Limits to Law and Information Sharing, Despite Gunman's Danger Signs

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U.S. |Limits to Law and Information Sharing, Despite Gunmanâ€™s Danger Signs

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Friends of one of Friday night’s victims, Christopher Michaels-Martinez, consoled each other in front of the shop in Isla Vista, Calif., where he was shot to death. Monica Almeida/The New York Times

LOS ANGELES â€” 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.

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Mr. Rodger, 22, had been planning his â€œDay of Retribution,â€ 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 â€” if not as explicitly threatening as the one he posted the day of the attack â€” nonetheless showed an extremely disturbed young man.

Elliot Rodger Santa Barbara County Sheriff Department

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 â€” and the network of communications between police authorities and schools â€” 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.

â€œIf you look back at any kind of bad situation, there are generally people who have information, but they donâ€™t know what to do with it,â€ 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 â€œmake 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.â€

â€œMany professionals have let the pendulum swing so far that they believe their primary mandate is to protect privacy at all costs,â€ he said.

Still, the missed opportunities, viewed with the benefit of hindsight, are at once frustrating and understandable.

Mr. Rodgerâ€™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.

â€œThe police interrogated me outside for a few minutes, asking me if I had suicidal thoughts,â€ he wrote in a 140-page manifesto explaining his plans for mass murder. â€œI tactfully told them that it was all a misunderstanding, and they finally left.â€

The police determined they had no grounds to hold him for psychiatric examination â€” 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. â€œThey rely too heavily on how they feel about the person at the time they interview him,â€ he said. The deputies, he said, should have â€œcared 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.â€

Mr. Rodger rejected attempts by his parents and therapists to treat him. â€œI donâ€™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,â€ 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 â€œThe Hunger Games.â€

â€œElliot never spoke about guns,â€ Mr. Astaire said. â€œNever. Never. Wasnâ€™t part of his character. There was no fascination with it. He didnâ€™t like violent movies as such. That was not part of his character.â€

Laws that set down a mental health professionalâ€™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, â€œElliot Rodgerâ€™s Retribution,â€ 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 serviceâ€™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 siteâ€™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.

â€œYouTube may have an ethical obligation to monitor postings,â€ he said. â€œBut there are so many postings every day that that becomes truly impossible.â€

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 â€œstrong crisis intervention response structure and teamâ€ and provides extensive personal counseling to students, said Lori Gaskin, the president of the school.

â€œHowever, Elliot Rodgerâ€™s connection to the college was limited,â€ she said in an email on Monday. â€œAfter 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.â€

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.