America's Mental Health Triage Room: Walmart

A few months ago I covered an incident where a man entered a Walmart in Rockford, Illinois.  He was so upset about his racist feelings that he took two different knives off the shelves in two different parts of the store,  and wandered around until he found a black employee to stab to death.  That employee was a teenager, a high school student, someone who never saw his attacker coming.  But the alleged attacker (who I don't believe has been convicted yet) says that he couldn't get the mental healthcare that he needed, so he had no other choice.

Now, as a veteran paramedic, and a white person, and someone who went for many years without the mental healthcare that I needed, I find everything about that completely infuriating.  First of all, no matter how much you may dislike other people, keep your hands to yourself.  You have freedom of speech.  We have to tolerate whatever you want to say. 

But also Walmart, with their casino-like security, had an obligation to protect that young man's life.  They have so much security.  Why was he able to wander through the store gathering weapons for that length of time?  Look how much police presence there always is at Walmart, aside from the myriad security people and eyes in the sky.

As a white person, I have no use for this stabby idiot and would happily trade him for the highly productive high-schooler he allegedly murdered any time.  Lastly, as a paramedic, I can't guess how many people I took to the emergency room with mental health problems that could and should have been dealt with some other way, like a primary care or urgent care physician.  I spent so much time carrying people like him to the drowning emergency room, while people sat in wrecked cars, or having heart attacks, wondering where their ambulance was.  His failure to get himself together and seek help doesn't demand a human sacrifice by the rest of society.  Everything about that is a deep fail, on every level.  Simply infuriating.

But the lady in this video luckily didn't kill anyone -- although she really might have.  That's fortunate, because she has two very small kids.  This could have been a much worse outcome all the way around.  

My point is that Walmart just isn't the place for everyone to come when they have one too many feelings about racism and they need to unload on some random person.  So many people in America are ticking bombs, ready to shoot up a school or run over a Christmas parade.

I'm showing this video because the young lady doesn't seem drunk or high.  It's strictly maturity and mental health with her, potentially fixable issues.   The Rockford stabber is a mature neckbeard and his brain is probably ruined from drugs.  Hopefully he won't come out of prison and it's Clorox in the gene pool.  But she has two small kids and could have more.  So it's crucial to intervene and get her on track now, which may not be possible based on what I can see in this video.  Luckily she has relatives who seem very decent and capable of caring for her children if/when she flames all the way out.

This young lady's baby's shoe fell in a parking lot and she didn't notice right away.  A stranger kicked it out of the road, he says so it wouldn't get hit by a car.  They both agree that she ran up to him and demanded he pick it up and give it to her.  He declined.  The two of them, plus a witness, say she shoved him and then tripped him to the ground.  He got up and kept walking away with an older lady, presumably his mother -- who never said anything. 

Body cam shows that the police -- who were dealing with a shoplifter about 130 feet away -- came to investigate the shouting. 

• The police dropped what they were doing when they heard this woman yelling from way over yonder, is the only way she got onto their radar.  Just pointing that out LOL
  

The man who allegedly got shoved and tripped to the ground didn't call the cops on her.  The baby's mother was still screaming at him.  He was walking away when the police approached and asked for his ID.  He immediately gave his license to the officer and thanked her for being calm and not aggressive.

Another woman in a van is there, and the guy who got shoved down and walked away silently begs her to speak to the police.  He thanks her when she does.  She agrees with everything he said about it.   He kicked the shoe away so it wouldn't get run over before somebody could find it.  He hadn't seen the mother.  And he didn't want to touch it.

In this whole video there is only one person who ever raises their voice.  She can be heard shouting on the phone the whole time the police are getting calm, rational statements from the other people.

Her statement to the police begins at 10:07.  The most interesting thing about this video is that everyone is perfectly calm except the lady who started it, and she's completely off the rails.  She seems to need maybe inpatient therapy.   I would consider at least a mood stabilizer for her. 

But as much time as I spend criticizing the police on this blog, their job is apparently to be mental health workers who are prepared to shoot you if necessary while investigating your shoplifting activities.  I'm just saying.  Watch the segments that I time stamp, it's pretty amazing the job they do sometimes.

The cop keeps saying, "Okay," and in that process he gets her to admit to "I believe my fingernail went in his arm.  I did not reach at him.  I did not try to grab him."  LOL  "And yes, the situation did elevate.  And I do apologize -- not to him, because he was very disrespectful at the mouth.  Had it been another race, I'm pretty sure he would've picked up [the shoe].  That's how the situation elevated a little quickly.  I would never put my hands on nobody."  Which makes sense because her nail went into his arm.

Then the cop does a quick recap of her statement and asks her, "Was there any other contact or anything else happened?

"I tripped him.  Yes I did."  D'OH!

She goes on explaining and apologizing -- not to the guy she tripped.  But justifying why she had to trip him, he was so rude for not picking up the shoe.

"The situation escalated," says the woman who created a situation and then escalated it.  "I came here to waste time," she further elaborates.  "I hear you.  I get it," replies the heavily armed social worker.

"She drop kicked him!" the Walmart loss-prevention officer gasps upon reviewing the video. 

At 18:51 the super-chill guy says he doesn't want to press charges.  He just wants her to understand that she can't do this anymore.  He hasn't heard her blaming him, calling him a racist, saying how rude he was, apologizing to everyone but him.   He probably can't imagine how little chance there is of her getting that message.  But he's the perfect guy for her to have shoved in the first place, the guy who didn't break her jaw.

His mother convinces him that he should press charges, and I agree.  The woman is completely out of control.  She won't learn even with charges.

At 22:30 look at her face when she realizes she's being arrested.  That thought has never entered her mind, that there could be consequences to tripping a random person in a parking lot.

I could almost feel sorry for her as panic sets in.  She remembers that she only went to Walmart to kill time while her other child was at a birthday party at the skating rink.  This was all a big nothing in which her mood got completely out of control and now she's going to jail. 

But she goes straight into victim mode about being a single mother.  Her super-nice cousin comes to pick up her kids.  And she cycles through a full range of bad behavior that I don't think can be helped, including DARVO:  Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.  And that suggests she knows she was wrong in the first place.  That's why it was good that he pressed charges.

• That's so racist, I didn't even put my hands on him.
  
• Where are the cameras?  Can I use this?
  
• Can I reverse this on him please?
  
• Does this make me a criminal in terms of a job?
  

And then she sits down and starts crying, while the police officer social worker talks her through an anxiety attack and they wait for her cousin to come and pick up her kids, so they won't see mommy getting handcuffed.  Really everyone is being super nice but her.  She continues apologizing to the police over and over, and presumably still not to the man she intentionally tripped.  She's looking for a way to charge him with something.

From the channel creator of the linked video:

"Update Sentencing: Nolle Prosequi (charges dismissed) Defendant participated in treatment; she has no prior or subsequent arrests. The victim agrees with the dismissal Unsecured judicial release bond(no cost)"

I agree that this woman doesn't need to be in jail.  What concerns me is the past tense for "participated in treatment." Because she has serious issues that can't be helped in one or two sessions.  And she's raising kids.