Today’s USA Today is running an article about a new federal program to help local police departments deal with the “ticking time bomb veteran” chimera. I found elements within it rather irritating:
The Justice Department is funding an unusual national training program to help police deal with an increasing number of volatile confrontations involving highly trained and often heavily armed combat veterans.
Developers of the pilot program, to be launched at 15 U.S. sites this year, said there is an “urgent need” to de-escalate crises in which even SWAT teams may be facing tactical disadvantages against mentally ill suspects who also happen to be trained in modern warfare.
“We just can’t use the blazing-guns approach anymore when dealing with disturbed individuals who are highly trained in all kinds of tactical operations, including guerrilla warfare,” said Dennis Cusick, executive director of the Upper Midwest Community Policing Institute. “That goes beyond the experience of SWAT teams.”
Shouldn’t SWAT teams always try to de-escalate crises? Is it our usual practice to have a “blazing guns approach” with disturbed individuals? We need a federal training program for this?
The story goes on:
Cusick, who is developing the program along with institute training director William Micklus, said local authorities have a better chance of defusing violent confrontations by immediately engaging suspects in discussions about their military experience — not with force.
The aim, Micklus said, is to try to reconnect them with “a sense of integrity” lost in the fog of emotional distress.
“You can’t win by trying to out-combat them,” Cusick said. “You emphasize what it means to be a Marine, a soldier to people who now feel out of control.”
Do police officers “win” engagements with the public, even disturbed members of that public? Do those people on the receiving end then “lose” anything more important than their lives? These are public servants, performing often valiantly in situations where the public does not want to go. But there should not be a mindset of “winning” in some conflict with that public.
And here’s the kicker:
There is no data that specifically tracks police confrontations with suspects currently or formerly associated with the military. But an Army report issued this year found that violent felonies in the service were up 1% while non-violent felonies increased 11% between 2010 and 2011.
During that time, however, crime in much of the nation declined.
So, Eric Holder’s Justice Department has no data to suggest a rising wave of the perennial “disgruntled veteran” going postal, but we’re all set to develop a new federal program to deal with the threat. We analogize that since violent felonies within the services have risen a meager 1%, that there is therefore some latent pool of combat-trained – and armed! – lunatics out there bent upon going out in a blaze of glory. Which we would be all too happy to provide them with, except the good guys may take some hits too.
This has nothing to do with relaxed recruiting standards during a tough ten years of war, nor our country’s failure to develop meaningful support mechanisms for those who have borne the strains and stresses of those ten years. The important thing to realize is that there are veterans out there!!! With guns!!11!
Ergo we must have a federal program to deal with them, channeling those resources through the “Upper Midwest Community Policing Institute”.
Much of the anecdotal evidence reads like the report of the Jan. 13 standoff between Army Staff Sgt. Joshua Eisenhauer, 30, a veteran of multiple combat tours, and Fayetteville, N.C., police and firefighters.
Anecdotes, but no data. Generalizing from a specific instance to all veterans, who may be armed (!) and therefore must be considered politically suspect dangerous.
Pop quiz: Who’s killed more law enforcement officers: Psychologically scarred veterans, or Mr. Holder’s own Justice Department?
Is it April Fools day already?
First of all, this isn’t happening. Lex proved the main point already, that there’s no plague of disgruntled veterans attacking cops and other citizens. And, if there are, I think our police forces are plenty militarized enough to handle them already.
Next, what exactly are they going to teach in this class? Super-dooper tactics so they can break down some whacked-out rifleman at the end of his rope? “SWAT teams may be facing tactical disadvantages.” If SWAT can’t manage a 20v1 with the moral and material advantages all on their side, the game is already over. “You emphasize what it means to be a Marine…” Give me a break! I’m sure some unemployed and, sadly, unemployable Marine or soldier, sufficiently deranged to find himself in a standoff, is going to yield to some dime-store psychology pushed on him by a peace officer masquerading as an infantryman. Especially when said peace officer is on the other side of the divide from him, what with his municipal salary and a good shot at medical retirement at full pay after 20.
