<p>I thought everyone should read this article: it is the most thoughtful article I’ve read about what happened to Carol Gotbaum in the Phoenix airport. Many of the reader comments are also insightful. </p>
<p>This kind of brutal mistreatment is very scary and could affect anyone travelling through an airport. The unfortunate victim was suffering and in need of help, but her cries for help were ignored by airport security and the police.</p>
<p>If you ever send one who is depressed and probably suffering from withdrawal across the country to rehab, just make sure you go or send someone with them.</p>
<p>That is hardly the job of security officers working in our airports. The treatment was proper for the actions. She brought it on herself and the opinion of the NYT NY elite with whom her family may be tight has no impact on my opinion. If her family cared so much they should have been taken better care of her. Blaming everyone else just shows their guilty consciences.</p>
<p>Barrons, your lack of compassion never ceases to amaze me. Is there anyone you think can’t just pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Do you ever see the need for ANY sort of helping hand?</p>
<p>That said, I would never send a woman in Mrs. Gotbaum’s condition alone to rehab. First order of business always is that people in delicate emotional states need to be escorted by someone who can remain calm and in control. That was an error on the part of Mrs. Gotbaum’s family, but it doesn’t excuse the rude and cruel treatment she received at the airport.</p>
<p>I’ve raised questions about this incident in another thread, but this article doesn’t hold that much weight for me. A hysterical person in an airport, throwing a fit, is an obvious reason to call security. This is not something the people who work at the gate can or should deal with. It doesn’t sound as if the police or security guards handled things very well, but the initial decision for the person at the gate to call them makes sense. If a stranger has completely lost it, and may or may not be mad enough to injure someone, it would be irresponsible to allow an untrained worker at the gate to try to counsel her back to sanity. Call security, and then hopefully security can determine whether she’s a danger to herself or others, and determine whether she needs medical attention (which she does, if she’s a danger to herself, or appears to have other medical problems).</p>
<p>My compassion is for the police who have to put up with a bunch of NYers complaining in 20-20 hindsight over their totally appropriate actions. The only reason this is a story is the family connections she had. Sorry, not a tear from me over this.</p>
<p>Obviously, security needed to be called, but that’s when it went bad. If it went this badly for her, I hate to think what would happen to a minority male. Someone should have been with her. Really sad for her kids.</p>
<p>“If you ever send one who is depressed and probably suffering from withdrawal across the country to rehab, just make sure you go or send someone with them.”</p>
<p>Just as I think that security could have handled the situation more sensitively, as a person who worked in the substance abuse field and was involved in the treatment of more than 1,000 alcoholics, addicts and their families, I agree that someone responsible should have accompanied her on that trip.</p>
<p>A death of someone who is in the custody of the police always calls for a serious, probing, hard-nosed assessment of police actions just before the death.</p>
<p>I feel FAR more sorry for the parents and friends in this case linked below. Or dozens of other similar cases. She was just as likely to be on the road to this sort of end taking the innocent with her. The kids may be better off without her. Drunks are not known to make great parents. Lots of books have been written about the life of the kid with a drunken mother–most not very flattering. Get realistic. I doubt she was ever up for mother of the year. </p>
<p>Barrons, your comment about the kids may be better off without her has to be one of the most shocking cruelist statements I have read yet. Your comments come across as she is better off dead and wasn’t worthy of life. Shameful. Sorry, I am trying to reserve myself here. No matter one’s view on the circumstances of who is at fault or not, your comments are not even about that but about her worth as a person or if she should even be alive at all. To not feel bad for someone who has died or for the sake of their children, is almost inhuman to me.</p>
<p>I live near NYC, and I happened to be in Phoenix last week. It was pretty interesting to see the different press treatment the story got in each city.</p>
<p>I have a lot of compassion for Mrs. Gotbaum. She was in a terrible situation, depressed, mentally ill and essentially abandoned. However, at the same time, I absolutely do not blame the security personnel who handled her. They’re not psychologists; it’s not their responsibility to assess whether a disruptive person is depressed or plan for possible suicide attempts by a person whose only psychiatric symptom was agitation.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, sometimes bad things happen through the fault of nobody. In this case, there was specific fault; it was the fault of the people who sent a depressed woman cross-country to rehab alone. Those people should feel ashamed, and everyone should stop focusing on the security guards, who could not have been expected to know what was coming, 20/20 hindsight aside.</p>
<p>I trust that a professional, dispassionate assessment of the actions of the police will be undertaken. The evaluation imo should be done in light of current, widely accepted standards of police accountability for the health and welfare of those in their custody, particularly those giving strong indications of emotional disorders and/or substance abuse.</p>
<p>I think the thing that has be address is placing her in a room without cameras, when other rooms have them and then leaving her alone. An hysterical person should be monitored for their safety and the safety of others. They need not be in the room, but if they planned on leaving her, why didn’t they put her in a camera room? </p>
<p>This is why police have camera’s in their cars. This is why police at the airport have rooms with camera’s. While it was hopefully an accident, it very well could have been preventable, simply by placing her in a monitored holding area. I have no way of knowing if she did this to herself or not. The tough thing for the police is they don’t either…</p>
<p>Barrons comments sadly demonstrate a coarseness that exists in our society. Granted, in hindsight a camera should have been in the room and, of course , had a family member escorted her the outcome would have been different. That did not happen. The fact that the family is prominent should have no bearing on whether human beings have compassion for three very young children. I’m with soozievt on this. It must be nice Barrons to see everything in black and white. I’ve experienced the wrenching pain of family members with substance abuse problems and mental illness and I can tell you it is hard not to feel compassion for all involved in this tragedy. No one would want this outcome.</p>
I agree. If the police did everything they were supposed to do, then I don’t have a problem with their actions. (I may have a problem with protocol, but that would be unusual for me.) At first glance, it seems as if the woman must have appeared or seemed physically or seriously mentally ill, in which case I would assume she would be kept under closer watch. If she seemed healthy, then it’s simply an unfortunate situation. If she didn’t, then it’s either an issue with police/security or protocol. </p>
<p>I don’t see what her family’s financial or social situation has to do with this. Perhaps if she were poor, we wouldn’t have seen this story. Does that change the outcome, though? It would have been just as unfortunate, but we may not have gotten as many details on the story. That doesn’t di-legitimize this woman or her family, though.</p>