Chicago Police officer, Vietnam Vet tells why he serves

A cop's life: Police blotter

BY MICHAEL SNEED Sun-Times Columnist
The hero file: Sneed's Friday column on the life of a cop netted the following letter from a Chicago Police officer that's worth sharing. The column was written in response to the killing Wednesday of Officer Thor Soderberg on the South Side. Here's the letter:

I am a Chicago police officer about to hit 20 years next month and also a Vietnam veteran, which often times seemed to be the same thing while on the job.


All of those things you mentioned were more than true . . . but I wanted to add just a few things. When we get up in the morning and put the uniform on, we don't plan to encounter trouble, we don't plan to run for blocks through gangways and streets in the dark after offenders. We don't plan on being told by a victim they don't want an offender arrested while holding their hand over a swollen eye, and we don't plan on having to stare down the barrel of our gun at someone who is staring down theirs.

We do what we did yesterday and today and will do tomorrow even in the light of another officer being murdered. We put on the uniform, go to roll call and into the street to serve and protect. We will think of Soderberg and other officers who have passed on but won't lose our focus because we still have to serve and protect.
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Police blotter

Current TV to Explore PTSD-Violence Linkage Among Combat Vets

If you cannot understand then you need to look on the web for Veterans Courts. This is a big deal because these men and women would lay down their lives for someone else so when they commit crimes, there is a reason behind it.

Current TV to Explore PTSD-Violence Linkage Among Combat Vets

By David Bois
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 10:59 AM ET

The exploration of how PTSD may tie to violent crime among war veterans promises to offer a chilling but invaluable expose on the mental health challenges and needs of our returned servicemen.

Some stories of servicemen returned home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are inspiring and uplifting to the point where it feels as though they write themselves. Even when having experienced the horror and hazards of war presents lingering physical and emotional challenges to the combat veteran's return to civilian life, we're able to celebrate acts of compassion for those less fortunate and displays of remarkable endurance undertaken in an effort to raise the public profile of the challenges the returned veteran faces.

Vanguard, an investigative report airing on Current TV, may be expected with tonight's episode entitled War Crimes to deliver precious little in the way of a feel-good depiction of the experiences of an increasing number of our combat veterans.
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Current TV to Explore PTSD Violence Linkage Among Combat Vets

When you care enough to send the best, remember that

When you care enough to send the best, remember that.

by
Chaplain Kathie

Deciding to send men and women into combat, especially in someone else's country, means that doing something about something requires we send the best trained and equipped military in the world. They are the best. We cheer them, honor them and most of us claim to support them but when it comes time for them to return home, we don't seem to remember they were the best and gave us the best they had. We let them languish in a flood of paperwork and in long lines. We let them have to fight the government to have their claims approved.

Some in this country want to suggest that anyone claiming PTSD is a fraud yet no matter how much evidence to prove otherwise, they cannot even manage to understand that they were regarded as the best and not the kind of person to be wanting a free ride off anyone. They risked their lives for others, but some forget that. They stepped up and went where we sent them while the rest of us were able to stay home and complain about how much it was costing or how long it was taking. The time for those thoughts was before they were sent. The time to honor them is always and the time to value them is more when they come home.

PTSD Claims: Making the Process Easier for Our Veterans

By Tammy Duckworth
We often hear the cliché, “the fog of war”—a simplified expression used to describe the chaos and confusion so often found in a combat zone. It’s something all combat Veterans understand.

Whether you’re running toward a hardened shelter during a mortar attack or gripping the wheel as your truck races through an area known for ambushes, combat is not a place where troops often stop to document the details. Those details may be forever burned into our minds, but we often don’t come away with hard copy proof of what occurred.

Unfortunately, for years now, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has required Veterans filing disability claims for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to do just that—to document in detail what caused them to become symptomatic. We call it a “stressor.” Our rules have been even more stringent for Veterans who didn’t serve in a combat branch of the military—like the infantry, artillery, or armor.