Police leaders: put down “First Blood” and the LEO tactical supply catalogs, pull up your pants, and go walk a beat. Common sense, good shoes, and an empathetic connection to the community you serve is going to be a hell of a lot more valuable than some b.s. course and more hi-speed gear you guys don’t need. If you wanted to command killers, you had your chance last decade.
Combat Vets: God bless and thank you for your service.
On another tack, this could be due diligence and backside-covering, whether against potential public-relations backlash or far-reaching litigation.
I recall Janet Napolitano saying that the biggest threat to America was … our veterans.
Seems that her words are about to become policy.
Our nation is in the very best of hands!
I’m starting to thing that Holder is running for mayor of New York.
These folks have no idea how simultaneously cynical and tone-deaf they appear: One day they congratulate themselves for having the courage to send SEALs into combat, the next they openly ruminate about the veteran threat to our liberties.
Feckless, stupid, ignorant, gutless b@stards put in office by those who have no clue to their true agenda. The Obama administration is full of those who have spent a lifetime resenting the military, especially POTUS & FLOTUS. We owe our freedom to our Veterans, not the blowhards who work in the White House.
If these self centered fools are able to gain re-election ( God forbid), they will spend the next term gutting the military and turning our country into a clone of some South American hellhole.
OMG – OBAMA MUST GO !
Lex – it’s worse. They just don’t give a damn. They have an agenda, they are going to push it and the hell with everyone else.
Lex/
It’s easy for disciples of the White “I can think of six impossible things before breakfast” Queen. Don’t you realize that Obama-land is just another word for living in a “Through the Looking-glass” world?
Ahem…Excuse me, but,,but,,I thought alot of our police departments and their SWAT units were military veterans. Hmmm.
Maybe they can play the adversarial role during training.
Don’t point that out to the knuckleheads in charge or they may strip our PD’s of all their manpower in the name of diversity and protecting us from rogue cops.
De-militarizing the police would only be a good thing.
In case, you know, you might want to call them or something…. http://www.umcpi.org/Home.aspx
A site search returns no results for “Protect” or “Serve” on the umcpi site but I’m sure it’s included under the code word “public safety”.
The board of directors is a mix of Law Enforcement/ Lawyers/ Community Relations. For example one, John Harrington, is a MN state legislator and former police chief. A member of Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labour Party (think Al Franken) and a devout Catholic, Zen Buddhist (not making this up – http://www.leg.state.mn.us/legdb/fulldetail.aspx?id=15330).
And Commissioner Mona Dohman who has a long record of police service and “has worked with the legislative and executive branches to implement policies designed to improve and expand the role of law enforcement across a broad spectrum of issues including advocating for victim’s rights and critical federal funding.”
I’m sure there is no conflict of interest when these board members holding public/appointed office or being a federal employee seek government funding for their non-profit consulting organization.
Why should I have all the fun? This is America and we have Google!
Veterans. Men trained to fire and less afraid of the cops than TPTB want them to be. Really, Lex, you’re inching toward tinfoil hat territory here, but since Homeland Security (as German an English malaproprism as you can find, but then English wasn’t Bush’s first language) has decreed that people who stockpile more than a few days of goods in the event of disaster (manmade or otherwise) are potentially domestic terrorists, it makes sense that that they want to “sensitize” our police to the inherent threat that veterans pose.
Gee, based on no data, let’s start a large and misguided program. ???!!!!??#$%@#$$
Hey! Where’s the real fliterman, and what have you done with him?
Did we leave him under the table at Shakespeare’s only to have an imposter take his place?
Hey, nobody’s perfect
As I have long suspected, flit really is one of us. He just has too much fun pushing our buttons. Not to say that he doesn’t lean somewhat more to port than others of us, but when it comes to cases, I expect to see flit standing shoulder to shoulder with the rest.
