What Did Sheriff Dupnik Know About Jarod Loughner?

Horrifying: Jarod Loughner's mug shot

Many people who came into contact with the Tucson mass-murderer, Jarod Loughner, felt instinctively that he was likely to commit a massacre, and they said so. The blogsphere and print publications are packed with stories about people who so greatly feared for their lives in Loughner's presence that they took precautions when circumstances forced them to be near him, such as sitting next to a classroom door to expedite escape in case Loughner started shooting or attempting to "befriend" Loughner to reduce the chances of being killed by him in case he snapped. One of his teachers was afraid to turn his back on Loughner to write on the blackboard.

All this was no secret.

According to Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, law enforcement officers knew that Loughner had threatened to kill people. In fact, law officers are known to have talked to Loughner about these death threats, and one recent report even states that Loughner telephoned "many" people to issue death threats, "including staff of Pima Community College, radio personalities and local bloggers."

Didn't people complain? Didn't they attempt to press charges?

They did.

Faculty and students at Pima Community College were so alarmed by Loughner that they refused to let him return to school after he was suspended and then withdrew unless "a mental health professional agreed he did not present a danger. The Cholla Jumps is claiming that, "when Pima County Sheriff’s Office was informed [about death threats made by Loughner], his deputies assured the victims that he was being well managed by the mental health system."

Despite widespread knowledge that Loughner had serious mental problems, including at the Pima County Sheriff's Office, that knowledge seems never to have been communicated to local mental health authorities, who did not intervene. The organization that provides mental health services to Pima County denies not only that Loughner was enrolled in their system but also that anyone ever called the organization's crisis line about Loughner. Either step might have helped a great deal:

The slain: Christina Taylor Green, 9, Dorothy Morris, 76,
Arizona Federal District Judge John Roll, 63,
Phyllis Schneck, 79, Dorwin Stoddard, 76,
and Gabe Zimmerman, 30.

Unlike other states, which require that someone be an imminent danger to themselves or others before seeking to have them involuntarily committed for psychiatric evaluation and treatment, in Arizona, one need only be "persistently or acutely" ill.

"It was also suggested [by the Sheriff's Office] that further pressing of charges [against Loughner for making death threats] would be unnecessary and probably cause more problems than it solved . . . ."

It didn't turn out that way.

Like medical intervention, further charges against Loughner might have prevented the legal purchase of the Glock 19 semi-automatic weapon that Loughner apparently purchased only 5 weeks ago, and might have prevented the massacre altogether.

It's past time for the press to stop asking Sheriff Dupnik what he thinks about public discourse and start asking him what the Pima County Sheriff's Office did to prevent a mentally disturbed man who was threatening to kill people from carrying out those threats.
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