
Amateur ISIS Investigator Ends Up in Prison - mhb
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/an-amateur-vs-isis-a-car-salesman-investigates-and-ends-up-in-prison.html
======
user24
Holy Moly.

> Without access to his records, prison psychologists assumed his tales of
> talking to Islamic State members were fiction, symptoms of a mental illness
> that made him incompetent to stand trial. Prosecutors sought a hearing to
> decide whether he should be forcibly medicated.

~~~
tamana
This is sadly common. There was a famous case where a woman in a car accident
was committed to a psychiatric prison because they didn't believe that Obama
followed her on Twitter. Psychs believe that anyone who claims to know famous
people is insane, just like cops believe everyone they encounter in the beat
who looks sketchy is a criminal. Psychiatry is petty in the same way as
police: anyone who seems "better" than the official is taken down a notch
using the official's power.

------
fyirt
Guy was clearly unstable and in over his head. Not against the law mind you,
but his mental health was deteriorating (by his own mothers admission) and he
began threatening FBI agents.

The 14 months in prison without due process could have been expanded on more
in the article, there was next to no info regarding that situation which
leaves the reader with a fair few unanswered questions.

~~~
tptacek
What's there to say? Involuntary mental health commitment in the US is a
disaster. The doctors operating state-run mental health prisons are overworked
and underqualified. And, if you've had run-ins with the doctors operating
_private_ mental health hospitals, you know that's saying something!

Lopez was apparently armed and, from the picture painted in this article,
pretty much unhinged. Something needed to be done. But the only "something"
the criminal justice system has in its bag of things is, by pretty much all
accounts everywhere, a total debacle.

Are things better in other countries? Who's doing this well? What does Norway
do?

~~~
tinco
In The Netherlands I imagine it would go like this:

He would annoy the AIVD (or RIVD?), at some point possibly breaking a law (the
threat). The AIVD isn't authorised to arrest I think, so they would make a
complaint and a police officer would come to his door, interrogate him,
recognise the mental health issues and send a note to his physician.

The physician would call the guy and try to get him into a voluntary
institution or at least to see some kind of therapist on a weekly basis. Let's
say the guy is unreceptive to his.

Next step is that a social worker in his neighbourhood (this is a new system
called wijkteam) is assigned to him that will visit his residence once a week.
The worker will knock on his door and try to connect and build trust, family
and friends are encouraged to participate in this process.

If the guy screws up too bad though, and the police gets involved another time
or two the physician will be asked to authorise an involuntary treatment and
he would end up in an institution of which would be much like a rich state in
the US (NY, CA) one I think.

Note that nowhere in this process there would be a solitary confinement or
separation from his family. That might happen in the NL but I can't imagine it
would ever happen for more than a few days.

~~~
tptacek
NY and CA state-run mental hospitals are deeply unpleasant and staffed with
overworked, underqualified doctors who have caseloads consisting of the very
most difficult patients in numbers that would overwhelm private-practice
doctors even if they were just teenagers with mild eating disorders. Is that
the case in the Netherlands as well?

(For whatever it's worth: the NYT piece doesn't say Lopez was ever held in
solitary, or that he was denied visitation by his family --- but solitary
confinement is a distinctive US problem and a legit contrast to draw with the
Netherlands).

~~~
ryanlol
> solitary confinement is a distinctive US problem

Not really, it's a problem in Europe too. We just don't talk about it.

If you get arrested here in Finland, you'll by default be in solitary and will
remain so until the cops, not the courts, feel like letting you out.

~~~
roywiggins
Has anyone tried to challenge that sort of thing in the European Court of
Human Rights?

~~~
ryanlol
Yes, and Finland for example has consistently lost. The problem is that in
practice these court decisions only end up benefiting the individuals bringing
the suits, as it's almost impossible for public workers to get fired here they
can safely ignore those decisions in most cases.

------
cubano
I found the most surprising aspect of the article was the guy absolutely
refusing to believe that his Skype contact was phony and trying to scam money
from him, even when the very law enforcement he so trusted to help "save the
hostages" 1/2 way across the world told him so.

I wonder what sort of physiological issues must be present, and why, that
allows someone to be sucked so deeply into believing the fantasy of the
situation, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, and how that very thing
exists in so many other decisions that confront people.