Essentially, if a former military intelligence soldier is continually late for work because he can’t sleep at night, we ask him to provide photos or a written radio log proving he was rocketed when he says he was. If he can’t, we might deny the claim. If a former medic shows signs of depression and blames it on having watched people bleed to death, we ask her to get a written statement from her former boss. Again, if she can’t, we may not award her benefits. But starting today, we’re making this process.
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Making the Process Easier for Our Veterans

There are some people in this country who reduce everything down to a Democrat or Republican but this is about the right thing, knowing it, believing it and proving it. There are Democrats and Republicans and Independents risking their lives everyday to defend this country. Bullets, bombs and traumas do not ask for a voter registration card. They do not know blue state from red state from island. All that war offers includes men and women serving side by side with people they disagree with politically but agree with their lives.

They have been told they had a "preexisting condition" and diagnosed with "personality disorder" even though they were able to pass every mental health screen and had no history of mental illness before being deployed. They have been discharged for using alcohol and drugs when they were trying to kill off the pain PTSD caused. They have been told by the DOD and the VA they were not believable when they filed claims because they couldn't remember if it was the first, second or third IED that was the one too many times their life was on the line. They were told that when they didn't know if it was the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th deployment that was the one that did it. Vietnam Veterans will be able to file claims without having to remember every detail from 40 years ago. Now they have a chance to be really honored they way they were treated when they were sent into combat. Remembered as being not your average citizen but the best we had to send.

Back home, female vets fight for recognition

Back home, female vets fight for recognition

By Natalie Bailey - Medill News Service
Posted : Tuesday Jul 13, 2010 13:58:07 EDT

With her copper hair, pale skin and small stature, Army Reserve Sgt. Jennifer Hunt, 26, stands out in the Veterans Affairs Department hospital waiting room filled with Vietnam War-era veterans.

She’s there for treatment of shrapnel injuries she received two years ago, after a roadside bomb hit her Humvee as she drove through West Rashid in Baghdad.

She said it’s not uncommon for her to be the only woman in the hospital waiting room, and to hear comments like, “You’re the prettiest vet I’ve seen all day.”

Although that brings unwanted attention, at least it shows the men take her for a veteran. Camouflaged by their gender both inside and outside VA hospital doors, women in the military are routinely mistaken for spouses and daughters — anything but combat veterans.

“It makes us feel invisible,” said Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Genevieve Chase, 32, founder of American Women Veterans. “It makes these women feel like their service didn’t matter.”
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Back home female vets fight for recognition

LA police teach Marines how to train Afghan police

LA police teach Marines how to train Afghan police

By: Associated Press

By JULIE WATSON

Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES — A tough-talking, muscular Los Angeles police sergeant steadily rattled off tips to a young Marine riding shotgun as they raced in a patrol car to a drug bust: Be aware of your surroundings. Watch people’s body language. Build rapport.

Marine Lt. Andrew Abbott, 23, took it all in as he peered out at the graffiti-covered buildings, knowing that the lessons he learned recently in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods could help him soon in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“People are the center of gravity and if you do everything you can to protect them, then they’ll protect you,” he said. “That’s something true here and pretty much everywhere.”

Abbott was among 70 Camp Pendleton Marines in a training exercise that aims to adapt the investigative techniques the LAPD has used for decades against violent street gangs to take on the Taliban more as a powerful drug-trafficking mob than an insurgency.

The Marines hope that learning to work like a cop on a beat will help them better track the Taliban, build relationships with Afghans leery of foreign troops and make them better teachers as they try to professionalize an Afghan police force beset by corruption.
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LA police teach Marines how to train Afghan police

Veterans Affairs Officer Accidentally Wounded

Veterans Affairs Officer Accidentally Wounded
Staff: Officer Shot Himself In Hand

CHEROKEE COUNTY, S.C. --

A Cherokee County Veterans Affairs officer was injured Monday when a gun he was handling accidentally went off, according to Veterans Affairs staff members.

