Why do they do it?

[Lilyofthevalley]

Today there was a tragedy in the world of my friends, in a tight knit community, in the State we so fondly call Zion. A young police officer shot his wife, mother-in-law, son, and daughter to death. He then turned the gun on himself. No one knows why. Their Facebook pages show a happy smiling family just back from Disney Land for the Holidays. They were loved, they were wanted, they were respected. Their friends and family are devastated and shocked.

I am no stranger to depression and desperation but...what makes someone do THIS? What is so overwhelming that there is no return and the only way out is murder suicide? Why did no one see this coming? What could have been done? Could it have been prevented? Are we all blind? Stupid? Self Focused? Apathetic? My heart is breaking, my mind is whirling...my little problems seem so small today.

 

[ProteinSnob]

Probably a myriad of reasons, but I'll start with what I think is a huge problem in the US. We don't treat mental health or even neurology with the same respect as other fields in healthcare. Problems with mental health are "invisible", unlike something like breast cancer. There's often a stigma attached. We also don't protect our citizens' quality of life enough. We do things in the US such as providing mental health services to criminals after a crime, but make no such allowance for the families of victims. We don't do enough to support the mental health of military and law enforcement personnel.

I love Utah, but the state hasn't even been able to get it's act together enough to pass legislation which would require health insurance policies to cover therapies (many of which fall under the mental health category) of children with severe autism (early intervention saves the state MILLIONS per person later when those children become adults). Most other states have already done this. Inexplicably, Utah has not.

 

[Larra]

My guess is that that happy smiling family photo was not a reflection of reality. There is so much that goes on behind closed doors that we don't know about. I'll give you a little example from my distant past. There was a family that went to our same synagogue. The parents and my parents were good friends and often socialized, played bridge, ate out together, spent holidays at each others homes, etc. The kids were about the same age as my brother and I, though they weren't very friendly with us (kind of snooty, as I recall, but not mean). We sometimes carpooled together. In other words, it seemed like the two families knew each other pretty well.
Then one New Year's day, the wife called my mother for help. Turns out she had been battered for years. She had finally reached the point where she was ready to move out. So, on New Year's day, my mother helped her find an apartment and move there. My job (I was home on vacation from college) was to hide boxes of china and linens that her parents had given her over the years somewhere in our house.
My mother had been friends with this woman for I don't know how many years, and never had an inkling that she was a battered woman, and my mother was no dummy. From the outside, all anyone saw was two intelligent, professional people with good careers and children in college, living in a nice home in a nice suburban neighborhood. That wasn't reality, and my guess is that your young family had something more going on than what met the eye, though we may never know what that something was. Your story is particularly sad in that the children, who had nothing to do with whatever the father's problems were, became collateral damage. The wife may have been collateral damage as well, or may have been involved in the pathology, don't know. Either way, none of them deserved this fate.
There is far more mental illness in our society than most people realize. It is stigmatized, hidden, and often goes untreated, sometimes due to shame, sometimes due to denial, sometimes because treatment isn't made available. I'm very sorry this has happened.

Larra

 

[MsVee]

My heart aches whenever I hear things like this. I know that many people are embarrassed to ask for help. Especially help with mental health issues. I often wonder if the family reached out for help and how that request was received.

We often treat mental illness like some dirty little secret. I wonder if we treated it like we treat diabetes or cancer if we could prevent or reduce tragedies of this type.


MsVee

 

[cajungirl]

DeeDee my heart breaks for you and your community.

We had a 32 year old RN commit murder suicide last week. His girlfriend was 26 years old and a RN also. Her friends tried to convince her to get away and she didn't, she feared for her life. Then this happened.

I can't understand the whys either.

 

[Spiky Bugger]

Part of the answer is adrenalin. (More on that later.) But, essentially, when you work, day after day, in an environment described as "eight hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of stark terror," your body's physical response starts to cause you to react to EVERY perceived threat to your environment as though you are defending yourself against saber-toothed cats...it's just the way we are built.

Also...
1--the craziest woman I know has a wallet FULL of family photos of smiling happy faces...including the one taken when her 14-year-old had a friend with a job at...and keys to...the city swimming pool, so that's where the 14-year-old was LIVING when the smiley picture was taken. Photos capture a moment in time...many times a staged, very unrealistic moment, choreographed to hide the chaos that is their reality.

2--Zion....for a while, Utah had the highest porn rental rates in the nation. Meaning, that the happier things look on the surface (see above) the more I suspect that reality is entirely different. This cop didn't FIRE his weapon...he just used it to beat the crap out of his father, the sheriff, who as schtupping the shooter's wife. In Zion. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/56697492-78/brewer-police-moab-wife.html.csp

3--I have a lot of experience interacting with cops. I worked in that field (but not with a badge and gun) and I had MANY family members in that field. They are particularly at risk for that behavior. Their professional world TENDS TO BE very black or white...and real life doesn't always conform to that pattern. Cops are taught ESCALATING ways to deal with people who don't do what the cop tells them to do. That may be the simple explanation for the popcorn-armed father vs firearm-carrying retired cop in the theater last week...result, one dead dad.

4--and it's nothing new...forty years ago, a county sheriff's deputy where we lived came home early (planned or unplanned) and encountered wife with boyfriend. He shot them both and took off, in his cop car. They talked the guy down because they had contact with him via his car radio. (Before cell phones.) If it hadn't been for the radio, he may have killed himself as well. It is, too often, how cops solve problems.

5--a slightly smaller version your local situation was played out a year ago, down the street from a friend of our daughter:
http://www.jrn.com/ktnv/news/188086131.html?lc=Tablet

The underlying issue, as I see it, is that when you live in a world that you think is as "orderly" as Pleasantville, and then things start to change...and your adrenalin starts pumping, again, you probably don't have a lot of coping mechanisms at your disposal.

