Category: Paint me surprised by this
Chicago police officers investigate a shooting on Thursday, May 30, 2013. (Photo by Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
I dream of one day getting a government grant to investigate why drivers in black cars are always the last to turn their headlights on. For a couple million of U.S. money, I’d happily sit in a lawn chair with a clipboard and yellow pad beside the Interstate, and tick off the colors of the cars that are still running unlighted well after dusk. Then I’d construct impressive Excel spreadsheets and use those to generate attractive tables and graphs. With proper funding, I could make that project last for years.
I was reminded of my idea by a recent piece in the Washington Post that detailed a study by Andrew V. Papachristos, an associate professor of sociology at Yale University. Papachristos studied murders in Chicago and discovered if you spend a lot of time around criminals, you’re a lot more likely to be shot. Who’da thunk?
As Papachristos reported: “More than 40 percent of all gun homicides in the study occurred within a network of 3,100 people, roughly 4 percent of the community’s population. Simply being among the 4 percent increased a person’s odds of being killed by a gun by 900 percent.”
Now I know you’re thinking this just proves hoary old maxims like “lie down with dogs, come up with fleas,” and it is true that this is yet another example of university research expending lots of time and money to prove something we all know to be the case.
But it is very useful in the current context. The antis are saying that our division of society into good and bad people is unrealistic and — of course — racist. They argue there is no such thing as a good person, and no one — whether Nobel laureate or gangbanger — is really to be trusted with a gun. Conversely, they argue there are no bad people, just people in bad circumstances.
Well, Prof. Papachristos apparently has demonstrated the opposite. There are those in the world who are bad people. If you are one of their friends or neighbors, you are likely to catch a bullet, whether intentionally or by accident. The obvious answer to the problem? Remove bad people from society. If you can by some alchemy make them into good people, by all means do. If not, sequester them far from the rest of us.
Knowing that requires no affiliation with Yale, but it’s always good to see elite academics stumble into the truth.
WRITTEN BY WILL DABBS, MD
You really wouldn’t think there should be a sign on these
things reading, “Do Not Eat,” but you just never know.
I don’t know where you stand on the subject of demonic possession, but I made an acquaintance at a big inner-city hospital who offered some unique insights on the subject.
Modern medicine excels at quantifying things. If more than two people suddenly start having similar symptoms, some research physician someplace is going to hang an eponym on it and celebrate having discovered a new disease.
As an example, the Fregoli Delusion is a delusional misidentification syndrome wherein the sufferer is convinced that different individuals are, in fact, a single person capable of changing their appearance at will. It was named after 19th-century Italian actor Leopoldo Fregoli. Fregoli was notorious for his ability to alter his appearance during a stage production. As you might imagine, not a lot of folks suffer from this disease.
One of the more common forms of psychosis, however, is paranoid schizophrenia. This unfortunate malady typically results in delusions and hallucinations, usually auditory, that blur the lines between what is real and what isn’t. While there are some great medications that can help treat this problem, if left to its own devices, paranoid schizophrenia can make it all but impossible to lead a normal life. And then there was Robert, who took everything to the next level.
I met Robert on a Monday morning. While on my inpatient psych rotation as a medical resident, I got weekends off. That meant that if someone showed up acting strangely in the ER over the weekend, the ER guys would just tuck them away on the psych floor. As a result, you just never knew what would be waiting for you when you showed up for work on Monday morning.
Robert was a simply incredible physical specimen. He looked like an African-American Arnold Schwarzenegger circa 1984. The guy was just huge. He was also articulate, engaging and friendly. He began acting weird over the weekend, so his family took him to the ER. Once there, he swallowed a drywall screw and the hypodermic needle off of a syringe he retrieved from the sharps container. That earned him a ticket to the psych floor.
Robert, whose name has been changed to protect privacy, shot a total stranger with a .38 revolver for the most unsettling of reasons.
Robert had worked in a sketchy part of town, so he began carrying a .38 revolver for protection. One day, he passed several Hispanic gentlemen on the side of the road. One of the voices in his head told him that a particular member of the group was going to hurt somebody. He further explained that this individual, if left to his own devices, might actually hurt Robert.
Therefore, he drew his weapon and shot a total stranger five times in the belly because the voices in his head told him to do so. This got the attention of local law enforcement. Robert subsequently spent the next five years in prison. As near as I could tell, the only thing he did for those five years was lift weights.
Robert had only been out of prison for about 30 days when we met. He stopped taking his medications, something the voices in his head directed him to do whenever they needed him to be “thinking clearly,” and, predictably, began acting weird. We got his meds regulated, packaged him up, and sent him home.
Roughly one-fifth of Americans suffer from some sort of diagnosable mental illness. Fortunately, very few are as severe as Robert. While his chart proclaimed that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, Robert was convinced that it was something altogether more.
At least 1,376 troops in the Texas National Guard have faced pay issues since September, according to internal documents obtained by Military.com. 109 issues still remain for the roughly 6,800 Texas troops assigned to the mission.
The troops are part of the nearly year-old state mission ordered by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that has seen reports of a wave of suicides and self harm on the mission, alcohol abuse, and troops facing severe financial hardship.
National Guard officials have responded to reporting about pay and discipline issues by describing coverage as being built on “nebulous charges.”
Col. Rita Holton, a Texas Guard spokesperson, told Military.com earlier in January that 82 soldiers were facing pay issues, while the document revealing pay issues that was reviewed by Military.com was dated Friday. The Texas National Guard did not respond to a request for comment ahead of this story’s publication.
The pay issues range from soldiers being shortchanged, sometimes by thousands of dollars, to minor discrepancies. One Guardsman interviewed by Military.com received a $100 paycheck after two weeks of duty, a period when that Guardsman should have received a minimum of around $2,000. Meanwhile, some troops were overpaid, which can have a domino effect where pay is withheld unexpectedly from future checks.
Of the outstanding pay issues, 19 troops were overpaid and 90 are missing checks. It is unclear how far back the outstanding pay issues go.
Military.com had previously reported that there had been accounts of issues with pay, but the internal National Guard document obtained by the publication is the first to provide specifics on the number of soldiers affected.
While Texas has seemingly made progress on the pay issues, it is unclear why those issues existed to begin with, or why so many soldiers were impacted. Some senior officials interviewed point to troops swiftly being mobilized en masse, sometimes with days’ notice.
For troops to deploy under state orders, they have to fill out entirely new W-4 forms, which makes them state employees. Because of that paperwork, Texas effectively hired a thousands-strong labor force with little notice or logistical support.
“I don’t know what’s going on; our state never had this problem. But imagine this, how in the world did Texas add thousands of employees to the payroll system?” one senior Guard official from another state told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. “The scale is not surprising, but it’s also heartbreaking.”
A key issue, current Texas Guardsmen who were interviewed by Military.com said, was many checks not being itemized. That means that when soldiers are paid it is unclear what days they have been paid for — making it difficult to track whether they’ve received the correct amounts.
Some soldiers have faced financial hardship due to state orders earning them significantly less money than their civilian jobs. State orders also do not come with benefits, which are associated with active duty federal orders and typically pay soldiers less.
On Friday, Holton issued a statement that included criticism of media reports, including some from Military.com.
“There have been nebulous charges that service members are not being paid. This is inaccurate. While there have been administrative pay challenges, currently every service member assigned to Operation Lone Star is being paid,” Holton said.
Yet, in the same statement, Holton noted that a lot of troops still have unresolved pay issues, many of which have been brewing for months.
“75 percent of pay discrepancies have been resolved, to include, back
pay for those who have been paid inaccurate amounts,” Holton’s statement added.
— Steve Beynon