I'm not so sure... (Crandon Police Shooting)

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=673036

No mental tests given to gunman
Screening not required for officer to be hiredBy GINA BARTON
gbarton@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Oct. 9, 2007
Tyler James Peterson, who killed six people at a Crandon party, was hired as a police officer at 19 without a psychological screening, a combination that, though legal in Wisconsin, falls short of national norms and might allow unfit candidates to enter law enforcement, experts said.

I'm reading this point over and over on a variety of news media sources. Of course media is always looking for the "Ah HA" moment of every story.

This raises 2 thoughts for me.

First, it seems like media consistently reports from the perspective that everything is predictable, everything preventable, and everything has a logical pattern of precipitating factors. I suppose its easy to take that luxury of thought when all you ever do is Monday-Morning-Quarterback (cliche #1)on what has already happened. News media has that luxury. Hindsight is 20/20 (cliche #2) and it seems that would lend itself to always being able to pose the self-righteous question "why didn't anyone see this coming". I think that line of thought leads to a lot of poor decisions and beliefs. While everything has a cause, not everything is predictable. Why do some kids get raised in healthy homes and turn out to be murderers. While other kids raised in the poorest of circumstances go on to become educated and acheive the highest levels of success. There are people who struggle with mental issues every day that never snap and "go postal". There are people who've never struggled with a mental issue that come across a circumstance that causes them to snap. I think its media's chase to always portray these incidents (whatever they may be) as the result of something that, if not for some oversight would have been prevented. I think that leads people to have unrealistic expectations and actually shifts accountability away from places where it belongs, and places where accountability would make a difference.

Which ties into my second point which is that I wouldn't be so sure that psychological testing would have made ANY difference here. Until psychological testing can replicate the exact situations that lead people to 'snap' I highly doubt that any of the 'non-invasive' tests that are done could predict what will happen in a particular situation. Those in the industry of providing these tests will surely disagree with me, as they NEED to believe they can predit the future. But I highly doubt the success of being able to do so. I'll bet this kid would have passed psychological tests with flying colors.

Getting back to my previous point about how media's drive to blame lack of psychological testing shifts accountabilty:

So who's to blame here? Maybe blame isn't the word, but what would REALLY prevent this? Psychological testing? I'm not so sure psychological testing would prevent this. I offer another suggestion. To quote Dale Carnegie “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, Based on other news reports of the shooters conversation with a friend after the shootings, he said that he was called "worthless pig" as he was asked to leave the party(and he was already in a jealous rage)? Imagining all the emotion that goes along with relationships, jealousy, hurt, fear, etc. Justified or not, that alone can drive a person to an emotional crisis. If this shooter was in that state of mind, and THEN had to hear people calling him a "worthless pig". Denigrating his job/career. Something people take a great deal of pride and draw self worth from... I think those are some pretty extraordinary circumstances that could cause someone to snap. This is not to excuse what he did by any means. But if people want to have an honest conversation about how to prevent a situatin like this... rather than blame lack of psychological testing which surely can't replicate situations like this, perhaps it out to be suggested that when people encounter a person who is in a fit of jealous rage, the LAST thing to do is to escalate an already explosively volatile situation by calling him a "worthless pig"


But oh well... Media always needs to find the smoking gun.