Esteban Santiago was mentally ill enough to walk into an FBI office in November with his infant son and inform federal agents his brain was being controlled by a government intelligence agency that wanted him to join the Islamic State.
But under the law those delusions and the brief hospitalization that followed were not enough to keep his gun away from him.
Since Santiago allegedly shot to death five people at a baggage claim in the international airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Friday, attention has focused on what happened in Alaska two months before the rampage: On the same day that the 26-year-old showed up at Anchorage FBI headquarters making "incoherent, disjointed statements," an Anchorage police officer took his handgun away — only to have police give it back a month later.
How did a man who had presented himself to federal officials ranting about mind control get a firearm back? Did police have the legal ability to do anything else?
Police may have had no choice under current laws but to return his gun.
It takes a lot to lose your gun due to mental illness in Alaska.
"If there had been a civil commitment order or serious criminal convictions, it would have been illegal for him to have a gun," said Mark Regan, an attorney for the Disability Law Center of Alaska.
Santiago was only hospitalized for four days and there is no record of him being involuntarily committed, a lengthier process. And though he had
a series of run-ins with police for domestic violence-related allegations, he did not have any felony criminal convictions in Alaska.
Alaska has
no state laws regulating gun ownership by mentally ill people — in fact, it has no state laws at all defining who can own a gun beyond federal standards.
The federal standard says that a person who has been "adjudicated mentally defective" by a judge or who has been "committed to a mental institution" cannot legally possess a firearm. While details of any mental health treatment for Santiago are confidential, along with any court proceedings involving civil commitment, it's not clear that Santiago met either of those criteria.
After the Nov. 7 encounter at the FBI building, Santiago was taken by a police officer to a psychiatric facility. He may have gone voluntarily or under a provision of law that allows for the "emergency detention" of a person in crisis when "considerations of safety do not allow" the initiation of more involved involuntary commitment procedures. The
document that police officers must fill out asks whether the person is a danger to self or others, or whether the person is "gravely disabled" by mental illness.
If the answer is yes, the person can be held for about 72 hours, or three days. Police have said Santiago was held for four.
"Commitment is harder and harder to get. There are no beds," said Joshua Horwitz, the executive director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence in Washington, D.C.
Dorrance Collins and Faith Myers agree. Both have spent time at the Alaska Psychiatric Institute in the past and are now advocates for the rights of psychiatric patients.
"Today you can't just be walking around mumbling of having delusions," said Collins. "The standard is really high."
Myers spoke of a time in the early 2000s during an episode of mental illness where she was found asleep in a snowdrift, believing it was a bed, and still didn't meet the standard to be committed.
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/201...for-the-mentally-ill-to-part-with-their-guns/
