Mental patient arrested...(huh?)
Sean_Q_
has been arrested (ie, taken into custody) for arson.
Isn't there something redundant about this?
I always thought institutionalized mental patients were supposed
to be supervised to prevent them from harming themselves or others.
Anyway I think the guy would be crazy not to plead Innocent
by Reason of Insanity.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2009/12/28/12284896-cp.html
SQ
S'mee
> http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2009/12/28/12284896-cp.html
You had my hopes up until I opened that...
Road Glidin' Don
On the crazy people doin' crazy things theme, I was with family
visiting my brother-in-law in the Misericordia Hospital a few years
back. Waiting for the rest to finish with the bedside chatting, I
wandered the halls a bit and, at one point saw a girl, about 12 years
old, being forcibly dragged towards the elevator by a man who was
about the age to be her father. She was very upset and struggling,
saying, "No! I don't want to go!"
At first, it struck me this was (perhaps) a case of the girl wanting
to stay to visit with her mother and her dad insisting they couldn't
stay longer, or something along those lines. There were a lot of very
ill people on that floor and many families visiting. But that
impression quickly changed when she yelled, "Help!"
I ran over, just before he managed to get her into the elevator and
broke things up to determine what was what. That's when the young man
started saying crazy shit like, "But she loves me." It took a fair
bit of self-control to not beat him to a pulp right there and then,
but I realized there was something quite wrong with the guy
(mentally). Then the girl's father came running down the hall. It
then took a bit of intervening to stop him from doing what my first
urge had been.
Long story short, hospital security came and took the guy away...
back to the mental ward! (located on another floor)
I told them I wasn't too happy with the fact a guy like that could
wander around the hospital, but they wanted to handle it from there,
saying he couldn't really be held accountable for his actions in the
state he was in. Still, if he had managed to get her into the
elevator and out of the hospital (probably unlikely anyway), it
wouldn't have been a good thing.
Twibil
>
>
> A patient in a mental hospital (presumably in their custody)
> has been arrested (ie, taken into custody) for arson.
> Isn't there something redundant about this?
No. Mental illness isn't a crime. Arson *is*.
> I always thought institutionalized mental patients were supposed
> to be supervised to prevent them from harming themselves or others.
And real convicts are supposedly closely supervised to prevent their
escape from custody.
Nonetheless, they *do* escape from time to time.
> Anyway I think the guy would be crazy not to plead Innocent
> by Reason of Insanity.
Not funny. Or relevant.
There are various reasons a person could be institutionalized that
would have no bearing on their being held responsible for commiting a
crime while in that institution.
Twibil
>
>
> >http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2009/12/28/12284896-cp.html
>
> You had my hopes up until I opened that...
You and me both, brother!
Rob Kleinschmidt
> I told them I wasn't too happy with the fact a guy like that could
> wander around the hospital, but they wanted to handle it from there,
> saying he couldn't really be held accountable for his actions in the
> state he was in.
Seems like if he's a patient in their facility and can't be
held accountable for his actions, maybe they should be.
Twibil
wrote:
>
>
> Seems like if he's a patient in their facility and can't be
> held accountable for his actions, maybe they should be.
Um, so you want to put the prison guards on trial when a convict
escapes and harms someone?
Perhaps you'd have a case if you could demonstrate that the guards in
question were off puffing weed somewhere when they should have been
guarding, but because someone managed to get loose when he shouldn't
have does not automatically infer culpability on the part of the folks
whose job it was to keep him from doing so.
Murphy's Law doesn't just apply to mechanics.
Rob Kleinschmidt
> On Dec 28, 11:31 pm, Rob Kleinschmidt <Rkleinsch1216...@aol.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Seems like if he's a patient in their facility and can't be
> > held accountable for his actions, maybe they should be.
>
> Um, so you want to put the prison guards on trial when a convict
> escapes and harms someone?
The reason somebody's a convict instead of a patient is that we've
deemed they should be held accountable for their own actions.
"Shit happens" is probably not a good explanation for why he
got loose. When someone can't be held accountable for their
own actions, that doesn't automatically make it an act of God
if they do damage while in your custody.
When you're watching somebody who can't be held accountable,
it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest you've assumed some
of the responsibility for their actions.
don (Calgary)
<d.la...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>I told them I wasn't too happy with the fact a guy like that could
>wander around the hospital, but they wanted to handle it from there,
>saying he couldn't really be held accountable for his actions in the
>state he was in.
I might have responded, if he isn't responsible for his actions maybe
the hospital is.
>Still, if he had managed to get her into the
>elevator and out of the hospital (probably unlikely anyway), it
>wouldn't have been a good thing.
Hard to say how far he would have gone. These days too many of us tend
to not want to get involved or would be slow to react to a situation
like that. Good on you for stepping up.
Sean_Q_
> I ran over, just before he managed to get her into the elevator and
> broke things up to determine what was what.
Good thing you intervened, Don. (I tried to think of a Canadian
equivalent to "Good onya, mite" but the nearest I can come up with
is "That was skookum, you hoser!"... which doesn't quite convey
the same meaning.)
SQ