Staff members said Officer Todd Humphries was handling a gun at his desk in his office in Gaffney when the gun went off, hitting him in the hand.
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Veterans Affairs Officer Accidentally Wounded

Plan should help soldiers receive PTSD treatment

There is no doubt that the new rules for filing a PTSD claim will make it easier for our veterans to get through the process, but we cannot forget the Vietnam veterans. There is no way to make up for the time it took them to struggle needlessly to have their claims approved and we need to acknowledge that. Above that, we also need to let them know that had it not been for them, much of what the newer veterans are able to receive would not be there. Their struggle and long, hard fight, brought us to this point. Because of them, no other generation will have to suffer the way they did.

When you read the numbers, notice that there are 247,486 Vietnam veterans being treated. There are many more who have not sought help to heal. Many more have committed suicide.

Veterans' benefits process shortened
Plan should help soldiers receive PTSD treatment
BY R. NORMAN MOODY • FLORIDA TODAY • July 13, 2010

By the numbers
Veterans receiving care for PTSD with VA in 2009

World War II: 22,500
Korea: 12,360
Vietnam: 247,486
Peacetime: 12,875
Other/Gulf war: 91,661

It took Vietnam Veteran Larry Symington decades to get the help he needed when he returned home from war.


After struggling to prove he had post-traumatic stress disorder, Symington only recently began receiving treatment.

Although a new regulation making it easier to access healthcare for PTSD won't make a difference for him, his wife, Debbie, said it is a welcome change for veterans, especially those returning from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and for older veterans who have fallen through the cracks.

The Department of Veterans Affairs announced Monday a simplified process that should make it easier for veterans to receive benefits and treatment for PTSD.

Before this change, veterans who applied for disability benefits had to prove what caused their PTSD by providing evidence of a particular bombing or attack. Now, it will be enough to show that the conditions in which they served could have contributed to the diagnosis.

"It's a long time coming," said Scott Fairchild, a Melbourne psychologist who treats veterans with PTSD. "It really eases the process."

PTSD is a medically recognized anxiety disorder that can develop from experiencing an event that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury to which a person responds with intense fear, helplessness or horror. It is not uncommon among war veterans, even those who didn't directly see combat.
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Veterans' benefits process shortened

VA Simplifies Access to Health Care and Benefits for Veterans with PTSD
WASHINGTON (July 12, 2010) - Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K.
Shinseki announced a critical step forward in providing an easier
process for Veterans seeking health care and disability compensation for
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), with the publication of a final
regulation in the Federal Register.

"This nation has a solemn obligation to the men and women who have
honorably served this country and suffer from the often devastating
emotional wounds of war," said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K.
Shinseki. "This final regulation goes a long way to ensure that
Veterans receive the benefits and services they need."

By publishing a final regulation in the Federal Register to simplify the
process for a Veteran to claim service connection for PTSD, VA reduces
the evidence needed if the trauma claimed by a Veteran is related to
fear of hostile military or terrorist activity and is consistent with
the places, types, and circumstances of the Veteran's service.

This science-based regulation relies on evidence that concluded that a
Veteran's deployment to a war zone is linked to an increased risk of
PTSD.

Under the new rule, VA would not require corroboration of a stressor
related to fear of hostile military or terrorist activity if a VA doctor
confirms that the stressful experience recalled by a Veteran adequately
supports a diagnosis of PTSD and the Veteran's symptoms are related to
the claimed stressor.

Previously, claims adjudicators were required to corroborate that a
non-combat Veteran actually experienced a stressor related to hostile
military activity. This final rule simplifies the development that is
required for these cases.

