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Study shows ‘uptick’ in attacks at colleges

by Daniel de Vise

A report by federal law enforce- ment officers, released last week on the third anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre, offers the first comprehensive analysis of violent attacks carried out on U.S. college campuses in the past cen- tury and finds that more than half have occurred in the past 20 years.

Researchers looked at public records of 272 incidents of “tar- geted violence” at colleges since 1900. The study, “Campus At- tacks,” was a joint effort of the Se- cret Service, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Education. The report offers a foundation of research for the discipline of threat assessment, a growing fac- et of college administration that seeks to predict and prevent Vir- ginia Tech-style attacks. On April 16, 2007, Tech student Seung Hui Cho, 23, killed 32 people and him- self in one of the nation’s deadli- est attacks. “This is the first time that any- body has identified in any kind of comprehensive way the uptick in these violent acts over the course of decades,” said Barry Spodak, an expert on threat assessment. The analysis found that three-

fifths of campus attacks in a 108- year span occurred in the past two decades: 79 in the 1990s, and 83 in the 2000s through 2008. The report attributes the surge to the growing campus popula- tions and expanding media cov- erage; the past two decades have also seen increased federal re- quirements for colleges to report crimes. The report focuses on at- tacks that were premeditated and used potentially lethal force. College killings are not an en-

tirely new phenomenon. Re- searchers found episodes from 1909, when a man fatally shot his former girlfriend at her college and then shot himself. Attacks most often happen in April and October. Attackers are overwhelmingly male, and they have ranged in age from 16 to 62. The eldest was a part-time librar- ian who shot a fellow librarian in 2008 after a dispute over work ethics. Relatively few perpetra- tors, 75 of 260, were students of traditional college age. One-third of attacks were relat- ed to intimate relationships. “Re- taliation” was the second leading cause, followed by romantic re- jection and obsession. The report doesn’t offer tips for

colleges seeking to profile poten- tial killers. Colleges awaiting such help “are going to be left wanting,” Spodak said, although federal authorities might publish such guidance in the future. The analysis does identify patterns in past attacks that could steer col- leges in assessing threats. Threat assessment teams shouldn’t limit themselves to campuses, the report says, be- cause 20 percent of the violent in- cidents studied took place off campus. Communication with outside law enforcement author- ities “is essential,” it says. One-quarter of attacks in- volved weapons other than guns and knives, so investigators must “look beyond” those traditional weapons, the report says. Students represented 45 per- cent of perpetrators. Many at- tackers were former students, current or former employees, or people indirectly affiliated with the college, if at all.

devised@washpost.com

Frostburg student slain after off-campus party

by Josh White

A Frostburg State University student from Southern Maryland was shot and killed and a student from the District was seriously wounded during a confrontation with another student Sunday morning near the campus in western Maryland, police said. The dispute apparently began

at an off-campus party late Satur- day after a Frostburg student, identified as Tyrone B. Hall, 21, of Glen Burnie, allegedly assaulted a woman at the party, police said. An ensuing fight broke up when other partygoers intervened. The location of the party was unclear. Officials with the Allegany

County Combined Criminal In- vestigation Unit said that several people at the party later went to Hall’s home on East College Av- enue, across the street from the college campus. “There was another confronta- tion, and then the suspect pro- duced a 12-gauge shotgun,” police said Sunday. “The suspect fired two rounds, striking both of the victims in the abdominal area. The suspect then fled back into his residence and remained there until law enforcement arrived and he was detained.” Police said they arrived at the

scene shortly after 4 a.m. and found two victims with gunshot wounds. Brandon M. Carroll, 20, of Waldorf was pronounced dead at Western Maryland Regional Medical Center. Ellis E. Hartridge Jr. of the District had surgery and was expected to survive. His fam- ily members told school officials that he was in stable condition. Pfc. Daniel Dunn of the Frost- burg Police Department said Sunday that there was no in- dication that any of the students who went to confront Hall were armed. Investigators found the shotgun thought to have been used and ammunition in Hall’s residence. Hall was charged with first- degree murder, attempted first- degree murder and two counts of assault. He was being held with- out bond at the Allegany jail. The shootings stunned the

Frostburg State community, with 5,385 undergraduate and gradu- ate students. The rural campus is off Interstate 68 near Cumber- land, about a 21

⁄2 -hour drive

northwest of Washington. “The thoughts and prayers of the entire University community are with the family and friends of both students,” school officials said Sunday on the school’s Web site.

whitejs@washpost.com

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MONDAY, APRIL 19, 2010

St. E’s and patients prepare for a fresh start

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able setting, officials say. They in- tend to create a more effective hospital, one focused on stabiliz- ing people’s conditions and, wherever possible, preparing them to return to their communi- ties. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for healing,” said Department of Mental Health Director Stephen T. Baron, who worked at St. Eliza- beths in the 1970s while working on his master’s degree in social work at Howard University.

A history of trouble

Since he was appointed in 2006, Baron has helped engineer improvements in the city’s long- troubled mental health system, which has been the subject of a federal class-action suit since 1974. For the first time in many years, an end to the case appears within reach, but with the Dis- trict proposing to cut nearly 10 percent of the Department of Mental Health’s budget, a court monitor has worried publicly that the agency’s efforts could be set back.