Paul
Ok, Muslim men from the ages of 16 to 35 keep blowing themselves and others up, but we can not talk about that, and gangs are overwhelmingly made up of minorities: The “National Youth Gang Survey Analysis” (2009) state that of gang members, 49% are Hispanic/Latino, 35% are African-American/black, 9% are white, and 7% are other race/ethnicity” but we don’t have any data and are going to target vets? YHGTBSM! Vets, largely vote Republican, so in the Democrat’s eyes, they must be crazy as can be, I guess.
But, but, but… Aren’t the vast majority of combat veterans supposedly now also minorities?
Wasn’t Charlie Rangel using that argument not long ago to try to gain support for re-instituting the draft?
Biting their tails so hard their heads slipped up their asses.
In my estimation, if vets were to prove a threat it would be to the extreme left as they decided they’d had enough of their Nazism and pout an end to it. It would be a couple deranged loonies either. It would be a very large number and the left would have good reason to quake in their boots.
The idea that Police “win engagements” is a military idea they have no bidness adopting. Frankly, any cop that has that idea is deranged himself and needs to put in a rubber room because he is a threat to society and himself.
Now I know a bunch of the hooligans hereabouts are, ahem, senior enough, to recall the last time this mud-slinging against vets started. And for almost two generations, my Vietnam War veteran friends have been tarred with the “ticking time-bomb, homeless but armed to the teeth” meme thrown at them by the poltroons and politicians. (Yes, I admit the latter are almost uniformly the former) But I am pleased to see more and more vets of the GWOT pushing back, vigorously against the soft and the comfortable as they mindlessly spout this tripe.
Welcome to the club, veterans of the GWOT. Remember this when it comes to time to vote. Not only nationally, but locally, as well. Let your local Chief of Police know you’re watching and talking to his or her employer, the Mayor and City Council. Who watches the watchers?
You’re missing the end game. Obama and Bush changed our Army and Marines from a big battle doctrine, to an anti insurgency doctrine… and there are only TWO situations where that is needed, Occupation, or combating an INTERNAL insurgency… and knowing that you have to understand somthing to combat it…
Now, put thousands of Combat Vets on the Streets (drawdown) at a time of High Unemployment… with a Commander in Chief who is ignoring the Consitution when it is inconvenient.
Add a sprinking of an Oath to defend the Constitution? against enemies foreign and domestic?
Then add some Paranoia?
If you are paying attention, this was predictable.
Justice Department creativity. Setting the stage for more outrageous things, I think.
As a “ticking time bomb” whose mainspring seems to be running down AND the father of a police sergeant in a rather large city at the South end of the San Francisco Bay, I assure everyone in D.C. that the problem is not with vets going postal (does that mean they get two pensions?).
The problem is hard core Mexican gang members infiltrating our cities and towns. Looking askance at these people is disallowed by the PTBs and their lackeys. One can’t profile for fear of hurting their feelings and that same one can’t interact with them until they’ve used up a clip or two.
The inmates are running the asylum. Sonny-boy is looking to retire in four years or so, taking his expertise to the private sector where he can profile to keep things safe.
I think “problem” cops who are vets with attitude constitute a far more serious threat to our Republic than the anecdotal (imagined?) civilian vet with guns.
Tom
Again, Burkett’s “Stolen Valor” is predictive. Any chance we can get some veteran’s groups pushing back on this?
“Call for Mr. Rambo…”
Then there is Maj. Hasan. Murders, was it 13 soldiers, and we are told not to rush to judgment regarding him.
He is assigned pre-PTSD status (whatever that may be) as he had not seen combat, for an excuse. Amazing how we
are told to treat him with kid gloves. And when does his trial begin? That whole deal disgusts me to no end.
These clowns are lonly providing a service that customers think they need, and have funds to pay for. (Wanna bet there is a federal pot of money for this crapola?)
