Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Crazy: The Deadly Insanity of the Berkeley Hills Killer



Last weekend's murder of Berkeley Hills resident Peter Cukor has been blamed, at least in part, by the diversion of police resources to babysit an Occupy march. But, don't let that distract you from the more basic fact that the alleged murderer was a sadly familiar Bay Area "type:" the mentally ill - indeed deranged - person wandering the streets, secure from institutionalization because of his "civil rights."

The 23-year old who is suspected of killing a 67-year old man in the Berkeley hills on February 18 is a paranoid schizophrenic who has been in and out of mental institutions for the past five years. 
Despite his severe mental illness, Daniel Jordan Dewitt has never been committed to long-term psychiatric care, which his family felt he needed, according a family friend who asked not to be named. State laws make it very difficult for anyone to be institutionalized against their will. 
“I can’t tell you how many times he has been in and out of the hospital,” Candy Dewitt told the Oakland Tribune. “I don’t know what happened but our system has to change or else this will keep happening.” 
“Our system is such that they go in, they shove them full of all kinds of antipsychotics and put them back out on the street again,” DeWitt told KTVU Channel 2.

All sympathy to Cukor and his family, but you don't go outside to "confront" someone without carrying a baseball bat. The police likely weren't going to come, Occupiers or not. The fact is that there are enough nuts walking around, especially in progressive paradises like Berkeley, that the police simply can't respond to every call about some guy lurking in the garage. Hey, it happens. 


If you read the comments in the linked article, you'll see the standard line you read/hear from Progs anytime a crazy person kills an innocent: they always say "It's Reagan's fault." (hey, what isn't?) "Reagan" must be a ghost who wanders the halls of the State Capitol preventing liberal legislators from appropriating funds to institutionalize the insane. Progs can't be referring to the former governor of California since that Reagan left office 40 years ago and has done nothing to keep California from putting some of these nuts away. 


No, the real problem is that, at some point, it became a matter of left-wing legal orthodoxy that the insane have civil rights, so any and all attempts to rein these people in is welcomed with lawsuits and the like. So nothing gets done, the insane wander the streets, and every once in a while some unlucky soul crosses paths with a guy at the precise moment he does exactly what the voices in his head tell him to do. Sad. 



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