James Boulware attacked Dallas Police Headquarters and then was shot to death by SWAT officers after a standoff in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. He was crazy:
Boulware’s family said in a statement that it was “in shock.”
“We tried to get him mental help numerous times, but the system failed him, because he was declared ‘sane.’ He was very delusional. It was very obvious,” the family said.
Boulware, 35, of Paris, Texas, had been arrested multiple times. One of the more troubling arrests was in May 2013, when he allegedly choked his mother, strangled his uncle and made threats, including one about a mass shooting.
At the time of Boulware’s arrest in 2013, police issued a public alert that he was armed with guns, a large amount of ammunition, and also had body armor, and might go on a shooting spree.
“He was going to just kill all the adult members of the family and then that’s when he made the comment he may shoot up some churches and schools,” said Paris police chief Bob Hundley, according to a 2013 news report on NBC station KTEN.
According to an arrest report, the incident began when Boulware attacked two family members and went on a rant.
His mother “had gone into the kitchen to make her something to eat when the suspect began making comments about North and South Korea, and began talking rudely about religion, Jews and Christians,” a police affidavit said. “The suspect suddenly grabbed (his mother’s) throat with both of his hands and began squeezing.”
“He then punched his uncle and choked him “to the point of unconsciousness,” the affidavit said.
What has happened to our court system and our mental health system that someone like James Boulware, who has perpetrated serious violence and is so obviously deranged, is turned loose into society?
At what point was it decided that crazy people had a “right” to be crazy that was so important as to outweigh basic considerations of public safety? Who made the court rulings that limited our nation’s ability to lock up dangerous lunatics?
Answer: Federal judges whose courtrooms have metal detectors and armed police to protect them.
The key decisions were made in the 1960s and 70s, at a time when liberalism was the dominant legal philosophy, and when eminent intellectuals proclaimed that criminals and lunatics were victims of an unjust society. Mentally ill people and dangerous criminals were turned loose in the name of “social justice.” Now here were are, decades later, where it seems every day brings us headlines of shocking violence perpetrated by people like James Boulware who — despite their obvious mental problems and known capacity for violence — can’t be locked away. Because “social justice.”
His family said the system failed James Boulware. Perhaps more importantly, the system has failed America. People need to read Clayton Cramer’s My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill.
The people who most need to read that book, alas, are the least likely to read it. Federal judges, legislators and law school professors — the people whose bad ideas, bad decisions and bad laws have produced this mess — can’t be bothered to read anything written from the perspective of common sense. Our nation’s policy-making elite have become corrupt and decadent, blinded to facts and reason by their quasi-religious devotion to the ideological cult of “social justice.”
A deranged gunmen can hurt a lot of people, but what about America’s corrupt and decadent elite? Aren’t they really more dangerous? What do you think America is going to look like after Hillary Clinton gets elected president in 2016 and re-elected in 2020?
Our nation’s elite hate our nation’s people. Because the elite despise everything that made America great, they have deliberately sought to destroy the foundations of a free society.
Damn them and damn their decadent souls. Damn them all to Hell.
Strange, isn’t it? We’ll throw a kid out of school for drawing soldiers (had this rule been in place when I was a kid, I doubt I’d have gotten past kindergarten), but an adult with a criminal record who’s made open threat and whose FAMILY says he’s a dangerous lunatic? We must respect his rights!
This is dangerous ground. On the one hand, dangerous lunatics need to be in institutions the protect us and them. On the other, I suggest that lefties would just LOVE to be able to institutionalize “crazy” people. Hey, it worked for the soviets.
And can we trust our present crop of judges and social workers? Apparently not.
Some rocket scientists on Sooper Mexican’s comments section was arguing that Sean Hannity was the cause of this. Boulware’s not the only crazy one.
