Category Archives: VTech-Psych/legal failure

Eldridge Cleaver, Capitalist: Produce More, Consume Less

Posted on by

In an interview with Reason magazine, February 1986, Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther who converted later to Christianity, showed a keen appreciation of many free-market principles:

Cleaver: I’ve come to basically the same conclusions. My life, I think, spans the whole era of the welfare state. I was born in 1935. I remember when people were ashamed to be on welfare and receive state aid and all that, but we developed a situation where black people to a large degree and a lot of other groups such as elderly people, children and a lot of poor white people ended being harnessed by political forces, particularly the Democratic Party. In return for the federal appropriations that we now dependent upon, our leaders were obligated to get out the black vote for the Democratic Party. So this put us in a negative relationship with the economic system. We were dependent upon the federal budget—a very precarious situation, because when the political winds change, we get our living cut off. Continue reading →

9-11 compensation director to give $7 mill to V-Tech victims…

Posted on by

“Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Washington lawyer who directed the federal program to compensate relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, will oversee the distribution of the $7 million that has been donated to Virginia Tech after the April campus massacre, university officials said Thursday.”

More here at the New York Times.

Well, now, this is nice ‘n all…but is 7 million serious money, taking into consideration everything? Let’s see. Our math skills are a wee bit rusty — so please correct us, if needed — but here’s what we figure:

“32 who were killed, about 30 people who were injured during the incident and an untold number of people who sustained psychological harm , ” says the Times gravely.

That would be 62 physically injured… plus, let’s say, six hundred (that’s the ‘untold’ part) for the others. 700 altogether. OK – that’s 7 million minus two zeros (pardon my antiquated methods here…)- which is 70,000. Divided by 7, that would be $10,000 apiece.

A pittance.

But, obviously we have to increase that sum for the dead and physically injured and cut it down by an equal amount for the others. Let’s say we give a $1,000 each to the psychologically damaged. That’s 600 times 1000 or $600,000 there, which is $6,400,000 for the rest. Now we get $64,000 for each physically injured victim.

Hmmm.. that’s more than many sparrows, for sure, but in the circumstances, not too much more.

Are there any other sources that might be tapped?

Says the Times, “state funds typically pay between $2,500 and $5,000.”

Not so good.

Especially when the Times also tells us that 1 million of the 7 has already been spoken for:

“Approximately $1 million of the total donations have been designated by donors toward specific uses, leaving the balance for general use, including distributions.”

Oh?

What’s ‘general use’ ? Who knows. ..more ceremonies…a fund to keep the President’s PR machine going…more pepper spray for the police….could be anything.
But, let’s be charitable and assume that it’s all meant for the victims.

So back up a bit and do that whole divvying with 6 million, not 7. Or, easier yet, just make it 500 psychologically injured and 100 physically, or 600 altogether. And we still only get about $55,000 for each physically injured person.

That’s a rough and ready calculation. But you get the picture. A lawsuit would do a whole lot better for the victims.

Oh, but unlike the 9-11 deal, the victims could still sue, says the Times.

True. But, considering how high the barriers to suing are in the state school already, I wonder if paying off the victims doesn’t just raise them just that much more.

And the point isn’t only money, is it? These parents know that nothing is going to bring back their children. But a lawsuit might make the state and the school accountable. It might prevent other parents losing their children in the same way again.

And it might tell us what really happened at V-Tech on April 16.

Familes afraid of V-Tech cover up….

Posted on by

Familes of more than a dozen of the victims of the V-Tech shooting want representation on the investigative panel to see that the university’s reponsibility for the tragedy is not covered up. Thomas Fadoul, a Vienna attorney, is trying to get it for them, but Gerald Massengil (involved in the 9-11 Pentagon hit investigation) – who heads the panel – doesn’t want the families to “control” the direction of the investigation, he says. Apparently, discussion between the sides got acrimonious last week.

Massengill is following the official line in minimizing the Virginia states’ failure by showing more interest in the privacy issue and the release of the psychiatric records. Well, that’s all very well, and we’d like to see the records too. But, are they going to have the names of the drugs Cho was taking on them? And where will that lead?

But, to my mind, accepting that the underlying issue is only the privacy law that (supposedly) kept the records out of reach of V-Tech is simply a red herring. As I wrote earlier, the school could have followed up on Cho, even with the existing laws. The privacy law is not what caused the tragedy, however much they spin it.

So nice try, Mr. Massengill, but those families better have some one representing their interests. Obviously, the rest of the V-Tech panel seems to be representing the interests of the state of Virginia. And we know what those are…

“Instead of focusing on Virginia Tech’s response to the shooting and questions such as why the campus was not closed after the initial reports of gunfire, the family members said they fear the panel is bogged down by what they consider to be extraneous issues.”

More at the Washington Post here

Sovereign Immunity and V-Tech

Posted on by

A comment on my V-Tech posts from Equitas – a human rights organization:

Eq Nunc | eqnunc@yahoo.com | eqrolc.ca/vatech.html | IP: 24.122.48.168

Good R&D LR. Take a look at this EQ Gateway and see what you can dig out of it. Pertinent links and legalogistics to wit! Perhaps some answers may be provided there too:

http://www.eqrolc.ca/vatech.html

Happy Researching!
The EQ Team.

I looked through their site and found this article from last month on FindLaw by Professor Anthony Sebok of Brooklyn Law School.

I wish I had come across it earlier, as it answers some questions I’ve had about why the shooting was being framed by the school a certain way. But it substantially agrees with what I earlier (based on a conversation with a well-known attorney, who had pressed victims’ claims in a previous school shooting case) that gross negligence would have to be the standard here.

From Sebok’s article:

“Let’s suppose Cho had, in fact, gone to counseling, and that his therapist, concerned about his threats about certain students, warned those students about the threats. To fulfill its duty to take reasonable care, would the university have to assign security officers to follow those students – or Cho himself – around? And what if the threats were more general, or to an entire class full of students? Would the university have the duty to expel Cho and remove him from campus?”And more:
“The Second Key Question: Does It Matter that Virginia Tech Is a Public University?

Let’s suppose for a moment that the wounded victims and the families of the deceased victims can, in fact, prove that Virginia Tech failed to take adequate steps to protect its students. Unfortunately, their case would still fail – for the doctrine of sovereign immunity makes it almost impossible for the plaintiffs to collect significant damages even if they can prove negligence.

Sovereign immunity literally means that the government cannot be sued for its torts, even if it acts negligently (or worse). Originating in England before the American revolution, the doctrine has been largely abandoned in the U.K. and Europe. But it is alive and well – though partially waived by both the federal government and the states — in the United States.

Virginia’s waiver of sovereign immunity is pretty typical: The Virginia Tort Claims Act, Code §§ 8.01-195.1 through -195.9, states that “the Commonwealth shall be liable for claims for money . . . on account of . . . personal injury or death caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee while acting within the scope of his employment under circumstances where the Commonwealth . . ., if a private person, would be liable to the claimant for such . . . injury or death.”

You might think that Virginia Tech could be sued under this waiver. But you would be wrong. As the Virginia Supreme Court noted in the 2004 case of Rector & Visitors of the Univ. of Va. v. Carter, only the Commonwealth of Virginia has waived its sovereign immunity, but the Commonwealth’s agencies – such as the University and its various schools — have not.

