Police Psychology:  Moments after Parkland:  A Personal Story

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

I went from police psychologist to victim last week.  I’d not been a victim for awhile, since someone stole my tires in my driveway way back in the 90’s.  This one was a little more active.

Some guy who used to be in my wife’s 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.  He posted on four days about ten posts each day.  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.  Quite a disturbing thing to read as well as post.  He mentioned my daughter by name, so it was a very specific threat.

My wife barely had a memory of him and couldn’t pick him out of two men if she had to.  She never failed him or had a problem with him — he had a crush on her 25 years ago.  His name was Indian and his Facebook page said he was from Trinidad and Tobago, but lived in Queens NY.  We ran to the police station on February 17^th to make a report, leaving our child with the neighbor.  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.  I asked if the fact he mentioned “hospital police” if we could get some psychiatric hospital records from NY and I was told HIPAA laws wouldn’t allow it.  All the while information from the Parkland Florida school shooting was coming out, we were having a nightmare all our own unfolding.

“Guns have to be controlled so a crazy person can’t get them.”  “Don’t register the gun, register the mentally unhealthy.”  Tuning out rhetoric banter had become a way of life in the past couple of years because of the election and last year’s protests, but this time it couldn’t be tuned out.  The Parkland Florida news rang in my ears as we went through this crisis.  Our lives were at risk until this guy was caught.  I called the FBI and the Secret Service, both who were willing to help if our local police didn’t catch him.

See, when you become a victim of this kind of threat it costs you a lot of money and time.  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.  The whole ordeal.   

He was apprehended on Wednesday and processed for an arraignment on Friday, February 23^rd.  Not too bad really, but it seemed a long week.  And all the while is the news about Parkland’s 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.  It was a Stanley Kubrick film played on fast forward with the volume turned way too high.

The man with the threats was a psychotic just released from a mental hospital the month before.  He is on welfare and his family takes care of him.  He has no priors.  We have an order of protection, for what good that is worth.  I don’t know what our country will do about gun control and registering guns, frankly that is not my concern right now.  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?  By the way, i consulted to the post office after those incidents in the 90’s and it still isn’t fixed.  We’ve 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. 

It would seem 5-6 weeks to get a subpoena for a Facebook site is our own kind of insanity.  As is releasing someone with a mental history without intensive follow-up from a hospital.  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.  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’t 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.  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.  If we act now, maybe we can avoid one of these incidents in the future.  Talk to everyone you know and we can make this happen.

Because if we don’t come up with some solutions that can be implemented on how to handle mentally unhealthy people and some rules of follow up, we are going to be back in this position again.  We will be watching the nightly news and having the same debates the next time someone decides to murder our children, or the next time some random person sneaks up from the past to threaten a child of a teacher 25 years ago. 

I personally don’t need that again; and I will tell you after having been through it, neither do you!

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