Liberal loons are are in full force trying to paint this guy as a Gubmint’-Hating Obama-Bashing Tea Party “Patriot.” I’m sure it is the NRA fault somewhere
And “ev4ryone” who knew him knew he was going to do something violent and yet he was still walking the streets. Just another example how the culture no longer recognizes mental illness until it is too late.
They are too busy calling sane people mentality ill
And of course the benevolent #BlackLivesMatter crowd, and race hustler Deray McKesson are on Twitter using this to stir up a little race hatred because the suspect is white and was well armed. I can only imagine what the political situation will be in 10 yrs?
Society so over reacts to low probability risks and under react to probable ones…it is almost as if by design…
At what point was it decided that crazy people had a “right” to be crazy that was so important as to outweigh basic considerations of public safety?
Maybe we can ask Rachel Dolezal, Ward Churchill, Belle Knox, Barrett Brown, Aaron Alexis, Charles Manson, Bill Ayers, ?Bernardine Dohrn, Adam Lanza, or Mohamed Atta? Oops, some are no longer available for comment but they are all just as bloody crazy.
[…] James Boulware was crazy (so is Dolezal, just not […]
Save a bit of spleen for NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. These people mean well—most of them—but are entirely focused on the rights and desires of the mentally ill, with little regard for the needs of other members of society or even for the long-run needs of the mentally ill.
The result of their efforts often harms the “clients” themselves. Schizophrenics, for instance, can be found wandering around aimlessly—refusing to take prescribed medication, ignoring physical health needs, committing minor thefts, and occasionally behaving violently. Through all this, NAMI propagandizes continually to keep them out of institutions and stands up for their “rights”—especially the rights of independent living on public support.
Schizophrenics are just like you and me, only moreso in one respect—their brains are subject to more short circuits than yours and mine. They are, therefore, less liable to consider the consequences of their actions and are more prone to impulse. They behave somewhat like druggies or drunks whose inhibitions are weakened. Those with what we consider criminal tendencies are less discouraged by fears of social disapproval or the so-called justice system.
Jails are well-populated with both borderline schizophrenics and those who are worse off but skilled at faking sanity during psych tests and trial appearances. Most judges are unable to identify the illness, and therefore fail to send schizos to mental institutions which might, at least, keep them temporarily out of trouble. Instead many are either convicted and jailed or released into society. NAMI’s activities are a part of the cause of this unwisdom.
First we let them out, then we let them vote. Now they’re running the place.
You mean, compulsory heterosexuality and radfem Mary Daly writing women have to “righteously rip off – gems of knowledge that the patriarchs have stolen from us,” that’s not real?
I dunno, they seem pretty sure. Maybe I’m mental.
When one is called a bigot for not being fully on board the idea women are trapped in a man’s body or blacks trapped in a white one, that’s a society that’s running on past fumes of success. The tank is empty.
Did you mean #TransBlackLivesMatter?
Many moons ago I had some professional BPD “consumer advocate” NAMI person cyber harass me on the Usenet. It was bizarre as she played the poor victim of all sort abuse and yet went on to make fun of my very severe life threatening seizure disorder. She accused anyone who didn’t agree with her of either being a child molester or promoting child sexual abuse. And yes she was a loon who believed in ritual Satanic l abuse and supported the mentally ill cyber-stalker Diana “Curio” Napolis
Unfortunately, both of the linked articles raise more questions than they answer. I note he was charged with crimes, but “charges were dropped.” By whom? Was it because the parents wouldn’t cooperate? Did the parents seek involuntary admission to a mental hospital, but were rebuffed? The links do not provide answers to those questions. It’s easy to blame the “system,” when one fails to utilize the avenues available to the fullest extent.
I would also note, there will be breakdowns in the system, even if it works well. That’s the price of due process. As I continue to point out on these threads, infringement upon personal liberties in the name of saving society from the “mentally ill”–a term defined by the state–is one of the many refuges of totalitarians.
Nailed it yet again. Absolutely nailed it. Bravo!
…and began talking rudely about religion, Jews and Christians.