Thus, in that case, Tina Carter’s medical malpractice suit against the University of Virginia Medical School was dismissed — although she, in theory, could have then refiled the suit against the Commonwealth of Virginia, if it was not barred by the statute of limitations. That’s because the Commonwealth of Virginia can be sued for the actions of its agents under a theory of vicarious liability.

Couldn’t the Virginia Tech plaintiffs just sue the Commonwealth, then? Yes, but here is where the final indignity comes in: The same Act limits the liability of the Commonwealth to $100,000 per tort. This amount, while not insignificant, is dwarfed by the amount of damages that might be won in a wrongful death claim brought on behalf of a college student or her surviving family. (By comparison, the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, which I have discussed in earlier columns such as this one, provided a minimum of $250,000 to the victims’ families, and in the case of young people who would have looked forward to long and lucrative careers, often much more.)

The Best Potential Basis for Suit: Evidence of Gross Negligence, If It Arises

In the end, the only realistic way for the plaintiffs to receive anything like the amount of the damages they have actually suffered, is to show that Virginia Tech acted with gross negligence.

As a Virginia-based federal court held in the 1995 case of Coppage v. Mann, sovereign immunity does not protect doctors employed by the state from tort suits if they acted with gross negligence. So too, the doctrine would presumably not protect university administrators and other employees if they acted with gross negligence. Nor would it protect their employer, even if it were an agent of the state.
In sum, if an investigation reveals negligence by Virginia Tech, and it can plausibly be argued to be gross negligence, then perhaps the wounded victims and the families of the deceased will be able to recover for the damages they actually incurred. But the law – thanks to the archaic sovereign immunity doctrine – sets the bar too high. Proof of negligence, even short of gross negligence, should be enough.”

V-Tech – the psych time-line

Posted on by

At least as important as the shooting time-line – some would say more – is the psychiatric time-line that preceded the V-Tech shooting:

Wyatt v. Aderhold (Arizona 5th circuit panel decision) in 1974 and later, O’Connor v. Donaldson (Supreme Court), were regarded as having jettisoned the parens patriae basis (the state as custodian for the mentally defective) and left only the police-powers basis (the state as defendant of the community’s safety) for the state’s interest in confining the mentally ill. Both decisions came after numerous exposes and sociological studies of the conditions of state mental hospitals and treatment had led to a trend toward de-institutionalizing mental health patients. That trend became stronger with the discovery of anti-psychotic medications in the 1950s that held out the hope for outpatient treatment for many patients.
Another step in the rise of the psychotropic drug industry came with the expansion of the definition of bipolar illness (manic-depression) in the DSM-IV Manual, the official psychiatric diagnostic manual, in 1994. Now, conditions less intense but presenting similar symptoms were included as abnormal variations requiring treatment. The result was an explosion of bipolar illness in children between 1996 and 2004. While some see this as a legitimate refinement in diagnosis, others see it is a result of the new, expanded definition. Then there are those who say there just isn’t enough known to conclude definitively one way or about how much bipolar disease there really is and whether children are being under or over medicated.

Simultaneously, the FDA backed off putting stronger warnings on the psychotropic drugs:

“The FDA held a hearing in September 1990 at which its Psychotropic Drugs Advisory Committee (most of whose members got funding from antidepressant manufacturers) considered whether SSRIs can induce violent and suicidal thoughts. They voted 9-0 not to recommend a more prominent warning and 6-3 not to recommend a warning in small type that would have read, “In a small number of patients, depressive symptoms have worsened during therapy, including the emergence of suicidal thoughts and attempts. Surveillance throughout treatment is recommended.” (Fred Gardner)

Next came the marketing plan:

“It all started in the mid-90s while George W. Bush was governor. TMAP was developed by what’s referred to as an “expert consensus” made up of a group of “experts” already known to have favorable opinions of certain drugs, chosen by drug company sponsors, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Astrazeneca, Pfizer, Novartis, Janssen-Ortho-McNeil, GlaxoSmithKline, Abbott, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Wyeth-Ayerst and Forrest Laboratories.

In 1997–98, with pharma funding, a panel was assembled to determine which drugs would be used in treating children and decided that the same drugs used on adults could be used on kids. There were no studies conducted to test the safety of giving the TMAP drugs to kids and most had never been FDA approved for use by children.” (Evelyn Pringle)

 

The next step was taken when Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April 2002 to conduct a “comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system.” The commission issued its recommendations in July 2003. Bush instructed more than 25 federal agencies to develop an implementation plan based on those recommendations.

In April 2003 came the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health‘s radical recommendation is to screen the entire nation for mental illness, beginning with school children:

Schools, wrote the commission, are in a “key position” to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at the schools. The commission also recommended “Linkage [of screening] with treatment and supports” including “state-of-the-art treatments” using “specific medications for specific conditions.”
The NFC Report promoted two controversial programs the pharmaceutical industry loves : Columbia University’s TeenScreen and TMAP (Texas Medication Algorithm Project), mental health prescribing guidelines formulated under Big Pharma’s sponsorship, including Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Janssen whose products were recommended through the algorithm).

As a Mother Jones article pointed out, while previously, drug companies had sold new products to doctors through ads and articles in journals or directly through television and magazine advertising, from the mid-1990s, they began to go through a handful of state officials who govern prescribing for large public systems like state mental hospitals, prisons, and government-funded clinics.

Furthermore, the focus moved away from anti-depressants – a very broad market – to the smaller but much more lucrative (since they cost about ten times as much) anti-psychotic drugs.

Meanwhile, in a glaring conflict of interest, NFC chairman, Dr. Michael Hogan, served on the advisory committee of Janssen Pharmaceutical, and serves on the advisory council of TeenScreen, the program singled out to promote in the NFL Report.

But research was mounting that SSRIs, especially, were a significant danger –

“Lilly and the other antidepressant manufacturers made more finite, begrudging concessions in the years ahead as evidence linking SSRIs to suicide kept mounting. A turning point came in April 2004, when the British Medical Journal reported that GlaxoSmithKline had concealed data showing that Paxil more than quadrupled suicidal ideation among teenagers. A few months later the FDA acknowledged a study showing that SSRI use induced suicidal thoughts in two out of 100 adolescents and ordered a black box warning. Prozac sales dipped as a result and Lilly et al commissioned the study that JAMA published April 18, showing that SSRI use induces suicidal ideation in only one in 100. Suicidal ideation,” “Suicide gesture,” “Suicide attempt,” and other such terms do not accurately characterize the extremely bizarre flip-outs induced by SSRIs. Carefully planning to annihilate the student body fits the profile. Biting your mother 57 times. Driving your car around in circles until you smash into a tree…”

More by Fred Gardner here at “Prozac Madness.” and at “Fuel for a Killer.”

The dangers were exacerbated by the rates at which psychotropic drugs were being recommended:

“That same issue of JAMA, April 18 [2004], contained a study showing that for-profit dialysis chains give patients much higher doses of Epogen than non-profit clinics. Epogen, made by Amgen Inc., is a synthetic version of a hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells. During dialysis it is added to the blood as toxins are removed.

The for-profit dialysis chains get a quarter of their income from the sale of Epogen -plus rebates from Amgen based on how much product they move. Investigators from the Medical Technology and Practice Patterns Institute looked at 134,000 patients treated in 2004.

