"Violence by returning veterans may be on the rise, experts say" is wrong simply because it is what has been on the minds of experts for a very long time but has been based on facts and stone, cold hard data. Not just a couple of news reports. The first thing is there are more veterans getting into trouble with the law simply because there are more veterans. Over 2 million of them.
With two wars going on as long as these, you'll have veterans getting into trouble simply because they come from the same backgrounds the rest of the population does, face the same problems the rest of us do with families, relationships, finances topped off with coming back from deployments into combat zones. We commit crimes too and we make headlines everyday without ever having been in combat. Veterans make the news because they are less than ten percent of the general population and the troops serving are less than one percent.
If you take the percentages of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans coming home with PTSD, it looks like this.
Since 2007 police shooting (49)police shootout (12) police standoff (53) just to give you some idea of the numbers we're talking about. While it is true the numbers are going up, they will keep going up because there will be more veterans.
CNN mentioned the suicides but didn't address the rise in calls to the suicide prevention hotline or the fact that as the suicides have gone up, so have the attempted suicides despite the suicide prevention hotline. Military suicides have gone up as well. So have divorces, drunk driving arrests, single car accidents, motorcycle crashes, you name it. What CNN didn't understand is that most experts were screaming about all of this as soon as the troops were sent into Afghanistan in 2001.
There are so many parts to what's going on that it is mind boggling. Medications that have side effects that cause anger and suicides. Training that tells them if they end up with PTSD it is their fault because they didn't train their brains to be tough enough. Redeployments increasing the risk of PTSD by 50% topping off the extra stress families already have being left over and over again worrying about someone they love not coming back and in the case of National Guards and Reservists families, they have to worry about income being lost and no jobs for them to come back to.
The nature of what is part of combat these men and women face is worst because of the IED attacks planted on so many roads it makes them a target every time they get behind the wheel and then there are the suicide bombers blowing themselves up. Amputation are up because of the number of bombs and the battlefield medics saving more lives. Along with this are the witnesses seeing it all happen and being helpless to do anything about any of it. You can't shoot back after a bomb has blown up. Then you have the VA claim backlog leaving them with no incomes when they are unable to work because of what serving did to them.
Ask a young kid after they joined right out of high school if they are happy having to give up the only career they ever wanted because they don't have legs anymore or have been so deeply changed by combat they have to be on so many medications they can't do what they used to do.
The two veterans they reported on made the headlines but they forgot about these.
Police suspect Army vet in shooting of six officers
OGDEN, Utah
Thu Jan 5, 2012 5:10pm EST
(Reuters) - Six police officers were shot, one of them fatally, when a gunman said to be a U.S. Army veteran opened fire on them as they served a drug-related search warrant in Utah, authorities said on Thursday.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Iraq War veteran home just 4 days is fatally shot during standoff
UPDATE to this story
Troubles haunted soldier killed in confrontation with troopers from WBTV
Iraq War veteran home just 4 days is fatally shot during standoff
Jan 08, 2012
IREDELL COUNTY, NC (WBTV) - Three troopers with the North Carolina Highway Patrol are on administrative leave after they were involved in the deadly shooting of an Iraq War veteran early Sunday morning.
Troubles haunted soldier killed in confrontation with troopers
Posted: Jan 10, 2012
By David Whisenant, Salisbury Bureau Reporter
STATESVILLE - To his fellow soldiers, Bill Miller was the kind of guy who would do anything for you. He was generous and hardworking.
But now many are saying that Miller was fighting some personal demons, and that those problems may have played a role in his fatal confrontation with state troopers on Sunday morning.
Troopers had confronted Miller at the home of his former girlfriend on Sain Road, east of Statesville. They say that moments earlier, Miller had driven his car off the road and through a neighbor's yard.
When they arrived at the house, they found Miller with a gun. They say he refused to obey their orders to put the gun down, and when an Iredell County deputy tried to use a Taser to subdue him, they say Miller started shooting. The troopers and the deputy returned fire, killing Miller.
Miller served with an Army National Guard unit based in Salisbury where he was a mechanic on the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters.
Fort Bragg Soldier in Fayetteville standoff facing 30 charges
Soldier in Fayetteville standoff facing 30 charges
By: JACKIE FAYE , JUSTIN QUESINBERRY , NBC17 STAFF | NBC17.com
Published: January 13, 2012
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. --
A Fort Bragg soldier is facing 30 charges after exchanging gunfire with police and barricading himself in his apartment for hours Friday night and Saturday morning.
Staff Sgt. Joshua P. Eisenhauer is charged with 15 counts of attempted first-degree murder, six counts of felony assault on a law enforcement official and nine counts of felony assault on a government official.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Iraq veteran with rifle killed by police in Kansas
Veteran with rifle fatally shot by Raytown police
BY DONALD BRADLEY
The Kansas City Star
The man shot to death by Raytown police Thursday while threatening officers with a rifle was a veteran of the Iraq war who had recently learned he was being sent to Afghanistan.