Can you hear the collective “NOOOOO!!!” from the MSM echoing through the sky?
CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield seems to think this chap was “courageous and brave” in his attack on the police station.
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/06/13/cnns-whitfield-attack-on-dallas-police-hq-courageous-and-brave/
He’s a member of the patriarchy, obviously.
A real American hero, unlike that Chris Kyle guy.
Some idiot (Rev. Pfleger, to the white courtesy phone) will certainly insist this is the case.
Next time maybe we can put her out there with the cops and hope for collateral damage.
Just remember that when it comes, a conservative will be deemed “crazy” and put up for institutionalization. We won’t have any “SJW’s looking out for us.
Dontcha just hate when that happens?
The issue you raise is complicated. I’m a retired psychiatrist who practiced in several states.
One must remember that in the heyday of state psychiatric hospitals (until about 1960) there were no effective treatments for the severely mentally ill. Thorazine, the first antipsychotic, became available in 1954. Many others have followed. Lithium, which revolutionized the treatment of bipolar disorder, came to the market in about 1970. Severe mental illness, e.g., schizophrenia, bipolar disease, inter alia, remain therapeutic challenges despite immense progress. Some patients are much more difficult to treat than others for various reasons.
As drug treatment improved, states recognized that it was no longer necessary to keep thousands of patients locked up for years. Moreover, it had become extremely costly to do so. States have established legal processes by which to determine whether patients can be involuntarily detained and treated. Such decisions are made by “judges” who may or may not be actual judges or even legally trained. The point is that psychiatrists are called as witnesses in such proceedings and give testimony and recommendations but the psychiatrists do not make the decisions about involuntary hospitalization and treatment. In most states, however, a physician is empowered to detain a patient involuntarily for 72 hours but to treat involuntarily during that time only in the case of life threatening emergency.
It was my experience that the process generally worked acceptably though there were many instances in which I believed that a given patient should be detained and be given medication when a “judge” decided otherwise.
The critical issue in the legal process is whether the evidence would persuade a “judge” that the patient was IMMINENTLY a danger to himself or others.
In short, a system in which patients could be adjudged to require indefinite treatment has been exchanged for one in which involuntary treatment and detention are highly circumscribed.
It is not a perfect system and people like Boulware will occasionally slip through the cracks. It is unavoidable, but nonetheless still tragic.
To change the system would require changing state laws to allow a lower standard for detention and treatment (different issues: sometimes a “judge” would permit detention but not permit involuntary drug administration), and would also require vastly increased public expenditures for the treatment of the mentally ill.
There will be, unfortunately, the occasional Boulware but even if the laws were to be changed to permit a lower standard for involuntary hospitalization and treatment, the occasional Boulware would still occur, though with somewhat decreased frequency.
Is it worth it to change the laws (and increase taxes) to try to eliminate every last Boulware (impossible) while possibly risking unnecessary diminution of the civil rights of many people? The problems of false negatives and false positives will always be with us, no matter what we do.
Good overview from the medical perspective. I’ve been a lawyer for over 25 years and have seen the legal side of it on many occasions. I’ve represented petitioners trying to have a relative involuntarily and respondents in such proceedings on court appointment. Your comments about the psychiatrist as “expert” are spot on. And, you are correct: it’s all about evidence of imminent harm to self or others.
What we have to remember is that these cases are big news because, in reality, they happen rather infrequently, especially compared to a) the total population and b) the total number of people who suffer from some mental pathology, even the more serious pathologies.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency upon hearing such a news story to jettison due process considerations under the misbegotten belief that we can guarantee absolute safety. We all know there are any number of political worthies who would and do promise such illusory “safety,” but it comes with a price: our liberty and personal autonomy.
“I’m a retired psychiatrist who practiced in several states.”
So, like, you practiced while sober, drunk, semi-conscious, depressed, etc.?
How many people were jailed due to false (and often impossible) accusations of satanic ritual abuse? Quite a number, I fear.
