by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I went from police psychologist to victim last week.\u00a0 I\u2019d not been a victim for awhile, since someone stole my tires in my driveway way back in the 90\u2019s.\u00a0 This one was a little more active.<\/span><\/p>\n Some guy who used to be in my wife\u2019s class at Queensborough Community College (she is a college professor) back 25 years ago decided a day after the Florida school shooting that he would find my wife on a Facebook page and start posting.\u00a0 He posted on four days about ten posts each day.\u00a0 Some rambling psychotic stuff at first, then a post saying that he was going to rape my 11-year old daughter in the ass and murder her<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 Quite a disturbing thing to read as well as post.\u00a0 He mentioned my daughter by name, so it was a very specific threat.<\/span><\/p>\n My wife barely had a memory of him and couldn\u2019t pick him out of two men if she had to.\u00a0 She never failed him or had a problem with him \u2014 he had a crush on her 25 years ago.\u00a0 His name was Indian and his Facebook page said he was from Trinidad and Tobago, but lived in Queens NY.\u00a0 We ran to the police station on February 17th<\/sup> to make a report, leaving our child with the neighbor.\u00a0 We were told that they would look for him, but Facebook had a long return on a subpoena, up to six weeks, and that his Facebook page likely was made up anyway. \u00a0I asked if the fact he mentioned \u201chospital police\u201d if we could get some psychiatric hospital records from NY and I was told HIPAA laws wouldn\u2019t allow it. \u00a0All the while information from the Parkland Florida school shooting was coming out, we were having a nightmare all our own unfolding.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cGuns have to be controlled so a crazy person can\u2019t get them.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t register the gun, register the mentally unhealthy.\u201d\u00a0 Tuning out rhetoric banter had become a way of life in the past couple of years because of the election and last year\u2019s protests, but this time it couldn\u2019t be tuned out.\u00a0 The Parkland Florida news rang in my ears as we went through this crisis.\u00a0 Our lives were at risk until this guy was caught.\u00a0 I called the FBI and the Secret Service, both who were willing to help if our local police didn\u2019t catch him.<\/span><\/p>\n See, when you become a victim of this kind of threat it costs you a lot of money and time.\u00a0 Making the police report, getting a camera alarm system for your home, making arrangements with an electrician, calling all the agencies, warning the schools and places that my daughter frequents like the karate studio, making sure my gun was cleaned, getting new bullets, warning staff in my office, (he threatened me as well), etc., etc. \u00a0The whole ordeal. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He was apprehended on Wednesday and processed for an arraignment on Friday, February 23rd<\/sup>.\u00a0 Not too bad really, but it seemed a long week.\u00a0 And all the while is the news about Parkland\u2019s psychologically unsound killer, the police not doing their job, liberals pushing gun control, conservative pushing people control, all a dissonant background noise to the problem at hand.\u00a0 It was a Stanley Kubrick film played on fast forward with the volume turned way too high.<\/span><\/p>\n The man with the threats was a psychotic just released from a mental hospital the month before.\u00a0 He is on welfare and his family takes care of him.\u00a0 He has no priors. \u00a0We have an order of protection, for what good that is worth.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what our country will do about gun control and registering guns, frankly that is not my concern right now.\u00a0 The question is what are we going to do about mental health and our rights to identify them in our workplaces, communities and our schools?\u00a0 By the way, i consulted to the post office after those incidents in the 90\u2019s and it still isn\u2019t fixed.\u00a0 We\u2019ve closed a lot of our mental hospitals from the combination of costs and medications, but what are we going to do with the psychotic man with the threats.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It would seem 5-6 weeks to get a subpoena for a Facebook site is our own kind of insanity.\u00a0 As is releasing someone with a mental history without intensive follow-up from a hospital.\u00a0 I am not as concerned about the rights of a mentally ill person right now, as either would be the victims of Sandy Hook or the students of Parkland.\u00a0 Gun rights might or might not be part of this, perhaps some accountability to relatives who know there are guns involved should also be a part of this. I don\u2019t know right now but I can guarantee if given a day to think it through I would come up with a plan that would make better sense than pushing it under the table.\u00a0 I want to call for a committee to be put together with psychologists, police personnel and victims (and even some people who have been psychotic) to come up with some idea for the government.\u00a0 If we act now, maybe we can avoid one of these incidents in the future.\u00a0 Talk to everyone you know and we can make this happen.
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