One More Massacre Not Prevented

The latest cluster of lamentable shootings on the East Coast are a sad and sorry indicator about how much our modern times have run amok. I will never know anymore about these shootings than what I read in the newspapers and on the web, no more than anyone else shall ever know. So I see no reason to simply just stack even more redundant words on a myriad pages of frustrated verbiage spawned by the event.

However, there is one aspect of this too often repeated tragedy which I have paid attention to for a long, long time. In fact, I’ve more than paid attention to it, but I’ve tracked it and researched it and been a victim of it for too damn long, now. The aspect of which I speak is bureaucratic incompetence, the fact that the latest villain was discovered, identified, labeled and recorded and yet, for all the safeguards that should have been triggered, no one was safe, no one was guarded. The maniac went amok, despite all the warnings and all the forms that were filled out, for all the “i’s” that were dotted and all the “t’s” that were crossed and all the reports circulated and then filed away. The system failed, and it failed miserably, once again. See today’s (September 20, 2013) San Jose Mercury front page headline “Unfit to serve, but fit for guns” (click here to link)

Again, I will never know anymore about the bureaucracy involved with the latest shooter’s downfall than any other John Doe on the street, who reads the papers or checks out the web. But, hopefully, by way of example, we can examine, how, by their very nature, these bureaucracies are doomed to failure when concern for their own existence overshadows the intended purpose of their existence, the very reason they were set up in the first place.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine hit the brick wall of bureaucracy. More than ten years earlier he had been convicted of a DUI, high on alcohol while driving. He did a few days in jail, paid large fines and did all the stuff you have to do when one gets caught. However, there was one thing he had to do that he couldn’t afford. He was supposed to attend the one of the special schools in California which are set up to “educate” offenders about the realities of “driving under influence.” These outfits are not really schools but more like specialized “group therapy” sessions licensed by the State of California. For the most part, these organizations are run by well meaning, socially sensitive professionals where most of the actual sessions are led by recovered substance abusers. The State requires DUI offenders to attend these “classes” for a prescribed amount of time dependent on how many DUIs one has.

My friend went to every one of these organizations operating in Santa Clara County and they all required him to pay a rather substantial down payment and around $250 per month to attend their classes, classes he had to complete to get his driver’s license fully reinstated. At that time, my friend was living on Social Security Disability benefits of less than $700 a month. There was simply no way he could afford such a payment on a regular, recurring basis every month. As it was, nearly his entire benefit amount paid his rent. He was feeding himself through the generous graces of the Food Bank and other free food programs. He told the different DUI schools that he just couldn’t afford their terms and they told him to come back when he was making more money. For the first couple of years, he tried to use the VTA’s public transit system but it was such a frustrating and inefficient means of getting around, he acquired a cheap junker car and took up driving without a license. Slowly, he was able to get back on his feet.

A few years ago, this friend, let’s call him Joe, got a ticket for driving on a suspended license from a Los Gatos cop. The way he got this ticket has always bothered me . . .

(click here to continue)