Some patients at for-profit clinics were found to be getting three times more Epogen than their counterparts at non-profits. “It’s clear there is a profit incentive,” says co-author Dennis Cotter.” (NOTE BELOW**) Industry payments to Minnesota psychiatrists rose 6 fold from 2000-2005 while antipsychotics prescribed to children in the state medicaid program rose 9fold. The story focuses on Minnesota because it is the one state that requires disclosure of industry payments to psychiatrists.


The NY Times story went on: Psychiatrists who received $5000 or more from manufacturers of atypical antipsychotics on average wrote three times as many prescriptions for those drugs in children as those who received under that amount.

—Psychiatrists received a median of $1750 each from industry from 2000 to 2005, more than any other medical specialty in Minnesota.

—The cost to the state of antipsychotic drugs used in children increased 14-fold from 2000 to 2005, from $521,000 to $7.1 million.

The Times quotes Steven Hyman, former director of NIMH: “There’s an irony that psychiatrists ask patients to have insights into themselves, but we don’t connect the wires in our own lives about how money is affecting our profession and putting our patients at risk.”

The drug industry pushed to expand its market despite strong expert dissent:

Here is Dr. Stefan Kruszewski’s criticism of TeenScreen made in an interview with the British Medical Journal:

“We can manufacture enough diagnostic labels of normal variability of mood and thought that we can continually supply medication to you. The shameful part is that there’s enough mental illness that requires careful and judicious treatment that we don’t need to find variants of normal. But when it comes to manufacturing disease, nobody does it like psychiatry.”

And about TMAP, another expert, Dr. Grace Jackson, writes,

“the algorithms have arisen from ‘Evidence Based Medicine’—a statistically based approach to studying treatment effects in populations, rather than a reality based approach to discerning treatment effectiveness in each unique individual.”

In brief, TeenScreen amounts to a dangerous intervention in the lives of 50 million children and about 6 million adults in the schools.

That is the background against which one should look at the move to expand Virginia’s mental health laws that was already in the works in October 2006.

Its goal was to “modify the criteria for placing people in emergency care by eliminating a requirement that they pose an ‘imminent’ danger to themselves or others,” precisely what is now being demanded — as a result of the V-Tech shootings

Take, for instance, the case of 13 year old Aliah Gleason, one of 19, 404 Texas teens who underwent involuntary mental health treatement in a state funded program in July-August 2004.

Falsely labeled suicidal, she was given 12 drugs including 4 SSRI’s (Zoloft, Celexa, Lexapro and Desyrel) 3 anti-psychotics (Geodon, Abilify, and Haldol) 2 anti-convulsants (Trileptal and Depakote), anti-anxiety (Ativan), anti-Parkinson’s (Cogentin). When discharged she was on 5 of them to which Risperdal was added.
In early 2005, the FDA issued a warning that antidepressants can cause both suicide and violence and mandated a black-box warning – the most serious – about side effects from panic attacks to hostility, impulsivity and mania. Further, abrupt withdrawal from antidepressants can produce suicide, aggression or psychosis.

But, with what’s at stake financially, the drug companies continue to look for ways to expand their markets.

Eli Lilly paid out $1.2 billion to 28,000 people who claimed injury by the drug Zyprexa in the ten years ( NYT, Jan. 5), but it made $4.2 billion in just one year selling the drug, taken by 20 million people world over since it was introduced in 1996. (statistics from Alliance for Human Research Protection).

That, perhaps, is the rationale for such events as the “colloquium” for national science and healthcare journalists –“Children and Mental Illness”– held at the Columbia University School of Journalism and sponsored by The Columbia University Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Carmel Hill Family Foundation which runs TeenScreen, which attracted plenty of media attention and was funded by Janssen Pharmaceutical Products, LP and McNeilConsumer and Specialty Pharmaceuticals.

In May 2007, the Texas Attorney General joined a whistleblower suit filed in 2004 against Pharma giant Johnson and Johnson that charged it with improprieties in marketing its psychotropic drug Rispertal as part of the TMAP program.

NOTE:

As this petition against TeenScreen points out, there are also broader socio-political implications for the program

“Whereas antipsychotic drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for children; the FDA’s “black box warning” states antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders; and drug safety experts have recommended additional “black box” warnings be placed on ADHD drugs: for the increased risk of stroke and heart attack;

Whereas potential recruits are ineligible for military service if they have taken Ritalin and other stimulants to treat the unscientific “disorder” called ADHD in the previous year;

Whereas most states have laws restricting the purchase of firearms based on an adjudication of mental illnesses or disorders, and mass screening of all American children for mental disorders will increase the number of persons labeled with a mental disorder, directly infringing upon the citizenry’s right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the 2nd amendment;

“Whereas TeenScreen only partners with and seeks to immediately refer students to “mental illness” practitioners and does not refer students to medical disciplines that could test for underlying health problems such as allergies, nutrition, toxicities and physical illnesses;

Whereas child suicides are very rare and have been on a decline for years; and even according to former TeenScreen director Rob Caruano, “suicides are so rare that you’d have to screen the whole country to see a difference in mortality between screened and unscreened students………”

Ron Paul again

On May 18, U.S. House Rep. Ron Paul introduced a federal legislative bill – H.R.2387 – http://thomas.loc.gov ( “Paul, Ron” under “Browse Bills by Sponsor”).

The title is: “To prohibit the use of Federal funds for any universal mandatory mental health screening program”.

On May 23, a bill granting the FDA powers to monitor drug safety was pared back during private meetings. And efforts to curb conflicts of interest among FDA advisers and allow consumers to buy cheaper drugs
from other countries were defeated in close votes.

* A measure that blocked an effort to allow drug importation passed, 49-40. The 49 senators who voted against drug importation received about 5 million from industry executives and political action committees
since 2001 – nearly three quarters of the industry donations to current members of the Senate, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data compiled by two non-partisan groups, Center for Responsive Politics and
PoliticalMoneyLine.

* Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said he demanded removal of language that would have allowed the FDA to ban advertising of high-risk drugs for two years because it would restrict free speech. Roberts has raised $18,000 from drug interests so far this year, records show, and $66,000 since 2001. His spokeswoman, Sarah Little, said he “takes great pains to keep fundraising and official actions separate.”

**Note : I wonder if it is simply the ‘for-profit’ motive on its own that is the cause. Without the state, would we have the incentives of third-party pay, for instance, which distort markets forces? I think not. A genuinely competitive market would also do away with unfair monopoly-like conditions preventing the entry of lower-cost and alternative providers — which would help correct the problem. For the same reason, although I personally think the ideal should be private regulatory bodies in a free market, the immense lobbying power of pharmaceutical companies at this point means that what few regulatory restraints remain cannot be abandoned but must be shored up.

What is undisputed, however, is the need to slowly bleed the Federal government of money, power and influence and return power and autonomy to local and state bodies as far as possible.

V-Tech Panel ready to go to court for Cho psych records

Posted on by

AP had this report, May 23, on the panel’s readiness to go to court to get V-Tech’s Cook Counseling Center to cough up V-Tech shooter Cho Seung Hui’s counseling records, now apparently shielded by Federal privacy laws:

“We’re going to get what we need, one way or the other,” Massengill said. If that fails, “we’ll have to go to the courts.”

University officials say federal privacy laws bar them from sharing the records.

Cho killed 32 people in two campus buildings before committing suicide in a classroom on April 16.