In describing events that led up to the shooting of 26-year-old Robert G. Long, Raytown police Capt. Ted Bowman on Friday said he did not want to suggest that Long’s military service was responsible for what happened. In talking with officers during the ordeal, Long, a reserve medic, said he was proud of serving his country.
These are just some of the recent ones. It is happening all over the country but considering how many are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, the bigger issues these veterans face is healing and the next part of their lives but those stories are not as attention grabbing as facing off with police.
Experts: Vets' PTSD, violence a growing problem
By Ashley Hayes, CNN
updated 5:02 PM EST, Tue January 17, 2012
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Veterans are accused of homicides in Washington and California
Violence by returning veterans may be on the rise, experts say
Some may experience relationship difficulties or struggle with substance abuse
Loved ones can be key in encouraging vets to seek help
(CNN) -- A man opens fire in a national park, killing a ranger who was attempting to stop him after he blew through a vehicle checkpoint.
A second man is suspected in the stabbing deaths of four homeless men in Southern California.
Both men, U.S. military veterans, served in Iraq -- and both, according to authorities and those who knew them, returned home changed men after their combat service.
Iraq War vet could face death penalty
A coincidence -- two recent high-profile cases? Or a sign of an increase in hostile behavior as U.S. troops complete their withdrawal from Iraq, similar to that seen when U.S. troops returned home from the Vietnam War?
"You're going to see this more and more over the next 10 years," said Shad Meshad, founder of the National Veterans Foundation, who has been working with veterans since 1970. "... There's a percentage that come back, depending on how much trauma and how much killing they're involved in, they're going to act out."
Margaret Anderson, a ranger at Washington state's Mount Rainier National Park, was shot to death on New Year's Day. Police believe Benjamin Colton Barnes, who served in Iraq from 2007 to 2009, was responsible for the shooting. After a manhunt, authorities found Barnes' body face down in a creek in the park.
According to court documents obtained by CNN affiliate KIRO, the woman with whom Barnes was in a custody dispute said she believed he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from his deployment. Barnes was emotionally unstable, vindictive and anger-prone, the woman said, and owned many knives and guns. The woman said she was frightened to be in the same state with him, the documents said.
read more here
We talk about what happens to them but what we don't talk about enough is what the families go through especially when they don't have a clue why it is happening.
We talk about them having nightmares but we don't talk about a spouse being woken up by the veteran having one. That is stressful. What is even more stressful is making the mistake of trying to wake them up in striking distance. Whatever you do, don't touch them or yell at them.
Untreated PTSD is a destroyer. They drink to numb themselves so they don't have to feel anything and usually they'll end up doing drugs when alcohol stops taking care of it. They take off for hours at a time leaving their families to wonder if they are alive or dead or arrested for DUI. They have mood swings without warning. They over-react to sudden moves or noises. Sometimes they take something said innocently as an attack against them. They can get paranoid.
That is the worst part of PTSD but then there is mild PTSD caused by combat when a sadness comes over them and they are no danger to themselves or anyone else. That is one more thing we don't talk about. There are many different levels to PTSD with just as many outcomes. Combat PTSD is a whole different type of PTSD than what average people get because of the nature of the trauma itself, the duration and the number of exposures.
The good news is that they can heal if they get the right help and they'll heal better if they get help fast instead of putting it off hoping they just get over it. It is also important here to mention the simple fact that it is never too late to begin to heal since Vietnam veterans have proved that one. They are still discovering another side of life than just suffering in silence.
There is so much that can be done but as long as the media spends so much time on putting the spotlight on a few of them, the rest of the population will learn absolutely nothing about the reality of PTSD and combat. The stigma will live on because the average veteran with PTSD is not reported on enough.
UPDATE
Christian Science Monitor
Veteran charged with homeless murders:
Hint of larger problem for US military
A veteran charged with killing four homeless men was troubled after returning from Iraq, reports say. That has highlighted the rising mental-health problems facing the US military.
UPDATE 4:27 January 18, 2012
Warning: Veterans are dangerous, crazy criminals
By LEO SHANE III
Published: January 18, 2012
WASHINGTON – CNN and the Christian Science Monitor had separate stories today chronicling the growing problem of post-traumatic stress disorder and unchecked violent tendencies among returning veterans. Both pieces hinge on a pair of recent stories involving veterans from Iraq who committed shocking killings, and may have been suffering from war-related mental trauma.
But two incidents don’t necessarily equal a trend, at least in the eyes of veterans who lashed out at the stories over social media. They say the narrative of the unstable, potentially dangerous war veteran provides an easy and inaccurate stereotype that keeps the military community distant from the rest of American society.
The Monitor story couches their findings with a statement from a spokesman from the National Alliance of Mental Illness saying that speculating on mental illness shouldn’t be used to imply a correlation to violence.
read more here
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