Deputies get help with postwar trauma

Michael Sears
Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Sgt. Colin Briggs, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is back and supervising deputies at the lakefront. But sometimes the hot sun can bring flashbacks.

Deputies get help with postwar trauma
Sheriff's Department program will guide returning veterans
By Eric Randall of the Journal Sentinel

Aug. 24, 2010
When he's driving his cruiser on a warm day, with the sun beating down on the pavement, Milwaukee Sheriff's Sgt. Colin Briggs says it is easy to flash back to the roads in Iraq.

Briggs served there, and Afghanistan before that, as a combat adviser to local security forces.

Odd as it may seem, the difference between Milwaukee and Baghdad can be difficult to perceive for some returning veterans who serve in law enforcement - the result of a war in which urban patrolling makes a soldier's job more similar to a police officer's than in any previous war. Those similarities can be dangerous when soldiers who have been taught to drive fast and stop for nothing translate that experience to the roads of Milwaukee County.

But speeding is not the most disastrous of the potential side-effects facing veterans who return to law enforcement jobs. Last October, a sheriff's sergeant, Scott Krause, repeatedly punched a handcuffed suspect in the back of his cruiser. After a judge sentenced Krause to 18 months in prison in March, Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. realized he had a problem.
read the rest here
http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/101439164.html

Here are two of my videos that may help you understand what Sgt. Briggs is trying to explain.