying to live this way, not fully in control of one's emotions.

[Stealth Camper]

When SWMBO and the kids get to missing the people we love that have gone, I tell them that even if we live to be 100, that still is only a very short time until we get to see them again. Also tell them to try to be patient and look forward to the meeting.