City Creek Center has been featured in the paper more than once this past week. Just before shutting down part of the mall because of a chemical smell coming from a nearby building, the area’s newest mall filed a lawsuit against Jack Harry Stiles.
Stiles threatened to go on a killing spree at City Creek Center, Movies 10 and TRAX. With the man taken into custody and the damage to City Creek’s reputation done, the lawsuit is unproductive and inappropriate.
City Creek is a $1.7 billion establishment and had 16 million visitors its first year, according to the Associated Press, making it the most popular attraction in Utah. What the courts will be able to shake out of a single citizen for “damages,” if any can be proven, will be pocket change to such a major corporation.
While the requested restraining order of 4,000 feet is a good idea for a man who visits frequently to scope out places to make a stand against unaware shoppers, the demand for $300,000 will financially cripple the man and will result in no real gain for the shopping center.
Stiles has a history of mental illness and making threats and is currently in prison. He was in the possession of no weapons and told a hospital crisis worker about his plan long before it was supposed to happen. Whether or not he would have followed through is unclear.
If City Creek wants to undo bad publicity, helping the mentally ill might be a better option than adding bankruptcy to his problems, which could easily happen had Cinemark and UTA, which were also threatened, decided to follow suit.
If City Creek thinks public fear from this story is hurtful to business, it is looking in the wrong place for a scapegoat. It is the media it should be blaming for the bad publicity. None of the threats were public, and were merely statements rattled off in a hospital.
The crisis worker at the hospital told the police of the concerning comments in August, but the media didn’t start circulating the story until over a month later, when criminal charges were filed. It wasn’t until after a KSL article on the incident made its way around social media that City Creek decided to sue the man whose story reached the ears of the public fourth-hand from local news sources.
The mall can also blame public unrest on the Navy Yard shooting on Sept. 16, as District Attorney Sim Gill cited it as a reason to take Stiles’ threats seriously, despite the threats occurring well beforehand.
There have been a disturbing number of mass killings in recent years and a number of heated political debates as a result. While tragic, influential figures should attempt to continue to use sympathy and reason in the wake of public panic. There is no single answer to protecting the public, but providing help for the mentally ill might be a good starting point.