Oh, god.

[conuly]

When I first heard about the shooting, I didn't expect it to be a doctor.

Bello was allowed to resign from the hospital in 2015 amid sexual harassment allegations, according to two law enforcement officials. The officials didn't know the details of the allegations.

The officials were not authorized to discuss the still-unfolding investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

In unrelated cases, the doctor pleaded guilty to unlawful imprisonment, a misdemeanor, in 2004 after a 23-year-old woman told police Bello grabbed her, lifted her up and carried her off, saying, "You're coming with me." He was arrested again in 2009 on a charge of unlawful surveillance, after two different women reported he was trying to look up their skirts with a mirror.

These are misdemeanors? Why was he allowed to practice medicine for so long? (And still technically allowed, it sounds like.) More to the point, why was he allowed access to firearms? These aren't some youthful errors - he was already a doctor, already in his 30s. What the hell.)

Comments

[siderea]

the doctor pleaded guilty to unlawful imprisonment, a misdemeanor, in 2004 after a 23-year-old woman told police Bello grabbed her, lifted her up and carried her off, saying, "You're coming with me."

When I was being trained how to subdue physically dangerous patients, I was warned that I had to put my charge on the floor right where I was, because if I moved them from that spot, after the third step it was kidnapping.

If that's true, and, as I understood, federal law, than that smacks of a plea bargain and a very good defense lawyer.

Why was he allowed to practice medicine for so long?

Looks like the length of time between his getting in trouble (legally) allowed concerned parties opportunity to say, "Phew, he got a grip on his behavior. Thank goodness we don't have to fire him/pull his license/risk getting sued."

Also, given what he did, I wonder if administrators were already frightened of him.

ETA: and what the article says, suggests he was getting away with practicing without a license.

[conuly]

Looks like the length of time between his getting in trouble (legally) allowed concerned parties opportunity to say, "Phew, he got a grip on his behavior. Thank goodness we don't have to fire him/pull his license/risk getting sued."

He was in his 30s! If you're in your 30s, and doing this shit, you're not getting a grip on anything! Except things you shouldn't be touching in the first place because they don't belong to you, I guess.

Also, given what he did, I wonder if administrators were already frightened of him.

Possible. He clearly could get away with a lot.

[siderea]

He was in his 30s! If you're in your 30s, and doing this shit

Well, the point is that he wasn't doing this shit, apparently, at least for long-enough spans of time for people to kid themselves that it wasn't that much of a problem anymore.

ETA: Also, in fairness, it sounds like the hospital he was working at when he committed the sexual harassment fired ("allowed him to resign") his ass, and that maybe his license was revoked or limited.

It's not his practicing medicine that was the problem in this incident. It was murdering people by shooting them.

ETA2: I would be pleased, I think, to see certain kinds of typically gendered crimes, such as sexual harassment and DV, grounds for revoking someone's firearms license.

[conuly]

I would be pleased, I think, to see certain kinds of typically gendered crimes, such as sexual harassment and DV, grounds for revoking someone's firearms license.

Hear, hear. (Also their medical license. There needs to be some trust there, and you can't have any trust if people who do this aren't getting immediately kicked out of the club.)

[stardreamer]

The person he killed was a woman. I wonder how many of the injured victims were also female?

[conuly]

Good question.

[swiftheartrabbit]

That's horrible. He took the fucking Hippocrates oath for petes sake! For shame!!!!

[conuly]

He clearly didn't think much about it when he did.

[swiftheartrabbit]

These kind of idiots don't.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

These are misdemeanors because it would be hard to prove that any specific harm resulted from them. The lady he picked up was apparently not injured, sexually assaulted, confined, tortured or whatever. The women whose skirts he was allegedly peeping up had their modesty offended, and it was totally unprofessional, but hardly a felony-level crime.

He was allowed to practice medicine for so long because the review boards and the justice system invariably take the word of the well-to-do professional male over the younger and/or poorer female, particularly if he was her doctor, pastor, teacher or boss.

He was allowed access to firearms because total morons have blocked every attempt to prevent those convicted of domestic violence and other non-felonious assault from buying whatever high-tech weapons of war they want.