A year and a half earlier, he had been found “mentally ill and in need of hospitalization,” according to court papers. A judge ordered him into involuntary outpatient treatment, but there is no indication that he complied.

University counsel Kay Heidbreder said the laws, even for someone who is deceased, mean the records cannot be shared even among departments at the university.

As it is constituted, the panel cannot issue subpoenas to compel testimony and obtain documents. Delacey Skinner — a spokeswoman for Gov. Timothy Kaine, who convened the panel — said the governor has assured members the attorney general will help them get information.”

My Comment:
So, it’s federal laws which have actually kept this thing under wraps in the first place. Another instance where federalization has been a negative. Yet, people want more and more of it. If that is not an instance of pure brainwashing, I don’t know what is. It’s obvious that the problem is the federal government. The answer to the problem, by definition, cannot be more federal government.

And meanwhile, the press kept everyone distracted with chatter about gun control. Not a word yet about the medication supposedly found or at least observed by room-mates. Nothing about the toxicology report (yes, what about that?)

A piece on a site called Alliance for Human Research asks the same questions. It cites Dr. Anna Blake Tracy, author and  executive director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness, who finds high-profile shootings almost invariably tied up with antidepressants and cites numbers of incidents in support:

“Other famous cases include the 1998 deaths of actor Phil Hartman and his wife, a murder/suicide committed by her (Zoloft); the 1999 home and office killing spree by Atlanta day trader Mark Barton (Prozac); the 1998 shooting deaths of four co-workers by Connecticut lottery accountant Matthew Beck, who then killed himself (Luvox); and the 1994 New York City subway bombing by Edward Leary, which injured 48 (Prozac).”

She goes on,

“Most people don’t know LSD once was prescribed as a wonder drug. Most people don’t know that PCP was considered to have a large margin of safety in humans. Most people don’t know ecstasy was prescribed and sold for five years to treat depression. Few know that history of drugs, and I think that’s our biggest problem. We’re just not educated enough to have concerns.”

She notes hundreds of similar cases.

But I found one particular incident especially interesting from the point of view of the Cho shooting:

“In February 2004 in Polk Township, Pa., Samantha Hirt, hours after taking a pill for manic depression, set fire in a bedroom where her two toddlers were playing, closed the door and sat on a sofa watching television while the fire spread, killing both children. Effexor.”

Remember that arson case on Cho’s record that didn’t make it into a police file? Why ever not? Did some drug company think it wouldn’t be good PR for their product?

More in my next post.

V- Tech Stonewalling on Cho counseling

Posted on by

Even the V-Tech review panel is getting miffed with the ongoing stonewall from Virginia Tech, according to ABC, May 21:

“When members of the Review Panel asked University counsel Kay Heidbreder if Cho had received on-campus treatment or follow-up, she said she did not know. She added that the information was protected under state privacy laws, even after Cho’s death.

Virginia Tech President Charles Steger admitted that the university should have a better answer on the question of whether Cho underwent treatment.

“Just saying we don’t know is not good enough. But we obviously need to follow the law,” Steger told the panel.

Members of the panel expressed frustration at being denied information on Cho’s treatment and follow-up.”

My Comment:

I am going to make a wild guess at what I think this means. As anyone reading this blog knows, I’ve been following this case as closely as possible, since it broke 35 days ago.

In an earlier post, I speculated that the formative event/treatment that drove Cho crazy happened in 2005-06. Not hard to guess. He was a shy guy and didn’t speak much, and he may have been prone to anger. But he didn’t snap until that year.

It’s beginning to look like V-Tech’s Cook Counseling Center is indeed the place he was ordered to go. And if the unversity’s refusal to release his records is any indication, he did go.

Let me take a risk and say I think he was prescribed drugs somewhere along the line, maybe an SSRI – that he began taking regularly (the pills his room-mates saw).

And that’s when the real trouble may have begun.

I don’t know what else might have happened.

Whether he had some sexual experience, like his relatively benign one with the escort he hired…or something that left him more humiliated.

I don’t know who his counselor was. Or whether some therapy session might not have either revealed that he had been abused or had led him, erroneously, to believe he had been abused in the way he suddenly began describing in his plays written in 2006 fall.

Who is the counselor who handled him at Cook? What sorts of pills are prescribed there routinely? Is there a pharmacy which might have records of prescriptions they could hunt up?

Can we have a closer look at the contents of the room that the search warrant disclosed?

Or, more information from his room mates about those pills?

The panel needs to be asking those questions.

And that’ s besides the questions it needs to be asking about that shaky time line.

An online comment on the ABC story follows the same line of thought I had:

“Bullets are the ultimate invasion of privacy. Anyone thinking Virginia Tech is acting out of concern for Cho’s privacy is sadly deluded. The only conclusion to be drawn from this secrecy is that Virginia Tech receives grants, scholarships or other funding from drug companies. Someone “made a phone call” to Virginia Tech administration to hush this up. And the administration withered. — America’s next bloody campus massacre may well trace back to the same psychiatric drugs that deleted Cho’s emotions and left him a robotic killing machine. Withholding facts that might correlate 33 deaths and hundreds of ruined family-members’ lives to prescription medicines cheats the medical community, researchers, patients and parents. — Is Virginia Tech only pretending to be an engineering and scientific institution? Hard science has ethical duties to publish truth, no matter whom it chafes. This institution’s secrecy casts shadows on all its research or academic work. Which studies were influenced by a phone call from a big donor? — Harvard divinity School gained international credibility by returning $2.5 million from the anti-Semitic United Arabs president. Yet Virginia Tech won’t open a file folder to do its scientific and humane duty.”
More news from a reader about V-Tech and some shady dealing there that might..or might not..have anything to do with this story. But, I want to check it out a bit. Stay tuned….and by the way, I do revisit posts to add material and links. I’ll let you know by changing the dates on the post.

I need to organize the V-Tech material so that the major posts show up as widgets – I’m just not that blog-savvy yet. Maybe, some one reading this labor of love can give me a little ‘puter advice as a reward??

Readers write in about that shaky V Tech timeline…

Posted on by 
I received a lot of support on the V Tech article, for eg. :
Lila,

RE: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/rajiva3.html

Thank you for a thoroughly informative article about the government's many
failures in the VT shootings.

I thought you might want to know that there are some published timelines that
indicate that the police dallied for over twenty minutes (maybe even close to
30), rather than 5, 9, or 11.