The bio of Micklus is enlightening. He seems to have spent an eternity in the “militarization of police” programs. And as further proof of his dubious credentials, he is “…also a Diversity and Cultural Competences consultant.”
These folks are from the same type of mindset as Lon Horiuchi, the infamous FBI “Hostage Rescue Team” sniper who killed Mrs. Randy Weaver in their cabin as she held their child in her arms.
These uber-militarized polizei and their “shoot first” tactics are a worse threat to our country than a handful of vets who might go nutso.
Something tells me Cisick is your typical GS-14/15 hack that hasn’t been in the field in forever and is only flexing his aura of a LEO in the “know”. Probably has never been in a situation he’s described. This smells like a man wanting to be a Director of something with a budget. Too many of his ilk wanting to control grant money but have no culpability. If it wasn’t already stated that it’s a DOJ grant it very well could’ve been a DHS type grant.
“to help police deal with an increasing number of volatile confrontations involving highly trained and often heavily armed combat veterans.”
Like the former Marine who was awakened by a SWAT assault on his house, didn’t fire a single shot, was himself shot numerous times and left to bleed to death on the floor of his home, with his Wife and child watching and not allowed to help him. I used to view the cops as good guys but no days, I’m not so sure.
Actually, I’m very sure. Expect rank & file police to be right on the bloody edge of our oppression. And nowhere but. It’s the natural progression of the militarization in equipment, mindset & training of civilian law enforcement. The first few times a SWAT team is reduced to well armed & armored charred meat by improvised thermobaric explosives & the like, I imagine they’ll stop seeing themselves as the civilian incarnation of DevGru’s Gold Team.
Totally agree. Dealing with the mentally ill (regardless of veteran status) in an age where state mental hospitals are long since in the rear view mirror is a huge challenge for law enforcement. Credible studies have shown that a full third of incarcerated people are undiagnosed and/or suffer untreated mentally ill. Many are jailed for nuisance crimes that officers typically overlook but won’t in the case of the mentally ill if for no other reason that to get them under a roof and into a controlled environment.
There is a revolution underway in the LE training community when it comes to helping officers recognize the signs of people suffering mental health crises. Small, local (NON-FEDERAL) groups of mental health professionals have put together training seminars, typically called Crisis Intervention Team or Crisis Intervention Training all over the country to address the warehousing and repeated arrest of the MI. It’s a program that I believed in and saw work when I was a beat cop.
The federal government has no place in this arena. They certainly should not be demonizing those who suffer from the emotional and mental trauma of war to cops across the nation. The isolated incidences of veterans getting in shootings with officers get undue notice in my community. It is unfortunate.
Excellent comment, Chunk.
Loralee/
Yes, Chunk really succinctly ( and excellently) summed up the state-of-play in a very short space, didn’t he? Three paras worth more than an typical hours lecture in SOC or Anthro 101 on campus..
Chunk,
If you’re involved with that, getting the MI into shelter then Thank You. They need shelter out of the wet snowy cold.
Well, CIT was more about non-punitive alternatives to jailing the MI. Mental health diversion court has a great track record. If an officer arrests someone they believe to be suffering from chronic MI (we’re not talking run of the mill depression), they can recommend at the initial appearance to send the case to Mental Health court. Generally, the defendant gets psychiatric assistance, a social worker assigned, and is given court ordered appearances where their social worker reports on the progress. If the defendant takes their meds, sees their doctors, then get back on their feet, they “graduate” from MH court and the original charges are dropped. It’s a supportive structure that uses the carrot/stick method.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_health_court
Oh, and no snow in south Florida!
“we’re not talking run of the mill depression”. Thanks for that, ossifer, so you won’t have to run me in. In my considered opinion, from an half-century of experience here, having to live in southern Florida CAUSES depression, not to mention other sorts of mental damage.
Sometimes the only thing which cheers me up is imagining that lots of anti-personnel mines have been thickly planted on all of the golf courses around here, by Direct Divine Intervention. Just imagining, mind you.