Fixing St. Elizabeths, which the

city inherited from the federal government in 1987, is a crucial piece of that change. It has not been accredited by the Joint Com- mission, a national body, since 1988. Even though it became clear in the 1990s that a new hospital was needed, ground wasn’t bro- ken until Dec. 19, 2006. In the meantime, problems in patient care deepened. In the most damning inquiry of recent years, the Justice Depart- ment documented what it said were widespread civil rights vio- lations stemming from an exces- sive number of assaults, a lack of adequate psychological and psy- chiatric services, and failure to ensure adequate discharge plan- ning and placement. Canavan, a psychologist who had worked at St. Elizabeths in the 1990s, was installed as the hospital’s chief with a mandate to turn it around. In 2007, the city reached a settlement agreement with the Justice Department. As he has watched the new building go up and contemplated the hospital’s future, Canavan has been looking, he said, to the hos- pital’s past. “We’re going back to our roots,” he said. The world of psychiatry, though, has changed since 19th- century reformer Dorothea Dix helped create the Government Hospital for the Insane. Set on an idyllic perch overlooking the Ana- costia and Potomac rivers, it was typical of the vast, verdant asy- lums championed by Dix. The Civil War sent thousands of ser- vicemen to the hospital, and the Spanish-American War and the two world wars would send thou- sands more, filling buildings fast- er than they could go up and fuel-

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BY NATHANIEL V. KELSO/THE WASHINGTON POST

EVY MAGES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

A stark room stands unused in a closed section of the old hospital.

ing research that would shape psychiatric practice across the country.

Such institutions have long since become anachronisms, emptied of most of their patients in the push to treat the mentally ill outside hospitals. Drugs that did not exist in earlier eras seemed to make that possible, and the Community Mental Health Act of 1963 helped to make it law. But for the many pa- tients who ended up in jail or on the streets, deinstitutionalization was a failure. Communities were unprepared for the flood of peo- ple and have been struggling to cope since.

Over the past several years, the

District has been trying to re- make the city’s mental health sys- tem. Private hospitals and organi- zations now provide much of the mental health care, and St. Eliza- beths is supposed to serve a smaller but still significant role as the provider of last resort. Even then, the objective is to help peo- ple return to the community by making them an integral part of their therapy. “We’re really shifting a para- digm here to say that your job, when you’re in the hospital, is treatment,” Canavan said.

A place for treatment

In ways large and small, the

new building is designed for that. Instead of shuttling among more than a dozen buildings for meals, treatment and medical care, pa- tients will be able do almost ev- erything in the new building. That will allow patients and staff members to devote more energy to treatment. For patients having a difficult day, the treatment areas will have

U.S. attorney faces glare of high-profile cases

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Machen was recommended for the job by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who submitted his name to President Obama. Obama nominated him, and the Senate confirmed him. Machen has long admired Oba- ma — since his days at Harvard Law School, where Obama al- ready was a “legend,” Machen said. In 2003, Machen was one of the first people to donate to Oba- ma’s U.S. Senate campaign, long before he emerged on the nation- al political stage.

Versatile prosecutor

For four years as an assistant

U.S. attorney, from 1997 to 2001, Machen worked on a variety of criminal cases, including homi- cide, fraud and conspiracy. “He was a very aggressive and dogged prosecutor,” said Glenn Kirsch- ner, head of the homicide unit for the office and Machen’s former supervisor. Then in summer 2001, Machen

left the U.S. attorney’s office to build criminal defense experi- ence. He took a job with the firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, specializing in white- collar criminal defense cases in- volving corporate clients. Norton says his versatility —

experience with cases involving Fortune 500 companies and in- ner-city crime — impressed her. “He has to be able to relate to the community, because you cannot deal with crime in a community if people feel estranged from the U.S. attorney here,” Norton said. Machen elaborated: “I’m com-

fortable in all environments. I can be at the corner of South Cap- itol and Atlantic streets at mid- night. My goal is to represent all people.” Machen’s office has been in the

middle of high-profile cases, which resulted in both negative and positive reactions. Last month, a jury found a District man guilty of killing his girlfriend nearly 11 years ago, even though the body of Yolanda Baker has not been found. It is rare to secure a murder conviction when there is no body. In December, a District man was released from prison after 28 years after DNA tests proved that police and prosecutors had charged the wrong man in a rape and killing. Last April, a D.C. Su- perior court judge accused one of Machen’s prosecutors of ethics vi- olations by withholding evidence from a defense attorney in a mur- der trial. Both cases are under in- vestigation by Justice Depart- ment officials. The most recent criticism, from police and neighborhood activists, came after the drive-by shooting March 30 in the Wash- ington Highlands neighborhood in Southeast Washington, which left four people dead and six in- jured. Machen went to the scene and

chatted with police and homicide detectives. But the next day, as news of the identity of one of the suspects surfaced, some officers, including Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier, criticized Machen’s office. Police had tried to get prosecu- tors to issue a warrant for Orlan- do Carter’s arrest a week before the shootings because Carter was tentatively identified as a suspect in another fatal shooting March 22. Had Carter been arrested, critics said, the drive-by shooting might have been prevented. Machen declined to comment on the case but said he was “sur- prised” by the criticism. Prosecu- tors said police did not provide them with enough evidence to persuade a judge to sign an arrest

escapes, such as a comfort room with soft music, blankets and hot stones. Patients will be able to re- group without going back to the living unit and losing a day of treatment, Canavan said. Because patients are more like- ly than ever to be discharged, the hospital is set up to try to keep them connected to the communi- ties they’ve left or reintroduce them to communities they’ve for- gotten. The Activities of Daily Living