Here's one link I found, with others in the discussion below, that suggest
different timelines than what the major media have been reporting:

        http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04212007.html

-- NAME DELETED

>Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:38:34 -0400
>To: NAME DELETED
>Subject: Fwd: Re: Crazed Maniacal Asian Killer
>
>
>By the way, the Times Dispatch said in a timeline they published on Sunday that
the first call actually came in at 9:21 or something.  The cops were on the
scene in two minutes (it was a brief run across the field where a hundred or so
already were at the double murder).
>
>The VT site still clouds the time they got the first call from the 2nd
building; it still says 9:45, as have several other news outlets.  I think they
know they screwed up, and they are trying to fudge the numbers in the hopes no
one notices.
>
>-- NAME DELETED


>
>>Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2007 10:17:48 -0400
>>To: NAME DELETED


From: NAME DELETED


>>Subject: Re: Crazed Maniacal Asian Killer
>>
>>
>>>>>I should have saved the links, but I didn't.  There were several articles that
said there was a 21 minute or 27 minute delay before they entered.  I do
remember one of the columnists on LewRockwell.com mentioned it.  It's eventually
going to appear -- buried -- in police reports, but by then the debate will have
shifted to gun control, and the entry delay will be off the radar like it was in
Columbine.
>>
>>I've seen it in several of the news reports.  One person can be heard saying
"why aren't they going in?" while he's capturing the video, and gunshots can be
clearly heard.  It was pretty obvious the cops were clueless, several can be
clearly seen walking around in the video, looking like they don't know where to
go or what to do.
>>
>>It may also be a lot worse than a twenty-minute delay before they went in.
Something is really fishy.
>>
>> From what NBC reports:
>>
>>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18138327/
>>
>>... the second assault actually started at 9:15 am.  I presume that's when he
put the chains on the doors, and then worked his way upstairs.  According to
witnesses, the shootings began at 9:20 am.
>>
>>Yet the police say they didn't get the first call until 9:45 am.  I consider
that really friggin unlikely, given that everyone and his brother now has a
cellphone, and since there are hardwired phones in every classroom.
>>
>>http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/timeline.php
>>
>>I'm tempted to do a FOIA request for the 911 logs.
>>
>>There's probably a bunch of people who still have their cellphone logs of
their 911 calls; but I bet the cops don't release the records they get from the
cellphone companies.
>>
>>The killer apparently shot himself at about 9:50.  Something's really wrong
when a shooter can do his work for 30 minutes without a response.
>>
>>Here's a couple more timelines:
>>
>>http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/17/timeline.text/index.html
>>
>>http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_9889.aspx
>>
>>The VT timeline says the cops took less than a minute to go in once they got
the calls at 9:45.  That may or may not be true (notice at the bottom of their
page says "Editor's Note: All times are approximate."); and that by the time
they got upstairs at 9:50, it was already over.
>>
>>The government had so many opportunities to prevent this guy from doing what
he did, and they missed every time.  Just like 9/11.
>>
>>You know, I wondered at first that this guy was railing against class and so
would have shot what looked to him like the white middle class wealthy people,
but he didn't.  It was entirely indiscriminate:
>>
>>http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/20070418_VICTIMS_GRAPHIC.html
>>
>>Lost in the gun controllers hot air is the fact that politicians railing
against gun control are all surrounded by teams of well-armed footsoldiers.  See
the article I added on, below.
>>
>>NAME DELETED


>>
>>
>>
>>At 11:20 PM 4/21/2007 -0500, you wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>I have been ignoring all the crap from the media looking to find
>>>negligence on the part of the University or the police.
>>>
>>>I was very alarmed today when you said that the police waited outside of
Norris Hall for 20 minutes AFTER shots had been fired.
>>>
>>>What is the source of this information?
>>>
>>>Thank you,
>>>
>>>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Tuesday, April 17th 2007 6:22PM
>>Campus security stirs feelings of safety
>>Michelle Rivera, CT News Reporter
>>
>>Today, whether for the security for the presence of high officials or to add a
reassuring presence to a community left in a state of shock, there is an
increase in security around campus. With President Bush and other high officials
present for the convocation at 2p.m. , there was a swarm of state troopers and
other security officers around Cassell Coliseum and Lane Stadium.
>>
>>"I actually just came to campus for the convocation," said Paige Barlow,
graduate student for the Department of Fisheries. "I saw tons of officers all
over Cassell and Lane." As she walked near the Squires Student Center to get a
late lunch, she felt safe. "We're all still a little shook up, but it's nice to
know that the issue is being dealt with," she said.
>>
>>Others agreed that the presence of high officials was at least one reason for
the heightened security.
>>
>>"I think there are so many officers on campus today one, because the president
is here and two, because of the scare of yesterday's events happening again,"
said De Monh, sophomore business major. "I don't think there are too many
officers here today."
>>
>>Virginia State Troopers are present on campus streets, outside of various
buildings, and near walkways across campus.
>>
>>"I believe it was partly for the (security of) high officials, but also for a
sense of security for the students," said Debbie Wilkins, Hokie parent of two.
>>
>>Though many felt that the purpose of security was for the protection of high
officials, others felt it was for a sense of safety for all those on campus.
>>
>>Sarah Sparks, senior theater major, was walking along Kent Street beside the
drillfield and passed a congregation of state troopers. "I think it's a great
idea that there are so many policemen on campus," Sparks said. "It makes us all
feel a lot safer, and having the visual of so much security adds to our feelings
of safety."
>>
>>Though the heightened security had the positive effect of helping students
feel secure, it also made it difficult to travel around campus. "Security made
it hard to get onto the grounds to get our child," said Wilkins. She however
stuck to her opinion that security was a positive measure. "A lot of the kids
still feel scared and insecure, and with security here, at least they know that
today nothing will happen," she said.
>>
>>-- end --


My Comment


I agree that the shooting probably took half an hour.


I was just being ultra cautious in my article.


Meanwhile, I'd like to enlist support for a FOIA request.


Any takers?









			

	
	



				
					


		

		
V-Tech Whitewash: Review Panel Finds University Response Very Effective and Very Successful


				

			Posted on   by  		

			


		

		
Telling It Like It Isn’t: 


V-Tech Review Panel Finds University Response Very Effective and Very Successful


“I think we know enough about the response to know it was very effective and a very successful response,” said retired state police superintendent W. Gerald Massengill, the chairman of the review panel appointed to investigate the Virginia Tech shootings. That was in a May 11 article in the Washington Post called “Va Tech Panel Outlines Agenda.”


Agenda is about right. How does 33 dead over a two and half spree on a campus crawling with cops count as “very effective” and “very successful”?


About the same way as V Tech is now apparently about “breaking down bureaucratic barriers among the courts, the school and the state as it relates to mental health information.”


More federal undermining of privacy laws, in fact. Just what we need from an administration already up to its intrusive eyes in domestic surveillance.


Massengill, by the way, is the man who led the Virginia State Police in the 9-11 attack on the Pentagon and the other panel members are Tom Ridge, the first U.S. secretary of homeland security, a top policy maker in state higher education, an administrator of the FBI’s center for the analysis of violent crime and two medical experts.


According to Massengill, the police gave him a timeline that “helped convince him that they responded as quickly as they could after the two people had been shot in West Ambler Johnston Hall.”


Since it’s the lynch-pin of the panel’s bizarre conclusion, that time line warrants more examination than the media has been giving it.


The timeline first entered the public debate on April 26, 2007 in this AP report: “5 Minute Delay Crucial in Tech Shooting.”


The article reported what is now regarded as the official version of the killings at Virginia Tech on 4/16:


Cho got to Ambler Johnston Hall a bit before 7 am; he killed his first 2 victims with a Glock 9 mm (a fairly ordinary handgun) with two rounds; his second bout of killing (30 people) was at Norris Hall and it took 9 minutes. Police supposedly took 3 minutes to get to Norris and 5 minutes to get into the building, where several entrances had been chained shut from inside.


Witness accounts are often contradictory and/or mistaken and a crisis, in recollection, can seem to have taken much longer than it actually did, but still, think about what’s supposed to have happened in 9 minutes:


Cho walked up and down the halls (2, 3 minutes, at least); he poked his head into a few classrooms a couple of times and left without doing anything; he fired steadily but with pauses in between, methodically breaking through doors that had been barricaded (that should have taken a minute at least), shot, left and returned to at least two classrooms (another minute or so each); stood over and shot students and fired individually at each (a minute?) in at least two classrooms. Although the students were trapped inside, they were barricading doors, running away, throwing themselves over each other, or jumping through windows, so they were moving targets that required him to aim and move too. And reload.


