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[UXLZ]

I get a bad gut feeling from everything. (I have stomach problems. :v)

Silly jokes aside... I can see this blowing up a bit.

[Frumple]

... can't say I've heard much of cops bringing suspects through the drive-through, no. Or fast food in general, whatever happened (I can't actually see the linked website. Thing's just a blank black background.). Heard plenty of them holding suspects without food (or water, sometimes) for extended periods (and often for considerably less than, you know, multiple homicide), but luxury foodstuffs (which fast food is, if about as low on that totem pole as it gets) isn't something you hear much about.

Occasionally in crime dramas or whatever, I guess, but considering how little those things represent real police proceedings, I'd imagine they get that wrong, too.

[BurnedToast]

The fact that you refuse to accept that a non-mentally ill person could do this doesn't mean it's impossible.  Also in any case better mental healthcare would have done nothing to help here in any case since he hadn't been identified as needing it, unless you're proposing some kind of weird thought-police policy.

But there's no evidence that he considered himself to be mentally ill.  And really I don't either - all the evidence has pointed to him being an ideologically driven violent racist.

I would argue that going into a church (or really, any place) and murdering 9 innocent, unarmed people is pretty damn strong evidence for mental illness.

They will, of course, say he's sane so that they can execute him and the public can have the revenge it desires but that seems absurd to me. How can you honestly claim that gunning down 9 people to try and start a race war is the act of a sane person? How could a rational, working mind ever come to the conclusion that it was a good idea to do something like that?

[Dutchling]

It's not just the mentally ill who do immoral stuff you know.

[Leafsnail]

Being a bad person is not actually a recognized mental illness.

[Graknorke]

How could a rational, working mind ever come to the conclusion that it was a good idea to do something like that?

1) Black people are invading his country and trying to undermine and take over the country and society that he values
2) While doing so they are also raping all of the American women and being violent, rather than it being a quiet and subversive takeover.
3) Despite 2, nobody will do anything to get rid of black people from America legally.

Are you seriously saying that you can't imagine why he'd try and go on a race war, given that he outright stated that he believed 1 and 2, and 3 is a true fact?

[Descan]

There've been a lot of murderers and dictators (I won't say his name, but it's Hitler) who have been all too sane. (You don't get to be the head of a nation and win the hearts and minds of enough people to have the Holocaust happen without being sane. Sociopathic, maybe, but sociopathy is kind of a special case.)

It's too easy to blame mental illness and go "Why don't we lock these people up sooner?" except that wouldn't really help at all and too many innocent people with actual problems would get caught in the crossfire and have those problems exasperated.

Just dealing with schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder or other disorders alone is hard enough, it doesn't need to be made harder by having every other person who knows you have it thinks you're a wrong Micky-Dee's order away from a killing spree.

[Frumple]

Yeah... we have a great deal of human history more or less detailing how terrifyingly easy it is to get sane people to commit atrocities. Yes, a murder spree is generally what you'd consider evidence for mental illness, but it's not proof of it, and there's a lot of cases -- such as, to all appearances, the case being spoken of -- where the person committing the act is not mentally ill. The situation they're in just such that they're able and willing to perform terrible acts, often on people who are to outside observers entirely undeserving of such things. Sometimes they're just terrible people, sometimes they're just in a terrible situation. Sometimes something in between. That doesn't make them insane.

To an extent, it's almost unfortunate. Mental illness is something often identifiable and sometimes treatable, or at least able to be largely mitigated in ill effects. Baseline human psychology is... less addressable. We want people like Roof to be insane, because that means we don't have to address the conditions that led to his actions. We just have to fix the person, rather than attend and be aware of the fact that their actions are a potential weakness for anyone, not just the mentally ill. There but for the grace of god, as the saying goes

[Redzephyr01]

I really don't understand why people are mad at the police for giving the guy food. They can't just let him starve.

[Graknorke]

I really don't understand why people are mad at the police for giving the guy food. They can't just let him starve.

Well first of all the police can and have been more than willing to let prisoners starve in the past. And secondly, it was McDonalds. Bought with police money. It's not a large extravagance, but it's more than the police typically goes to.

[Frumple]

I really don't understand why people are mad at the police for giving the guy food. They can't just let him starve.

... because it's a case of the police treating a murderer better than they treat non-violent protesters. Of giving someone that just killed nine people more expensive food than parts of the country allow people on bloody food stamps, that have done nothing except being poor.

Folks are pissed because it's a possible sign of fairly disgusting bias. They can't let him starve -- though there are precincts in this country perfectly willing to let protesters who have been stuck in a cell without even being charged go without food for dozens of hours -- but that doesn't mean he deserves special treatment. Which is what this is seen as.

Though maybe they had some kind of good reason for doing so. It's not impossible. Just damned unlikely.

[Redzephyr01]

Giving him food doesn't hurt anyone. It's not making the suffering of anyone else any worse. Hell, he hasn't even been convicted yet.

[Sheb]

I think it's just people going "fucking criminal don't deserve to be treated fairly".

[Graknorke]

Again: It's because the police have treated other people worse for doing less.

[Redzephyr01]

That doesn't justify treating someone else bad. The police shouldn't have treated those other people bad either.