NYTimes: Limits to Law and Information Sharing, Despite Gunman’s Danger Signs

Limits to Law and Information Sharing, Despite
Gunman’s Danger Signs
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and ERICA GOODE MAY 26, 2014
LOS ANGELES — Elliot O. Rodger was a young college student who had
few friends, detested his roommates and spent much of his time alone,
reveling in the isolation of a local golf course or the beaches near Isla Vista,
where he lived.
But a review of the three years leading up to Friday night, when Mr.
Rodger killed six people and injured 13 others before shooting himself near
the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, suggests a
series of flash points where his often bizarre and unsettling behavior might
have drawn the attention of the authorities and, potentially, signaled his
violent plans.
Mr. Rodger, 22, had been planning his “Day of Retribution,” as he
called it, for all three years he was in Isla Vista, a period in which he had
been under the treatment of therapists; gotten beaten up after trying to
shove women off a ledge at a local bar, drawing a visit by the local police;
and posted videos on various sites, including one for virgins and another
for bodybuilders, that — if not as explicitly threatening as the one he
posted the day of the attack — nonetheless showed an extremely disturbed
young man.
His behavior alarmed his parents, who had alerted the police, but they
found that he did not meet the legal criteria for involuntary psychiatric
hospitalization. He stopped attending classes at Santa Barbara City College before his behavior might have caught the attention of behavior
therapists there.
In the end, for all these early warning signs, it is hardly clear that
much could have been done to stop this tragedy. Mr. Rodger, like so many
mass killers before him, stands as evidence to limits in the laws and
regulations — and the network of communications between police
authorities and schools — intended to flag potentially dangerous figures.
That was one reason he was able to legally buy three semiautomatic
handguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Robert Fein, a psychologist whose specialty is targeted violence and an
author of a 2002 report by the Secret Service on school shootings, said
warning signs about disturbed individuals preparing for some kind of
mass attack are almost always present, but often do not come to the
attention of the authorities.
“If you look back at any kind of bad situation, there are generally
people who have information, but they don’t know what to do with it,” Dr.
Fein said.
Public debate after a mass killing inevitably focuses on shortfalls in
gun regulations or state laws that govern when someone can be
involuntarily held for psychiatric reasons. But no less important, according
to law enforcement and mental health experts, would be to improve the
sharing of information about potentially violent people among the police,
schools, mental health professionals and relatives.
And mental health practitioners themselves may unwittingly impede
that process, experts say.
Kevin Cameron, executive director of the Canadian Center for Threat
Assessment, who is a consultant to law enforcement and mental health
agencies and schools in the United States, said legislation governing
professional practice contains provisions that “make it clear, if we have
reasonable grounds to believe an individual may pose a significant threat
to their own safety or to others, that we have an obligation to share the
information without consent.”
“Many professionals have let the pendulum swing so far that they
believe their primary mandate is to protect privacy at all costs,” he said.
Still, the missed opportunities, viewed with the benefit of hindsight,
are at once frustrating and understandable.
Mr. Rodger’s mother had seen some of the earlier videos posted on his
Facebook page and alerted mental health officials, who in turn sent the
police. But Mr. Rodger, for all his inner turmoil, displayed to deputies who
showed up at his doorstep the kind of outwardly balanced behavior not
uncommon for troubled people when confronted by authority figures.
“The police interrogated me outside for a few minutes, asking me if I
had suicidal thoughts,” he wrote in a 140-page manifesto explaining his
plans for mass murder. “I tactfully told them that it was all a
misunderstanding, and they finally left.”
The police determined they had no grounds to hold him for
psychiatric examination — or, perhaps more significant, to search his
apartment, where he had hidden three automatic handguns and a trove of
ammunition. Once the police left, Mr. Rodger took down the videos.
Mr. Cameron said that visit illustrated a common error often made in
situations of potential threat. “They rely too heavily on how they feel about
the person at the time they interview him,” he said. The deputies, he said,
should have “cared less about how he behaved in the moment they were
talking to him than on the data that brought them there in the first place.”
Mr. Rodger rejected attempts by his parents and therapists to treat
him. “I don’t know why my parents wasted money on therapy, as it will
never help me in my struggle against such a cruel and unjust world,” he
wrote in his manifesto. A doctor prescribed him risperidone, an
antipsychotic drug, but Mr. Rodger wrote that after researching the drug,
he had refused to take it.
Under California law, if Mr. Rodger in speaking to a therapist had
expressed the violent thoughts found in his manifesto or last video, the
therapist would have been required to report it to the authorities. The man
Mr. Rodger identified as his therapist in his manifesto did not return
telephone calls or emails seeking comment on Monday.
A friend of the family, Simon Astaire, said he did not know if any such
report was made. Mr. Astaire said he had spent time with Mr. Rodger,
whom he described as withdrawn but showing no sign of violence. His
father, Peter Rodger, was a Hollywood director, and worked as an
assistant director on the movie “The Hunger Games.”
“Elliot never spoke about guns,” Mr. Astaire said. “Never. Never.
Wasn’t part of his character. There was no fascination with it. He didn’t
like violent movies as such. That was not part of his character.”
Laws that set down a mental health professional’s duty to warn the
authorities of a specific threat from a client are often narrowly interpreted
by practitioners, Mr. Cameron said. In truth, such laws offer latitude for
therapists to inform not only the person who is a target but the police and
other public agencies.
His final video, “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution,” which left no doubt as
to his murderous plans, was not posted until the day attack began,
according to Google officials. It was unclear who, if anyone, might have
seen it before he mailed out his manifesto to his parents, friends and
therapists on Friday night just before the attack began.
A spokeswoman for Google, which owns YouTube, said the video had
been removed on Saturday because it violated the service’s guidelines
against acts like stalking, intimidating behavior and the making of threats.
The spokeswoman said most videos marked for removal are first flagged
by viewers and then examined by special review teams that determine
whether they meet the site’s guidelines. Google did not have immediate
details on how many people might have seen it before it was taken down.
Clay Calvert, director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment
Project at the University of Florida, said YouTube had no legal obligation
to monitor videos posted to its site for warning signs of violent behavior or
report them to law enforcement.
“YouTube may have an ethical obligation to monitor postings,” he
said. “But there are so many postings every day that that becomes truly
impossible.”
Mr. Rodger had been a student at Santa Barbara City College, and
many, if not most, colleges these days have a committee or individual in
charge of threat assessment, a person who in theory might have responded
to unusual behavior by a student. In more sophisticated systems, the
college police are in touch with the local police and other schools to share
information. But more often than not, that does not happen.
Santa Barbara City College has a “strong crisis intervention response
structure and team” and provides extensive personal counseling to
students, said Lori Gaskin, the president of the school.
“However, Elliot Rodger’s connection to the college was limited,” she
said in an email on Monday. “After completing three courses at Santa
Barbara City College during 2011, he enrolled at various times, including
for the recently completed semester, but then either stopped attending or
withdrew on each occasion. We have found no record of any discipline or
other issues.”
Adam Nagourney reported from Los Angeles, and Erica Goode from New York. Ian Lovett
contributed reporting from Los Angeles, and Hilary Stout and Jennifer Preston from New York.
A version of this article appears in print on May 27, 2014, on page A14 of the New York edition with
the headline: Limits to Law and Information Sharing, Despite Gunman’s Danger Signs.