Also looks NOTHING like the sketch they sent out.

Yes, not the most flattering of pictures.

Fair shooting in the face sounds right.

I wouldn't expect justice from a King County jury, quite frankly.

He's disgusting human being that took the life of a beautiful human being.

God needs to take out the trash more often and this man is a prime example.

Honest question.

See: http://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html

Also:
"As president he cut aid for federally-funded community-run mental health programs. The result: thousands of more homeless people in California and nationwide and a spike in the prison population."
From:http://www.alternet.org/blogs/healthwellness/69430/

The gutting of community based mental health programs was absolutely disastrous and put an enormous strain on social service agencies working with the homeless throughout the US.

This stuff has been very well documented, discussed and debated.

While scrolling down, I saw this picture and thought "huh, an oldie at Microsoft?" then I realized who that was, and I shuddered and nearly fainted.

If true, I bet we know which building on Summit Avenue is the most likely candidate for his place of residence.

First, you are correct that many policy shifts in dealing with the mentally ill date back to 1961 and JFK. Many of these shifts -- especially toward the end of the 60s and into the 70s -- were pushed by liberals and civil libertarian types. Similar shifts took place in how we deal with drunks (if you haven’t read it, “You Owe Yourself a Drunk” by James Spradley is a great book looking at how Seattle dealt with this issue).

Second, you are correct that there’s no way that Reagan -- or, more accurately, his administration -- is responsible for this particular guy.

What social service and mental health providers (and I suspect Phil M @28) refer to when they trot out the “blame Reagan” meme has less to do with funding cuts under Reagan (as president, not governor), but with fundamental shifts in policy and where mental health funding went,

Under the Reagan administration funding for mental health services shifted dramatically from the public sector into the private sector. A result of this was a reduction of an infrastructure that had grown up in response to the dumping of the mentally ill that --as you say -- began much earlier. And, at the same time a massive growth in a private infrastructure. Most of this growth took place between 1984 and 1988 -- Reagan’s second term. This is described in the first article I cited @34.

The net effect of this has been that across the country soup kitchens and homeless shelters have become front-line providers to mentally ill folks. Something that they don’t have either the funding or the expertise to do.

Similar shifts have taken place under the Bush administration. To give one example: nationally, HIV/AIDS prevention funding has remained basically steady since 2000. So Bush can’t be accused of spreading HIV. But, under his administration huge amounts of money have been funneled into faith-based organizations and abstinence only programs. And there has been a continued ban on use of funds for syringe exchange (begun under Poppy and upheld -- shamefully -- under Clinton).

My point is that you don’t need to actually cut funding to gut programs -- you can keep the money steady and just shift who it goes to and what it pays for. That is what the Reagan administration did.