Educating cops about veterans with PTSD

Educating cops about PTSD

KALWNews.org

By Erica Mu


Veterans with untreated PTSD are more likely to wind up in the criminal justice system.

JOHN GALVAN: You get rage you can't understand and you can't control it. When I got arrested I was telling the police, "You need to get me away from this situation. There's a high potential that I'm gonna do something that's gonna be really bad." Better to get arrested and get some psych help than be free.

But getting veterans like John Galvan the help they need shouldn't come only after a jail sentence. So a pilot program is helping train law enforcement officers to identify distressed veterans and help them diffuse as ituation before it escalates to crisis and arrest. In the second part of KALW News' series on returning veterans, reporter Lilah Crews-Pless takes us to a Combat to Community training near Sacramento.


LILAH CREWS-PLESS: About 50 police officers are having morning coffee and donuts in a conference room near Sacramento. Light shines into the cool room, which is covered in linoleum and wood paneling.

MIKE VANDERWOOD: Anybody else here a veteran? Prior service? Currently serving? Got about 30 of you all in the room. Great. Anybody work with veterans? Like your peers? A lot of you all? And how many of you encounter vets in the street or in your jobs? A lot of you, right?

About a third of today's class identify themselves as vets, and Mike Vanderwood says that proportion tends to be the norm. Former soldiers are six times more likely to work in law enforcement than civilians.

VANDERWOOD: And if your hand wasn't raised you are freakin' wrong. I'm telling you because you are going be working with veterans at some point.

Vanderwood, a captain in the Marine Corps Reserve, is teaching these law enforcement officers how to deal with troubled vets, especially those who have just come home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vanderwood illustrates just how psychologically damaging combat can be on soldiers using a film clip.



Read more: Educating cops about PTSD