Janet Reno, not too surprisingly, was involved in the prosecution of some. She had more interests than merely slaughtering religious cultists.
good pun, Bub
What??? Do you mean to say that a CNN teporter won’t call us brave and courageous and totally wonderful??? I’m shocked! SHOCKED, I say!
/sarc
Yeah, SJW’s are EXACTLY what I worry about as their sense of morality is – to put it mildly – highly selective. Just think: that little shite who planted those bombs at the Boston Marathon got a dreamy cover pic and write-up in Rolling Stone. In contrast, the mere mention of Chris Kyle will send SJW’s scurrying for safe spaces like Londoners heading for the Tubes during the Blitz.
Slaughtering religious cultists was just a hobby for Reno.
Interesting aside. One of Renos’ former law school classmates practiced where I lived in Ohio and would come into the tax map office to chew the fat with myself and the Surveyor that ran the shop. In ’94 here name was mentioned and he fessed up to being a law school classmate. He said they called her “the big dyke.”
They have no basis on which to judge mental illness because they are mentally ill themselves.
So do you have anything intelligent to say on point?
Thank you.
Even if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee in 2016, she won’t get more than 200 electoral votes. I see Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania going red.
“Boulware was jailed but the charges were later dropped, his father said.”
I would like to know why the charges were dropped. If he were given time he might have been put on medication.
Okay I am going to play devils advocate here. We need to be very careful about what laws we change. The ropes we make may go around our necks. The more totalitarian governments in the recent history have used the institutionalize of “crazy” people to lock away the political opponents. Which in turns brings a need to reduce the institution costs thru the use of assistance. This is something both the Stalinists and followers of the mad Austrian had emplaced in thier laws. Remember that that today 75 years ago is when the followers of the Mad Austrian opened up the first death camp. Opened up to help “relive the burden on the state mental health organizations.”
But, but, but, if Mr Boulware was crazy, and had domestic violence accusations, then he was legally prohibited from having firearms, so he couldn’t have had any weapons with which to attack the police!
No one wants to be the guy who gets the crazy guy locked up. If you file som,e sortr of legal motion to get someone institutionalized, and it fails, you could well be the respondent to a major lawsuit.
Stacy, I caught the Hillary 2020 re-election line. Once again I have to say that I think that you are almost insufferably optimistic…
Dr. Morgan, please notice the problem in this case. The criminal justice system failed to address Boulware’s threats to public order and hygiene. If we are to take the accounts at face value, he committed an act very close to attempted murder and the charges were then dropped. Can we deal with what lawyers have made of the process for containing crime?
The country is in extremely short supply of psychiatrists
Sorry, not buying, especially when you have psychiatrists making a living as purveyors of talk therapy (supplemented with psychotropics or no).
The Democratic nominee will carry Pennsylvania, period.
Reset your job with theothermccain Find Here
You don’t want them all that conscious. The traditional psychoanalysts who say nothing and seem bored to tears are less insufferable than the ones who provide commentary.
When we have a society determined to define crazy as normal — meaning: homosexual and transsexual — and which celebrates whackos like Bruce Jenner and Bradley Manning, actively feeding in to their psychoses, it’s pretty difficult to see how we can expect ordinary citizens to turn in any kind of crazy.
It’s not even a case of the inmates running the asylum. If it were, at least it would mean they were still in the asylum.
The vote in Pennsylvania in 2004 was closer than the vote in Ohio. All it will take is about a 6-point win by the GOP to hold Hillary under 200EV.
Crazy people with domestic violence charges are OK. Nothing to see here….move along.
Matt is just having some fun with a pun.
The state legislature is controlled by the Republicans, because so many Democratic votes are concentrated in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, but that illustrates the problem: Pennsylvania hasn’t gone Republican in a presidential election since 1988. In 2012, there were 57 precincts in the City of Brotherly Love in which Mitt Romney didn’t get one single vote.