Dr. Clif Cleaveland“We can’t anticipate what people are going to do. We don’t have a crystal ball.”
These were the grim words of Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston as he explained the difficulty of identifying potential killers before they act. He spoke two days after a 43-year-old man killed his wife and four other people in a shooting rampage in a small town in northern California. But for prompt action in locking doors to an elementary school, the gunman might have killed numerous children before police officers shot and killed him.
Law enforcement officers had made multiple visits to the home of the gunman in response to complaints by neighbors. He had repeatedly fired weapons from the windows of his home. A knife attack on a neighbor had led to arrest and subsequent posting of bond as he awaited trial. A court order barred his possessing guns. No intervention occurred to block his murderous day.
A growing body of scientific research provides insights into violent behavior. Emotional control depends upon complex, delicate interconnections among discrete centers within the human brain. Centers within our frontal lobes, that portion of the brain closest to our forehead, regulate our emotional responses to an ever-changing environment.
Head trauma may disrupt this network. Penetrating injury and closed head trauma such as experienced in combat or contact sports may tear the connections apart. There are multiple reported examples of former football players afflicted with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the consequence of repeated blows to the head, whose behavior became progressively unhinged and violent. Think of the risk of injury to this region of the brain in a young child who is repeatedly and violently shaken by unstable adults.