 

[JackieOnLine]

very interesting, Sue.

 

[Spiky Bugger]

very interesting, Sue.

Thanks for saying so, Jackie. Living with those folks can be just normal life or it can be a special kind of living on the edge. I knew a guy who sat in his kitchen shooting dishes because his wife hadn't washed them...and he HAD told her to. And, most of the time, they are convinced that THEY are always right and everyone else is wrong.

I read on a retired cop site where several were posting about a current situation where cops from one department arrested a cop from another department for drunk driving. They were OUTRAGED, that the guy who made the arrest hadn't "done the right thing," and hadn't "had the brother cop's back."

Even worse with that kind of judgement, they are all old farts and they all still want their guns. There was a reunion of sorts to which I was invited. I was encouraged to bring my husband. I asked him. He said, "Do I want to go to lunch in a room full of 70- and 80-year-olds who are armed, drinking, and haven't qualified at the range for thirty years? Take Bruce. Isn't that why we keep him?" (Bruce was an ex-boyfriend who had morphed into "friend of the family" years before I met my hero. So I was still in touch with him. Bruce was my date for that event!)

Cops serve a valuable purpose in our society. Many are REAL heroes. But a huge percentage of street cops and undercover types have suffered physical/emotional damage from years and years of triggering their fight-or-flight response, sometimes more than once per shift. And, in that culture, seeking psychological help is evidence of weakness...John Wayne wouldn't do it...so they reject it. And they remain damaged.


ETA: Catecholamine must know more about this than I do...the fight-or-flight response triggers a release of catecholamines which "increase heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, muscle strength, and mental alertness. They also lower the amount of blood going to the skin and increase blood going to the major organs, such as the brain, heart, and kidneys."

 

[SHales]

Thanks for saying so, Jackie. Living with those folks can be just normal life or it can be a special kind of living on the edge. I knew a guy who sat in his kitchen shooting dishes because his wife hadn't washed them...and he HAD told her to. And, most of the time, they are convinced that THEY are always right and everyone else is wrong.

I read on a retired cop site where several were posting about a current situation where cops from one department arrested a cop from another department for drunk driving. They were OUTRAGED, that the guy who made the arrest hadn't "done the right thing," and hadn't "had the brother cop's back."

Even worse with that kind of judgement, they are all old farts and they all still want their guns. There was a reunion of sorts to which I was invited. I was encouraged to bring my husband. I asked him. He said, "Do I want to go to lunch in a room full of 70- and 80-year-olds who are armed, drinking, and haven't qualified at the range for thirty years? Take Bruce. Isn't that why we keep him?" (Bruce was an ex-boyfriend who had morphed into "friend of the family" years before I met my hero. So I was still in touch with him. Bruce was my date for that event!)

Cops serve a valuable purpose in our society. Many are REAL heroes. But a huge percentage of street cops and undercover types have suffered physical/emotional damage from years and years of triggering their fight-or-flight response, sometimes more than once per shift. And, in that culture, seeking psychological help is evidence of weakness...John Wayne wouldn't do it...so they reject it. And they remain damaged.


ETA: Catecholamine must know more about this than I do...the fight-or-flight response triggers a release of catecholamines which "increase heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, muscle strength, and mental alertness. They also lower the amount of blood going to the skin and increase blood going to the major organs, such as the brain, heart, and kidneys."

My son is a State Trooper. I worry about him all the time. My worry is that he will be hurt, not that he will shoot himself or anyone else. He is a great person but everything in his world IS black or white. Even when he was young, if it wasn't right, it was wrong. I don't think he has ever told a lie, other than maybe one of omission. My hope is because we are in such a rural area that he stays safe. I am glad he isn't in a high crime area and that he isn't a regular cop and so normally doesn't get called out on things like domestic violence, etc, unless the locals need him for back up. Why oh why couldn't he have been a vet or something?

 

[hilary1617]

Larra and Sue, excellent points both.

I'd add a quote from Thoreau's Walden that I find an unfortunate, but keen observation on the human condition, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

In my circles, as I suspect in most, there is definitely pressure to keep discussion of "dirty laundry" behind closed doors and maintain an outward veneer of good cheer whatever the circumstances. "Successfully managing" a situation generally involves keeping quiet.

It must be terribly difficult for a police officer or soldier to turn off the trained responses when dealing with personal events.... I wish as a society we could provide better psychological support for those who serve, as well as those who are ill, and somehow remove the stigma of treatment for those who have repressed serious problems to "avoid shame".

Sad.

 

[Elizabeth N.]

Even worse with that kind of judgement, they are all old farts and they all still want their guns. There was a reunion of sorts to which I was invited. I was encouraged to bring my husband. I asked him. He said, "Do I want to go to lunch in a room full of 70- and 80-year-olds who are armed, drinking, and haven't qualified at the range for thirty years? Take Bruce. Isn't that why we keep him?" (Bruce was an ex-boyfriend who had morphed into "friend of the family" years before I met my hero. So I was still in touch with him. Bruce was my date for that event!)

I SO WANT to meet you guys in person someday.....

 

[Spiky Bugger]

I SO WANT to meet you guys in person someday.....

Oh good! But I've been told I look better in the avatar photo!

 

[JackieOnLine]

I know I look wiser in mine.

 

[Whit]

I am so sorry this has happened. Heartbreaking. I wish your community healing.

 

[Elizabeth N.]

Oh good! But I've been told I look better in the avatar photo!

Dammit I wish you guys could come to high altitude Montana..... And like I give a **** how you LOOK?!