And then he shot himself. His last victim, wounded and on the floor, said he watched the gunman’s legs move to the front of the classroom, then heard a pause, then shots. No one actually saw the suicide, so what happened must remain somewhat tentative.


Why Nine Minutes


If Cho fired 170 rounds (or 255 – in at least one account) in Norris Hall, as reported, he fired almost 18 rounds per minute or a round roughly every 3 seconds. I’m not a marksman, so I don’t know if that’s likely or not. If you also take into account that he was reloading and pausing, he must have been firing an even higher number of rounds per minute than that most of the time. And, if we go by the multiple wounds in each body (3-4), he must have made about 120-130 hits (out of 170 rounds) in 9 minutes. So far as we know, he was an amateur with at most a few weeks of practice. I am not sure if that scenario is plausible or not. And again, I’m not trying to refute the timeline so much as evaluating it. But I do wonder how officials can be so sure of it. And why.


This was a time line posted on Wiki (it’s since been deleted, but you can find it, with the original footnotes, on my blog, which has collected material relevant to the case):


* 9:42 a.m.: Students in the engineering building, Norris Hall, make a 9-1-1 emergency call to alert police that more shots have been fired.

*9:45 a.m.: Police arrived three minutes later and found that Cho had chained all three entrances shut.

* Between 9:30 and 9:50 am: Using the .22 caliber Walther P22 and 9 millimeter Glock 19 handgun with 17 magazines of ammunition, Cho shoots 60 people, killing 30 of them. Cho’s rampage lasts for approximately nine minutes. A student in Room 205 noticed the time remaining in class shortly before the start of the shootings.

* Around 9:40 a.m.: Students in Norris 205, while attending Haiyan Cheng’s issues in scientific computing class, hear Cho’s gunshots. The students, including Zach Petkewicz, barricade the door and prevent Cho’s entry.

* 9:50 a.m.: After arriving at Norris Hall, police took 5 minutes to assemble the proper team, clear the area and then break through the doors. They use a shotgun to break through the chained entry doors. Investigators believe that the shotgun blast alerted the gunman to the arrival of the police. The police hear gunshots as they enter the building. They follow the sounds to the second floor.

* 9:51 a.m.: As the police reached the second floor, the gunshots stopped. Cho’s shooting spree in Norris Hall lasted 9 minutes. Police officers discovered that after his second round of shooting the occupants of room 211 Norris, the gunman fatally shot himself in the temple.


From this Wiki account (which is quite conservative and can be verified from other published time-lines), the shooting really could have taken place any time between at least 9:30 and 9:50 – a space of 20, not 9 minutes.


But even on its own terms, the official timeline seems a little odd. If students heard gun shots (which could only have been at the very latest at 9:40), and if police reached the second floor at 9:51, that still makes 11 minutes, not 9.


Why, you might ask, am I quibbling about a few minutes? After all, no one could really have been sure of anything in all the confusion. True. But that’s all the more reason why insisting on those 9 minutes seems peculiar. Especially since we also have at least one account that the police got there much later than in the official story. Confusion again? What about the video footage of the scene and  reports indicating police hiding around the building? Or reports they came out of nowhere (BBC, April 17). That doesn’t square with the official story saying they rushed straight from that 9-1-1 call to Norris. More confusion? Possibly. But each additional contradiction becomes that much less plausible as simple error.


But the insistence on 9 minutes does make sense if you think about the bigger picture.

If the gunman only took 9 minutes, then the onus on the police to explain their behavior becomes much less. It’s then no longer a question of what they were doing for the half hour or so in which Cho was rampaging through Norris Hall (not to mention the two hours before) but only what made them delay after they got to Norris at 9:45 (3 minutes after the call).


And that’s simple – the doors were chained shut. Ergo, they had to wait 5 minutes while – by this reckoning – Cho finished off his 9 minute spree.


That this is the significance of having a 9 minute time-line is pretty clear, since the police officers quoted in the article direct their criticism specifically at the 5 minute delay. The critics say it was those few minutes that most significantly increased the number of victims. Meanwhile, for some reason, they’re silent about what the police were doing for the two hours before.


Bringing in the Military


Then, tacked on to the criticism of the 5 minute delay is a discussion (for the first time in the media) of what is known as the ‘active shooter’ paradigm in police operations. The critics say the 5 minute delay wouldn’t have happened if V-Tech had been treated from the start as an ‘active shooter’ situation.


What is an ‘active shooter’ situation? It’s a sniper or shooter crisis where swifter and more aggressive police tactics are required because the perp is careless about his own life and therefore more likely to take as many down with him as he can. Those aggressive tactics, called, ‘Immediate Action Rapid Deployment,’ were developed in the nineties, but really came into prominence only after the Columbine school shootings in 1999. But they still aren’t operational everywhere, supposedly because of lack of funds and training.


But notice that ‘active shooter’ is being referenced in the 4/26 article only in terms of the 5-minute delay. Why? Maybe because it’s a strategy with several advantages:


1.  It lets the police take some blame, but not so much that the massacre looks like a case

 of negligence. That’s a move that makes it possible to take the focus off police failureand put it on policy changes requiring more laws, more force, and ultimately more

federalization.


2. It dampens public outrage at the individuals who really are culpable. A 5 minute delay isn’t going to work anyone up the way a 2 hour delay would.


3. It lets officials introduce the ‘Immediate Action Rapid Deployment’ (IARD) paradigm into campus policing without undercutting the decisions taken by the administration or the police.


Now, IARD is a distinct step in the militarization of police response and is very much a part of the trend to systematically erase the boundaries between wartime military actions and domestic policing. Domestic crises are more and more described and tackled in military terms, just as foreign military actions are being palmed off as policing operations.


Which is why the article goes on, ”This is a seminal moment for law enforcement as far as I’m concerned because it proves that minutes are critical”


Yes – it’s seminal. V-Tech is going to help put military responses squarely on campus.


What I’m suggesting is that the more officials can take the blame off V-Tech, the more they can push for additional federal policies and laws.


So, if my thesis holds good, officials should also be taking that 2 hour gap between Ambler Johnston and Norris off the table as fast as possible, because that’s where the administration’s culpability is most obvious. Are they?


Indeed they are. One of the first things the V-Tech review panel appointed by former Governor Kaine has done is to state flatly that shutting down the campus couldn’t possibly have done any good because the shooter could always have gone back into his dorm and shot the 900 or so people who lived there. I quote,


“On Thursday, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said that the massacre may not have been averted if the Virginia Tech campus had been locked down after the two shooting deaths at the dorm. ”Well, if the campus had been locked down — because the shooter lived on campus — I mean he could have gone into his dorm with 900 people instead of going into a classroom (and) he could have shot people there,” Kaine said in his monthly listener-question program on WRVA-AM and the Virginia News Network.”


Well, surely this is a straw-man. Locking down the campus was not the only option. V-Tech could also have made an announcement on its PA system for students to lock themselves into their rooms or stay off campus. A siren could have gone off to alert people, instead of an email notice. Police could have been rushed in to guard buildings (they should have been doing that anyway, since there had been a couple of bomb threats in the weeks preceding). How did they manage to shut down the campus so efficiently in August 2006, when survivalist and killer, William Morva, was on the loose?