Apartment, or the Apartment, will allow patients to learn hands- on how to live in a modern home. It has a stove that cooks, a toilet that flushes and a washing ma- chine that washes, in contrast to the old apartment, which had a box for a toilet and didn’t try to approximate a stove or a washing machine. Encouraging autonomy wher-

ever possible, Canavan said, was an essential part of the plan for the hospital, which was designed by Einhorn Yaffee Prescott, a firm that has worked on mental health facilities in Maryland, Virginia and elsewhere. Many of the wings in the new building have small, enclosed courtyards. Rather than having to be chaperoned for a breath of fresh air, patients will be able to ask the staff to buzz open the door to the courtyard, where they can be observed from the nursing sta- tion. Outside, they will find them- selves in a little patch of greenery —with plants whose branches are too small to support the weight of a body were a person to attempt suicide or an escape. The move to the new building is monumental by almost any measure, and for some of the pa- tients, the prospect has been

fraught with anxiety. “You can see it in people’s eyes,” said Samuel Awosika, who was a patient for about three years in the 1990s and now works for the hospital as an advocate for pa- tients. “They have a lot of ques- tions and concerns.” But as Awo- sika and other advocates have met with patients, concerns have given way to excitement. “They love that it’s a new building,” he said.

By the end of the year, the num- ber of patients is expected to fall to 293, the capacity of the new hospital, as more patients are moved into the community. The U.S. Department of Homeland Se- curity has begun building its new headquarters on the oldest part of the hospital compound, on the western side of what was once called Asylum Road and is today Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. On the eastern side of the com- pound, plans are in the works for the city to redevelop much of the land. The St. Elizabeths name will re- main. But the hospital that once spanned more than 300 acres, that housed poet Ezra Pound and still houses presidential assailant John W. Hinckley Jr., will in many ways be history, memorialized in a small museum just beyond the facade of its striking new home. The new building won’t bring back what was great about the old St. Elizabeths, but the modern fa- cility could be a crucial step in creating a St. Elizabeths for a new era, said Steven S. Sharfstein, a psychiatrist who leads one of Maryland’s biggest mental health providers, Sheppard Pratt Health System. “Maybe it’s not the grand dame

anymore,” Sharfstein said, “but maybe it can be the young prince of public psychiatry.”

cauvinh@washpost.com

NIKKI KAHN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Ronald C. Machen says criticism comes with the job — whether “you’re overly zealous” or “you’re overly cautious.”

warrant for Carter. Just days be- fore the drive-by shooting, both sides had discussed the need for additional evidence at a meeting that included Machen and Lanier at police headquarters. Criticism, Machen said, comes with the job. “It’s always a balanc- ing act. Doing this job, you’re go- ing to be criticized if you’re overly zealous, and you’re going to be criticized if you’re overly cau- tious.”

Street credibility

Like many prosecutors, Ma- chen shies away from talking about his personal life to keep his family safe. He grew up in Detroit and around the law, watching one of his uncles practice. Machen left Michigan to play wide receiv- er at Stanford University before graduating and heading to Har- vard Law. He’s married with kids but won’t say much else about his family. He laughs when he hears of the congresswoman speaking of his “street credibility.” But one sign of Machen’s nonconformist attitude is evident in his left ear, which is pierced from his days of wearing a diamond stud — a rarity among U.S. attorneys. “You also don’t see too many U.S. attorneys who are Omegas,” Machen said, referring

to his fraternity, Omega Psi Phi. Machen said he wants his of-

fice to be more visible in the com- munity, and that means sending prosecutors to community fo- rums before meeting when a crime occurs. He gets to as many as seven meetings in a week. With a busy schedule, Machen realizes he can’t make all the meetings to which he’s invited. Former Advisory Neighborhood Commission member Kathy Hen- derson, a representative of Ward 5, was angry that Machen didn’t come to an April 7 neighborhood crime meeting. “He didn’t have the courtesy to show up. We de- serve better than that,” Hender- son said. Machen’s office said he attended seven meetings that week and couldn’t get to Hen- derson’s. Henderson said her concern was that prosecutors have been “very picky” in the cases they pur- sue. She said the perception among many of her neighbors is that Machen’s office prosecutes only those cases it knows it can win. Machen disputed that. “No one wants to arrest an innocent per- son, and we have to balance that,” he said. “We have to base our de- cisions on the evidence.

alexanderk@washpost.com

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