Held to answer

It’s amazing more newsrooms haven’t been shot up by the likes of Jarrod Ramos.

The news business angers somebody every day, and newsrooms are often readily accessible, especially smaller newspapers. Open the door to many smaller newspapers during regular business hours, and you can walk right in, usually to be greeted by a receptionist.

The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., had a key-card system that let employees into the newsroom or be buzzed in through the glass doors. Ramos’ shotgun easily took out the glass doors, and in minutes he shot four editors and reporters and one sales assistant.

When I first heard the news, I could see it unfolding and felt like I knew the victims, even though we had never met. One of the unique features of newsrooms is a wide-open floor plan. Every newsroom I’ve worked in had more glass than walls.

The two larger newspapers I worked on – The San Bernardino Sun and The (Spokane) Spokesman-Review – had unarmed security guards on the first floor and the newsroom on an upper floor. Still, the newsrooms were on display. Even the top editors with private offices had offices of glass. For a time, The Spokesman-Review experimented with letting community members attend our news budget meetings (which also, for a time, could be viewed online).

At The Sun, which then occupied a block in downtown San Bernardino, Calif., we focused on getting the newspaper out – although violence was sometimes within walking distance of the newsroom.

Even during the “going postal” craze we didn’t worry about a gunman getting ideas, taking his anger and branching out into other businesses besides post offices.

Remember going postal? If you’re older, it might conjure up images of mailmen flipping out and shooting up their workplaces, killing supervisors and coworkers who had angered them.

The man credited with first going postal was an Oklahoma part-time letter carrier named Patrick Sherrill, 44, who killed 14 and wounded six before shooting himself on an August morning in 1986. He had a long history of strange behavior and animal cruelty. In 1991, two postal workers in separate incidents in New Jersey and Michigan shot and killed multiple people. In 1993, on May 6, in two separate incidents, a shooter killed one and wounded three at a post office in Dearborn, Mich., and a few hours later in Dana Point, Calif., a man killed his mother and two postal workers.

There were subsequent postal-related shootings, including one in 2006 that is considered to be the deadliest workplace shooting by a woman in 2006 when a former postal employee in Goleta, Calif., killed six at a postal processing facility. As recently as last year, there were two shootings involving postal workers in Baker City, Ore., and San Francisco.

But as these things go in America, the phrase “going postal” took on comedic overtones. In “Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult,” a mob of angry postal workers opens fire. In a video game called “Postal,” the player pretends to be a mass murderer.

Now that a newspaper has been the scene of a mass shooting, will there be more? America – and its media – have a thing for trends. The media have long been willing to seize on a catchy phrase or buzzword, and slap it on anything similar.

Coverage of The Capital Gazette rampage quickly reverted to the usual calls for more gun control and more mental health funding.

What hasn’t been delved into is how Ramos is an example of someone who has benefited from the media’s sympathetic portrayal of low-level criminals. In another context, he could have easily been seen as a victim of overly aggressive prosecutors who have turned America into a prison state.

These are facts that the media must remember:

First, Ramos – despite a long history of threatening a woman who did him no harm – apparently never served any time in jail. In 2011, he was convicted of harassment. According to Capital columnist Eric Hartley, Judge Jonas Legum called Ramos’ behavior “rather bizarre,” gave him a suspended 90-day jail sentence and placed him on probation. The judge ordered him to continue in therapy and not contact the victim.

Second, when Ramos sued The Capital Gazette for defamation (over Hartley’s factually correct column), he claimed he deserved equal sympathy with his victim. It’s not surprising that Ramos would think so when our major media – especially NPR and The New York Times – routinely present stories sympathetic to criminal offenders, such as favorable coverage of Restorative Justice, a program that brings victims together with their offenders so the victims can offer forgiveness. Restorative Justice is popular among Republican and Democratic politicians alike, who see it as a way to reduce the costs of incarceration. (Often left unsaid in these stories is that most violent crime victims are among the lower socio-economic classes.)

Third, Maryland’s strict gun laws successfully kept more powerful military-grade weapons out of Ramos’ hands, but he had no trouble passing a federal background check when he bought his shotgun. His harassment conviction had been expunged; as it is, harassment doesn’t prohibit gun ownership, even though Ramos’ harassing behavior continued, and the same woman obtained more restraining orders against him in 2012 and 2013. In 2014, Ramos followed up with a written oath to kill Eric Hartley. Three years later, Ramos bought the shotgun. Instead of pushing for a ban on firearms, gun-control advocates should lobby against expunging or concealing criminal records. They should lobby for gun control directed at persons who have been convicted of threatening behavior.

Fourth, calls for more mental health treatment for guys like Ramos assume that mental illness is the cause of their violence. Mean, cruel behavior is not necessarily a sign of mental illness. It’s a sign that someone is mean and cruel and should be stopped from hurting other people – not accommodated or excused or offered help. As it is, Ramos had been receiving counseling.

Fifth, as Republican and Democratic candidates alike readily acknowledge, we are “a nation of laws.” Those laws are meaningless if there is no enforcement or no consequences – whether it’s harassment laws, gun laws or immigration laws.

Unfortunately, Americans who have an irrational sense of justice seem to be gaining ground. While Ramos was getting away with actual harassment, his victim was put on probation at the bank where she worked. According to The Capital’s Hartley, a supervisor told the woman “it was because of an email from Ramos and a follow-up phone call in which he advised them to fire her.”

The woman was eventually laid off.

We are loath to go after people capable of physical harm, yet we pounce on unproved allegations or mere accusations of something deemed inappropriate.

Ramos, if he has read the news, must know that some people believe he went on a rampage because of Donald Trump’s animosity towards “fake media.”

Useful words of defense for the next Jarrod Ramos.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons

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Oh Darn, Please Drop the Gun