Kaine’s tendentious announcement also overlooks another bunch of really serious failures on the part of V-Tech. How was it that on a campus where the student population had been disarmed by policy, there were no monitoring cameras nor armed security guards near the dorms who could have stopped the shooter in the first place? Even measly little schools have them; why not this lush, plush campus with its own golf course, power station and airport and what the BBC calls “meticulously manicured” lawns?


How could V- Tech promise its students that the campus was gun-free, if they had no metal detectors or security checks to ensure it? How did Cho leave campus to post his video and re-enter loaded with ammo and guns and not set some detector or alarm off? How could he have even entered a dorm without a security card in the first place? And why were students entering and leaving Ambler Johnston until 10 AM (according to student reports) after the shooting at 7:15?


Is none of that worth noting? Would a little vigilance in any of those things not have helped at all? Does it really just boil down to those 5 minutes?.


Or is the media trying to frame what’s at stake? Seems like it, especially if we look at what else’s is going on.


Framing A Story


Quite early on, Time magazine had an opinion piece (“Va. Tech’s President Should Resign,” John Cloud, 4/19), which – with little serious argument – explicitly directed the public’s attention away from the delay between the two shootings and toward the danger signals Cho was sending up for two year before the shootings.


Now, those two years are problematic too. But the useful thing about focusing on the two years is that the failure to follow up on Cho’s problematic behavior – unlike the two hour delay – can always be blamed on policies.


And in fact, people are doing just that. Inevitably they’ll reach the conclusion that, mirabile dictu, none of it was V-Tech’s fault at all, either. It was the fault of laws, policies, programs, etc. etc…


Notice this report on 4/25 on MSNBC, for instance. It describes students standing firmly behind the V-Tech president and administration. It makes a striking contrast with earlier reports in which students repeatedly and loudly criticized the administration.


Looks a lot as if this show of student confidence developed later. But who’s pushing for the vote of confidence for the people at the top? Let’s see.


Quote: “Johnson plans to present the university Board of Visitors on Thursday with an online petition with thousands of signatures of support for Steger and Flinchum. Steger also received an endorsement from the governor.


”Charlie has been acting as a very, very good president,” Gov. Tim Kaine said. ”This kind of event could happen anywhere on any campus, and there has been an innocence taken away from the students. But the positive values, and academic tradition of this university will help the community stay strong, and keep this university attracting students.” End quote.


I’ve written about this kind of media framing before. First, the media sensationalizes. This is the pulp drama of personal narratives, human interest stories, emotion, drama, color, personalities… Then, when we get to the heart of the matter, the focus quickly shies away to broad questions of law and policy. No one’s ever at fault now. It’s always a failure to communicate, bad laws, not enough funding – anything that lets the bosses off the hook.


That was the MO of the media during the torture debate. Questions about what actually happened were quickly framed out and the debate focused on creating better policies rather than on punishing the people who created the bad ones. It was ultimately only the alternative press which pushed the debate back to where it belonged.


Likewise, at V-Tech, the mainstream public debate has been relentlessly about more federal laws of all kinds – more gun control…. or federalizing the mental health data base… or militarizing security…or imposing speech codes.


Which fits in perfectly with where this government wants to go, as a recent piece by James Bovard, “Working for the Clampdown,” in The American Conservative Magazine (April 27, 2007), indicates. Bovard describes how the Defense Authorization Act of September 30, 2006 makes it easy for the president to impose martial law in the event of what he calls public disorder — which might just be something like an antiwar protest on campus. (Not for nothing was it the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee that held a hearing on college campus security on 4/23 and on 4/26).


Meanwhile Congressman Ron Paul’s Texas newsletter, “Straight Talk,” describes the dangers of an impending and unconstitutional ‘hate crimes’ bill (HR 1592) that has every potential to create a category of “thought crimes.”


With that in mind, you begin to see that despite the overwhelming focus on them, V- Tech is fundamentally not about these things:


It’s Not About More Gun Laws:


The gun control argument runs — Were guns not growing on Virginian trees, this would never have happened, ergo – we need new laws. No guns for nut jobs.


But the trouble with this line of reasoning is that Virginia Tech is already a gun-free zone. Theoretically at least. The university beat back an attempt (in just 2006) by the state of Virginia to allow student to carry concealed weapons on campus. And, Virginia’s gun laws already do prohibit deranged people from purchasing firearms. When Cho bought his two handguns, he was already committing a felony.


It’s Not About More Mental Health Reporting


OK, you ask, then how come Cho’s record of derangement didn’t stop him from buying two guns?


Well, that’s because he had no record. Forget the Feds. He didn’t have one with the state. No one gave him one.


But doesn’t that make the case for more laws regulating the mentally deranged? Not really. The real problem was that the laws already in place weren’t followed.


First, let’s be precise here – no psychiatrist ever saw Cho. A licensed social worker recommended sending him to a treatment facility (and got a special judge to do it) and then a PhD psychologist reckoned he was a threat only to himself (and had the same special judge release him) – all in about 24 hours flat. Some evaluation. It was not only shoddy on its face but in flat violation of state law, which requires an MD to do the job. (“Cho Seung Hui’s Commitment Papers,” Bonnie Goldstein, Slate, April 24, 2007). That’s strike two just there.


And now, strike three. Although Cho was ordered to undergo outpatient treatment, it turns out that no one kept track of whether he did or didn’t. Or kept records of any kind, apparently, all of which is a violation of existing state law.


More details have emerged about what happened at the three state institutions through which Cho passed (“Cho Didn’t Get Court-Ordered Treatment,” Brigid Schulte and Chris L. Jenkins, Washington Post, May 7, 2007).


These were V. Tech’s Cook Counseling Center, Blacksburg’s New River Valley community services board, and nearby Christiansburg’s Carilion St. Alban’s Clinic, which is where Cho ended up staying overnight. Each now says it had no reason, jurisdiction, or wherewithal to follow up. They all saw no evil, heard no evil….. and did nothing at all.


Says Mike Wade, the Blacksburg board’s community liaison, “Since we weren’t named the provider of that outpatient treatment, we weren’t involved in the case.”


Says Terry Teel, Cho’s court appointed lawyer, of the court’s role in overseeing the treatment, “We have no authority.”


Says Christopher Flynn, director of V-Tech’s Cook Counseling center, “I’ve never seen someone delivered to me with an order that says, ‘This person has been discharged; he’s now your responsibility.’ That doesn’t happen.”


Really? What’s on paper contradicts all of them.


Re Virginia Tech. Here are VA state guidelines with which state universities have to comply (Act H 3064 approved by the Governor on March 21, 2007, not even a month before V Tech):


“The governing boards of each public institution of higher education shall develop and implement policies that advise students, faculty, and staff, including residence hall staff, of the proper procedures for identifying and addressing the needs of students exhibiting suicidal tendencies or behavior…….. Nothing in this section shall preclude any public institution of higher education from establishing policies and procedures for appropriately dealing with students who are a danger to themselves, or to others, and whose behavior is disruptive to the academic community.”


Re New River: Virginia state law says that community service boards “shall recommend a specific course of treatment and programs” for people such as Cho who are ordered to receive outpatient treatment. The law also says these boards “shall monitor the person’s compliance.” [Wade claims that’s “news to him.”]