VA expects this rulemaking to decrease the time it takes VA to decide
access to care and claims falling under the revised criteria. More than
400,000 Veterans currently receiving compensation benefits are service
connected for PTSD. Combined with VA's shorter claims form, VA's new
streamlined, science-based regulation allows for faster and more
accurate decisions that also expedite access to medical care and other
benefits for Veterans.

PTSD is a medically recognized anxiety disorder that can develop from
seeing or experiencing an event that involves actual or threatened death
or serious injury to which a person responds with intense fear,
helplessness or horror, and is not uncommon among war Veterans.

Disability compensation is a tax-free benefit paid to a Veteran for
disabilities that are a result of -- or made worse by -- injuries or
diseases associated with active service.

For additional information, go to www.va.gov or
call VA's toll free benefits number at 1-800-827-1000.

University keeps vets story project alive

University keeps vets story project alive

By Janese Silvey - The Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune via AP
Posted : Monday Jul 12, 2010 14:47:12 EDT

COLUMBIA, Mo. — As a veteran of Afghanistan and an active member of the Army National Guard, Rep. Jason Kander knows the importance of sharing stories from combat. But he isn’t keen on the idea of doing that on taxpayers’ dimes — 6 million dimes, to be exact.

Kander was one of the state lawmakers who helped scrap $600,000 from the upcoming state budget that had been requested to support Missouri Veterans Stories, a project that records Missouri veterans talking about their war experiences.

Now, he and several other representatives are teaming up with the University of Missouri to recreate that veteran video program in a way that benefits students and saves taxpayer dollars.

Missouri Veterans Stories debuted in 2007 and has since produced about 1,300 videos of men and women sharing their memories from World War II. It has been operated out of Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder’s office and managed by a private video company, Patriot Productions.

When Kander began questioning the allocation during a budget committee meeting this past session, he learned that the state was the company’s only client. Further investigation revealed that those affiliated with Patriot Productions also made campaign contributions to Kinder, said Kander, D-Kansas City.
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University keeps vets story project alive

VA official to clinics: Stop gaming the system. Thank you Larry Scott

VA official to clinics: Stop gaming the system

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Jul 12, 2010 13:38:45 EDT

After years of complaints from veterans who say they aren’t getting VA medical appointments within 30 days even if Veterans Affairs Department records show they are, a top VA official sent out a memo asking employees to quit “gaming” the system.

“It has come to my attention that, in order to improve scores on assorted access measures, certain facilities have adopted use of inappropriate scheduling practices sometimes referred to as ‘gaming strategies,’ ” wrote William Schoenhard, VA’s deputy undersecretary for health for operations and management, in the April 26 memo.

The “gaming” came after VA required its employees to ensure patients were given initial appointments within 30 days of entering the VA system. Instead, several clinics came up with ways to make it look as if the veterans had canceled their appointments or hadn’t asked for one until within 30 days of when the appointment was made.

“As we strive to improve access to our veterans, we must ensure in fact that improvement does not focus or rely on workarounds,” Schoenhard wrote. “Workarounds may mask the symptoms of poor access and, although they may aid in meeting performance measures, they do not serve our veterans.”

The memo, first reported by Larry Scott of VAWatchdog.org, comes in the wake of exceptional gains in reducing appointment waiting times announced by VA officials.
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VA official to clinics: Stop gaming the system

Female shooter killed herself, five others in workplace attack

Police: Shooter killed herself, five others in workplace attack

[Updated 2:12 p.m., July 12] A former employee shot and killed five people at a business Monday in Albuquerque before turning the gun on herself, New Mexico authorities said.

Police said officers responded to a 911 call at 9:26 a.m. (11:26 a.m. ET) that multiple shots had been fired. When officers entered the building, they found a total of 10 people shot - four were dead, including a woman believed to be the shooter, officials said.

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Two people have since died as a result of gunshot wounds, two are in stable condition and two others are receiving emergency medical attention, police said.

"We believe this incident to be a domestic-violence workplace situation," Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz said.
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Shooter killed herself, five others in workplace attack