~~~
faster
I just finished a book[1] that explains this pretty clearly. Dissonance
between reality and a person's self-image (i.e. "I am difficult to fool") is
often 'resolved' in favor of the more important factor, which is the person's
self-image. So they deny reality.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-
Not/dp/B003HFFI...](http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-
Not/dp/B003HFFIUM/)

~~~
greenyoda
That book looks very interesting, but note that you link to an old edition.
The new edition is here:

[http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-but-
Not/dp/05445747...](http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-but-
Not/dp/0544574788)

This URL also lets you preview the book with a "Look Inside" link.

------
ghshephard
This guy was really asking for trouble when he went ballistic on an FBI agent,
from the article:

 _he sent an agent 80 increasingly overheated messages in 10 days. In one, he
declared, “Just remember whatever ends up happening to you … You deserved it,”
and added an expletive._

~~~
tyingq
Valid reason to arrest him. Not a valid reason to sit in prison for 14 months,
with no due process, trial, etc.

Edit: Also, to me, the context is fairly clear that the "threat" of "whatever
ends up happening to you" is talking about the potential embarrassment or
career consequences to the agent around ignoring advice that might save some
hostage. He was (incorrectly) convinced he was trying to save lives, and
frustrated that nobody would take him seriously.

~~~
tptacek
Just to be clear: he was in prison for a portion of his detention, after being
arrested for making the threat and being informed by his mother that he was
armed. He was then moved to involuntary psychiatric commitment.

The article is unclear on the amount of time he spent in each kind of
detention, but gives the strong impression --- by marking time in terms of
psychiatric evaluations --- that most of it was spent in psychiatric inpatient
detention.

~~~
tyingq
>>most of it was spent in psychiatric inpatient detention

Apparently, mostly because extremely important information needed to make a
serious psychological evaluation wasn't made available to the medical people
doing those evaluations.

See this image from the article:
[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/04/24/us/24salesman-
psy...](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/04/24/us/24salesman-
psych/24salesman-psych-articleLarge.jpg) They finally got the information on
his 3rd eval, which is what led to his release. All charges were dropped at
that point.

~~~
tptacek
Maybe. But the documents make a pretty compelling case for mental illness,
because they also indicate that he expected to talk to the President about
freeing Kayla Mueller, and became unhinged after she died. Lopez's grandiose
claims about his connections to ISIS _were in fact fictional_ \--- it looks
like he was being set up for an advance-fee scam.

None of this is meant to excuse the criminal mental health care system in the
US, which is, I think, criminal.

I think it took over a year in Lopez's case because pretty much nobody gives a
shit about people in this system.

------
DanBC
If you live in England and think this kind of psychiatric detention needs
stronger controls you might be interested in looking at becoming a "Mental
Health Act Manager", or "Hospital Manager". This is often a voluntary position
that looks at some detentions under the Mental Health Act and sometimes orders
the de-sectioning of people detained under section.

[http://www.mentalhealthcare.org.uk/mental_health_act](http://www.mentalhealthcare.org.uk/mental_health_act)

[https://www.rethink.org/resources/m/mental-health-
act](https://www.rethink.org/resources/m/mental-health-act)

[https://www.rethink.org/living-with-mental-illness/mental-
he...](https://www.rethink.org/living-with-mental-illness/mental-health-
laws/discharge-from-detention)

In England it's rare to become a mental health inpatient. Only about 8% of the
people getting care from mental health trusts ever go in-patient. Some of that
is lack of beds (especially for children), but mostly it's because hospitals
are sometimes harmful (This is true for physical health too) and people should
get better care from "Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Teams" (for short
term emergency care) and community teams (for longer term recovery and
rehabilitation).

But if you think it's something that might happen you should probably think
about advanced directives, and sorting out who your "nearest relative is", and
getting a crisis plan set up.

------
Hondor
People are saying he was "unhinged" or mentally ill, but it sounds like he was
simply sucked into an online scam. That happens to normal people all the time
(even professionals through "whaling"). If you believe your scammer, and he
tells you about freeing hostages, and those stories corroborate with what you
hear on the news, then what normal person wouldn't get agitated and emotional?
That doesn't sound like mental illness, it sounds like normal reaction to
finding out that the one person who could save some hostages is refusing to
cooperate. Don't forget his friend was actually killed in Afghanistan so he's
got some genuine emotional connection to these troubles already, making the
other stories easier to believe perhaps.

What would you do if you believed you had a way to free a hostage and the FBI
just told you to get some sleep? When the hostage was killed, what would you
say to that FBI worker? Normal mentally healthy people would get angry and
obsessive when they believe they're being impeded from saving lives. I've seen
more extreme reactions for far lesser problems.

