Be More Afraid

As we all know, Spokane made the national news when Phillip Paul escaped while attending the Spokane County Interstate Fair. The day's drop in attendance was attributed to Paul's escape. I realize this is conjecture, but let's regard it as true for a moment. If so, then almost 2,000 people didn't go to the fair because of fear. Was it logical for them to be fearful? Well, if Paul had decided to go on a rampage of some sort he wouldn't have been missing very long. Since he could not be found it was quite safe to assume he was not at the fair. Since he was at large, it was probably safer to be at the fair than at home.

Now we have this bit of fear mongering from KREM 2 news.

When criminally insane killer Phillip Paul escaped from a field trip he was with 30 other criminally insane patients.

Eastern State Hospital had taken groups like that to big public events before like Bloomsday and Hoopfest.

The directors of both of those events say they had no idea Eastern had been bringing criminally insane people, maybe even murderers to their events.

The organizers of Bloomsday say if Paul hadn’t escaped they might never have known.

What isn't mentioned is that Bloomsday, Hoopfest and the Spokane County Interstate Fair have gone on for years without incident even though Eastern State Hospital has been "bringing criminally insane people, maybe even murderers to their events."

Yes, you read that right. Maybe even murderers! And how many times can we say "criminally insane"? What does that mean exactly? It turns out it means a lot more than someone is nuckin' futz and wants to kill people.

But that doesn't stop this reportage from scaring us into thinking that the criminally insane people from Eastern State Hospital walking among us at Spokane events are murderers just waiting for the right moment to strike.

The Paul case certainly warrants an investigation, but we need to remember this was a rare incident.