Re St. Alban’s, Virginia law says that if a dangerously mentally ill person ordered into treatment doesn’t go, he can be brought back before the special judge, and if necessary, in a crisis, be committed to a psychiatric institution for up to 6 months.


Let’s put it this way: If Virginia state guidelines for universities had been followed, Cho’s history would have been on record and campus police would have had an eye on him already. And if he had been properly evaluated and monitored according to state mental health requirements, he would have been labeled a danger to society and the state police would have stopped him buying a gun.


So tell me, why do we need more laws when  people aren’t following the ones already on the books?


It’s Not About More Funding:


Was it because there weren’t enough funds, as some argue? Community service boards apparently handled 115,000 mentally ill people in Virginia in 2005 at a cost of $127 million. That works out – very roughly – to about a thousand bucks per person. I don’t know if that’s shabby or not. But it doesn’t really seem relevant here. What would it have cost additionally in time or money to call up and find out if Cho had gone into treatment? Ten minutes and the cost of a local phone call.


The whole business is that amazing – no one seems to have known anything or done much of anything. No one seems to have followed up or even thought they had to. For instance, reports say the Cho’s family didn’t seek treatment for him because they didn’t have enough money, yet the family lives in an affluent Virginia neighborhood, sent their children to elite private schools, and gave Cho enough spare change for videos, a car, a cell phone, an escort service (at least once), firearms, an ungodly amount of ammo and training at a firing range.


Isn’t it much more likely that if Cho’s family didn’t get help for him, it was because of the stigma attached to mental illness, which is much greater among Asian families? And would more money really have made that better?


Let states spend as much as they want on community mental health. But don’t tell me Virginia Tech happened because of lack of money.


It’s Not About More Federal Data Bases:


Some argue that reporting to the Feds has to be tightened because under federal law, Cho’s voluntary confinement would have automatically prevented him from buying a gun. (Richard Bonnie, chairman of the Virginia Supreme Court’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform).


Well, in the first place, as we’ve seen, if he’d been properly evaluated, state laws themselves would have stopped Cho. If people don’t comply with state laws, why are they any more likely to comply with federal laws?


According to the FBI, Virginia is already the leading state in reporting mental health dis-qualifications to the Feds. But, the problems is that Virginia state law is a tad different from the federal law. It lists only two categories that would warrant notifying the state police – “involuntary commitment” or a ruling of “mental “incapacitation” – neither of which applied to Cho, who was confined “voluntarily” and wasn’t ruled incapacitated.

 


Immediately after the shootings, Governor Tim Kaine (a Democrat) eliminated this distinction. He also said he thought V-Tech would help push through legislation he supports that would also subject firearms sales at gun shows to instant background checks (legislation introduced annually in Virginia that dies before a floor vote in the General Assembly).


[Interestingly, a move to expand Virginia’s mental health laws was already in the works in October 2006. It’s goal was to “modify the criteria for placing people in emergency care by eliminating a requirement that they pose an “imminent” danger to themselves or others.”

Precisely what’s now being demanded as a result of the V-Tech shootings.]


But will making every state law automatically comply with federal law on this make things better or worse? I’m not sure. If people know that their mental health evaluations automatically go into a federal data base, will that make them even more reluctant to seek help they might need? Is it a provision that might be misused by vengeful spouses? I don’t know. And what if, in the present political climate, expression of certain beliefs – say, conspiracy theories about the government – were classified as signs of mental derangement? And suppose you could be forced into psychiatric evaluation for that? What if the hate crimes bill on the table now makes even thinking or speaking a certain way a sign not only of derangement but of criminal intent toward society. You get my drift. I’m afraid that the unintended bad of more federalization might come to outweigh the hoped-for good of standardization.


In any case, to my mind, the real problem lies with the special justice who released Cho and then decided he had to attend outpatient – not inpatient – treatment  Whether Cho was sent to V Tech’s Cook center or not (Cook’s not returning calls), mental health advocates and state officials call it pretty unusual to order outpatient treatment for someone labeled a imminent danger to himself. Usually, it’s an inpatient order, says Mary Zdanowicz, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center. And, a 1994 survey of special justices found that outpatient treatment was ordered in just 8 percent of the commitment hearings, among other things, because they’re hard to monitor (Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission).


In short, measured just by current laws and care standards, Cho’s evaluation seems to have been shoddy and the special justice’s remedy poorly conceived.

And I don’t see why more laws would change that.


In fact, part of the problem looks like too much regulatory apparatus and too many state bodies with orbits that were designed to mesh but ended up clashing and too little common sense and care.


The three agencies involved at V-Tech shared responsibility like the three crones in the myth shared one eye — they fumbled so much as they passed it around that they dropped it.


In short, what we have here is a full-throttle display of the Diminishing Utility of More Bureaucrats and Laws (DUMBEL), whereby what was everyone’s responsibility became no one’s job.


Meanwhile, the policies that should be discussed are not.

We still have no account of what medication Cho was taking, although his room mates have told us they saw him taking a pill regularly in the mornings.


And we have even less discussion about a matter of  crucial importance now:


 How to hold the state accountable for laws it expects us to follow but doesn’t follow itself.


A piece in the Chronicle of Higher Educatio, April 24, describes the potential for litigation at V-Tech and quotes lawyers who have suggested that the university showed gross negligence.

But of course, the panel’s swift and well publicized conclusion easily gets to trump that in the public debate.


Meanwhile, the media, which rushed to shove microphones and cameras in the faces of grieving friends and family, hasn’t shown much interest in reporting on what victims face if they do try to press their claims: The doctrine of sovereign immunity. A relic of common law, it protects a state university like Virginia Tech from litigation by citizens. States have relaxed the doctrine to allow state hospitals, for example, to be sued for malpractice, still, any plaintiff at V-Tech, I am reliably told, would have to establish a case of gross negligence and they would have only 6 months to press claims. That means any stalling by the university helps it to avert a lawsuit by reducing the amount of time victims have to collect information and prepare a case. It’s very likely that the victims don’t even know about the doctrine.


The doctrine of sovereign immunity, by the way, holds that a state can do no wrong because the state creates the law and thus cannot be subject to it. On that count at least, it looks like the State of Virginia is already perfectly in synch with the Federal government these days.

			

	
	



				
					


		

		
Cho wasn’t treated -updated 5/8


				

			Posted on   by  		

			


		

		
Update: details of the three psychological/psychiatric bodies, through which Cho passed in this Washington Post piece 


V. Tech’s Cook Counseling Center, Blacksburg’s community services board (New River Valley), and nearby Christiansburg’s St. Alban’s Clinic, where he stayed overnight. Each has its own reason for not following up, even though state and university guidelines required them to. Money is cited as an excuse, but they seem to have received $1000 (approx) for each mental case that went through their hands. If we use Cho’s evaluation as a basis, that would be a thousand bucks a day. Is that really too little? And how much more money and effort would it have taken to check whether the case had been followed up on? About what it takes to place a local phone call.


The Guardian has this piece which shows how the state failed completely to follow up on the court ordered outpatient treatment. The piece is amazing – no one seems to have known anything about anything. No one seems to have followed up or even thought they had to. And the outpatient treatment looks like it would have had to have been the responsibility of Virginia Tech. Pretty clear why they are stone walling there.


And, people think the government needs to be getting into even more social work.