~~~
gnoway
I would consider getting some sleep.

I agree with your point about the emotional involvement, but honestly, this is
an unemployed former car salesman and restaurant manager. For him to think
he's legitimately negotiating release of hostages over twitter and skype...
sure, maybe, but it falls into the 'requires extraordinary evidence' bucket
for me.

------
blowski
Off topic, but why does the NYT website have a 'show full article' button (on
mobile at least)?

~~~
hellojason
Guessing, but probably to get more accurate engagement stats. It would be
better to assume a user has read most or all of the article if they clicked
that button. Maybe also a way of determining if the introductory paragraphs
were written in an engaging way, because they determine whether I will
continue reading or not.

~~~
tlrobinson
Seems like monitoring the scroll position would have the same (or better)
effect.

------
fudged71
Contacting fake ISIS members and FBI agents is one thing.

Really sad that he was contacting american hostages families.

------
a3n
Man who made a vague threat against FBI agent is disappeared for 14 months.

~~~
tptacek
I know this is just a drive-by comment, but on the off chance you don't
actually know the difference between unjust detention and "disappearing", I'll
spell it out:

* Lopez was apprehended in daylight at his house by uniformed police acting on an arrest warrant. The disappeared are snatched by anonymous or covert paramilitaries.

* Lopez was taken to the NY Metropolitan Corrections Center. The disappeared are tortured and killed.

* Lopez' family was aware of his location throughout his ordeal. The families of the disappeared never know that, which is why they're called "disappeared".

* Lopez was released. The disappeared usually stay disappeared.

~~~
a3n
You're right, it was an exaggeration, to highlight the fact that he was held
and not tried for fourteen months, and charges were only dropped when an
evaluator finally got access to evidence that should have been available from
the beginning. How much longer would he have been disappeared in plain sight
if the government were able to suppress evidence/information even longer?

(And yes, I know the difference.)

~~~
tptacek
Maybe. But I don't think that's what happened. What I think happened was, the
guy was involuntarily committed through the criminal justice process, and so
like everyone admitted to psychiatric inpatient care --- under any
circumstances --- he was stuck until the facilities got sick of him or he
lucked into a doctor that actually gave a fraction of a shit about him.

Unfortunately for him, private psychiatric inpatients are there on the dollar
of their insurance companies, and so there's an implicit clock ticking on
their stay. The same is not the case for the utterly unaccountable state-run
involuntary mental health care system.

~~~
a3n
Then why would the prosecutor be motivated to have him "forcibly medicated?"
They clearly were taking an interest in his "treatment."

~~~
tptacek
What do you think involuntary psychiatric commitment is? This is what it is.
Yes! The prosecutors believed --- with some justification --- that Lopez was
crazy. The system is set up to err on the side of indefinite psychiatric
detention.

