News Out Of the Midwest where Two Bloomington police officers were injured and the Bloomington Public Library evacuated Tuesday afternoon after pepper spray was used to quell a man, police reports said.
A security guard was unable to make a man leave a computer station where he was sitting but not using the machine. An argument followed, and police eventually were called about 3:45 p.m.
Rumour has it there was an LISNewster in the library at the time…
Shoe!!!
You really need to control your over-the-top Internet access issues!!!
Re:Shoe!!!
HA! I am so sending this to my boss!
The Rest of the Story
I wasn’t going to post anything about this, but since Blake found the story on his own, I’ll offer a more balanced version. It was not a simple matter of asking a patron to leave. It wasn’t one of your garden-variety internet abusers, but a seriously mentally ill person, who appeared to be having an acute episode of some sort. It was a no-win situation for the library, the staff and patrons who witnessed it and inhaled pepper spray, the guard, the police, and most of all, the patron, who should have been receiving in-patient care. Unfortunately, folks like this can get long-term help only at the point when they cease being a nuisance and cross the line into actively aggressive behavior. Basically, somebody needs to get hurt before help becomes available. To offer an understatement, it was a total bummer of a day.
There’s a question for those of you interviewing for jobs–ask about crisis situations–how often and what kinds, and what sort of support there is in the absesnce of regularly scheduled security. There’s no way in hell I’d work in a library without full-time security.
(I was still amused by the comments by and about Shoe, though!)
Re:The Rest of the Story
I am very glad that this sort of thing doesn’t happen in my library, and this story is just further evidence to support my feeling that public librarians are extremely brave people in so many different ways.
As to my line about shoe, I knew she wasn’t “it”, because I knew it wasn’t her library.
Re:The Rest of the Story
I still keep my nursing license, but they won’t let me bring haldol to work at the library. From time to time when I am very poor I work PRN at a few local hospitals. One of them is a psychiatric hospital.
A few weeks ago I was in McDonalds and the cashier asked if I remembered her from when she had been ‘Baker Acted” (The Baker Act is Florida’s involuntary committment law.) Then she told her co-workers that I was the nurse that took care of her when she was in this particular (psych only)hospital.
I see patients fairly frequently, but to announce to your co-workers that you were involuntarily hospitalized was a first for me.
Most police officers are not adequately equipped to deal with mentally ill people, but then I am not so sure they should be. If we train them to be psych nurses then they would no longer be police officers. We have a crisis response team, but with the number of calls and the lack of resources it is woefully underfunded and understaffed. A lot of people who could be managed as outpatients are involuntarily hospitalized. It really is too bad, but I can’t see a solution anytime soon.
However capsacin spray beats a lead injection which happens all too frequently. This patient may have had a bad day, but it beats being shot.
Violence in Public Libraries
I left public libraries and moved into another field because of this very thing.
I went from working for a PL system with guards, to one without guards in the branches and regional buildings.
And it seems, my old library also phased out guards due to budget cuts.
I had seen it all: stabbings, one woman smashing an older man over the head with a library chair (a fight about Internet usage, no less!), molestations, one librarian was punched in the face, and another stabbed as she opened the branch. These incidents stood out from the normal abnormal stuff like masturbators, pedophiles, scary and abusive patrons, and one guy we ended up calling “The Slasher”, because he would slice ladies’ skirts with a razor blade as they browsed in the stacks.
I asked myself, “Am I earning enough to deal with all of this scary violence?”. Or, “Why am I starting to dread going to work everyday?” In both systems, administration did not care at all what happened on the front lines. To the librarians,the clerks, or the teenage pages who had to go out into the stacks alone and shelve.
It was not like I was earning enough to justify feeling afraid. The last straw was when one of the helpful hints to “protect” ourselves was to carry a clipboard in front of our bodies in case an “atypical” patron tried to attack us with some instrument.
So, I decided it was best to move on to another career, and I must say, I really don’t miss the stress. It would be nice if some of this stuff was addressed by ALA, by administrators, by anyone.
There is really very little out there about violence in public libraries. It seems to be a dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about.
But I hear you. If I ever had to work in a PL again, I would not work for one without guards.
Re:The Rest of the Story
Actually, I think that police officers should be equipped to deal with the mentally ill to an extent. Obviously they can’t have the training of a mental health professional, but they should be trained well enough that they don’t feel the need to punch a handcuffed 125 pound woman having a psychotic episode in the jaw. In this case, she was in the car and yelling. They pulled her out a block away and punched her.
I’ve dealt with the mentally ill in libraries where I’ve worked, and fortunately no one has become violent or threatening with me (or at least no one mentally ill has; some people who are just obnoxious have). I’m lucky to to be a bigger than average guy with sort of a “biker” appearance. The more I think about it, the more it looks like some of us should get hazardous duty pay.
Re:The Rest of the Story
My condolences to you, your fellow staff members, your patrons, and mostly, the poor guy that was so ill that it had to come to that.
I have a feeling had I been there to witness the whole episode, I would have needed the rest of the day off. Stuff like that bothers me… Argumentative “normal” patrons piss me off, legitimately sick patrons who can’t get help just sadden the hell out of me. But I think what would bother me more would be the obligatory ensuing insensitive remarks that follow, by other patrons and by (at least some) staff.
Re:The Rest of the Story
I am a big-time responder and usually jump into crisis situations like this. Knowing this guy’s mental health status and having been very close to someone with paranoid schizophrenia, I couldn’t bring myself to watch. I’ve been on the receiving end of a a schizophrenic episode and it’s frightening and heartbreaking.
I was in a cubicle and listened to the whole thing, though. Had I gone out on the floor, I likely would have ended up yelling at the cops or something else very unhelpful. Thanks for your good thoughts.