For purposes of Loughner’s trial, being found not guilty by reason of insanity is not very easy and his public defender seems to have a history of deep compromise anyhow.
But yeah, the sheriff knew that Loughner was a dangerous nut case well before the Giffords shooting, and seems to have done next to nothing about it. He fell down on his job.
The more I research this, the more it looks like law enforcement should have referred this case to pysch, had multiple occasions to do that and did not which would have drastically affected the course of events in 2010 and greatly lowered chances of violence. Not because I think psychiatry is all that beneficial as a science, but simply because he would have been in the system, his mother would have been aware of more, multiple people would have been looking for signs. It would be different if the state of AZ never asserted the authority and responsibility to provide mental health crisis management for it’s citizens, but they have. yet, for some reason, Loughner was not referred to these services even though a quick investigation would have produced many people who would concur that he obviously needed them as they were afraid of him.
Sheriff has vehemently, publicly announced his bias towards a conclusion that defendant is competent but was goaded to do this by politicians, public speakers, etc., so his objectivity in investigating defendants possible motives is questionable, which makes one wonder about overall department effectiveness.
These announcements seem meant to distract anyone from asking whether lack of referral was just negligent mistake thinking he was harmless or intentional to perhaps “help” by keeping him out of the system, or perhaps it was trying to save the state resources, or perhaps there are relationships not yet revealed.
Hey, I’m a cap punishment person, I thought it was routine at first, but I think the “routine” case is more where a loner is really a loner and there is no one around the person. But he lived with his family, he had school and police interactions at least. They must really be feeling bad that they did not report this and now all the deaths and injuries, and presumably this guy will get death penalty. And people were there the whole time to watch his slide downhill. Doubt he can be fixed much now after having committed the act.
This is a tough situation.
-——He fell down on his job.——
Au contraire mi amigo. His job was not to deal with precriminals, his job was to soothe the worried minds of constituents that elected him to be sure there was no injustice.
He is not a law enforcement officer, he is a left wing pacifier. He is the public bipi