Oh, I forgot to mention: I am a VERY anti-golf person. It’s a good walk spoiled, you should be exercising with yer weapons instead, and all that.
In my `SWAT` days, I lost count of the times the `principle` in a request for our services was nearly always portrayed and described as ` highly dangerous`, almost ad nauseum. `Oh dear, here we go again after Britain’s most wanted`. I think a lot of the time it was to save precious egos because policy required that we had to be given primacy for the arrest. What used to make me chuckle to myself was the look on the faces of the detectives when we said we would contain the premises covertly then just knock on the door or give him a call by phone and invite him to step outside. “Contain and contact” is much safer than a sexy/dynamic door bust, but it tends to disappoint those expecting something really special to happen. As for making special cases out of our ex servicemen in the manner proposed in this post, I find that nothing short of an outrage.
I think they’re in the process of starting something called Veteran’s Court here in FL. They have one up near Eglin AFB in Ft. Walton Beach area. I was at a talk recently given by a retired Brigadier General who is now a judge. He started the court up there and has been pushing for it State wide. He is a veteran of Afghanistan and has Traumatic Brain Injury. His talk was fascinating and he went into great depth about TBI and what it alters from a thought pattern standpoint.
Never did he mention violence. Never did he mention that veterans were a threat. Never did he mention that the ‘veteran’s court’ was for veterans who’d committed heinous acts. What he DID say is that sometimes people with TBI don’t understand the ‘No Trespassing’ sign. They may have gotten their checkbook balanced to the penny before the injury, but after, they don’t truly understand the concept of it and don’t get that they wrote a bad check. Neither of the ‘laws broken’ were meant to be malicious.
He was saying he didn’t think that veterans, in particular with TBI, deserved special treatment, but that there had to be a place where people understood and could take into accounting what was REALLY going on and make the appropriate call accordingly.
I think the talk was 40 minutes, probably one of the best talks I’ve been to. Not once did he ever mention anything this government is talking about… with no data.
Now see, Bou, YOUR BG judge and his program is the sort of thing that should be cloned and replicated everywhere, NOT the jackbooted PC thuggery envisioned by Big Sis et al..
I would love to see a comparison of “veterans gone bad” to “wrongful police shootings”. Whaddaya think? 1:10? 1:100? I guess solving real problems is too hard for the think-tank geniuses. Glad I’m out of the law enforcement biz.
Steve: Recent story from a friend who lives in North London. Driving her car recently, she was held up in a traffic jam caused by a guy who decided to stop his car near a junction and talk to a guy who was stood on the pavement. Its single file traffic with no room to pass. My friend sees a policeman stood nearby who was close enough to speak to. She asked him if this obstruction could be sorted out by him having a few words. The policeman said, `Well, the driver’s black, the guy he’s talking to is black. If I go in and tell them to shift it, they’ll cry harrassment, start to rant and get disorderly, others over there will most probably join in and I’ll be writing reports all week. Best leave them be. They’ll be finished in a few minutes”.
And we have war wounded and soon to be made redundant soldiers too! Wonder which is the easier problem to fix? Not in my day, sir, but I’ve been out ten years. Don’t miss a single thing.
Wait! I thought the Law was supposed to make no distinctions between different kinds of people! You know, One Law for everybody?
Jtg:
Animal Farm.
Paul
PLQ:
Bankers.
Jtg
Jtg:
?
Paul
Relax, folks. It’s all part of the plan. Next, the Obamanation plans on using this report and it’s announced program to justify ‘separating’ such individuals from private firearms. Things are going nicely…….if you happen to be a Lefty Anti-Military and Anti-Gun Nut.
Nobady has said anything to ME about watching the vets more closely, probably because around here we take To Protect and to Serve seriously. ( I don’t think I have ever met a crazed veteran ) These ideas tend to germinate in places like Madison PD, where they want armed social workers, rather than police officers, and have no idea what other views there are, other than that the we must do your thinking for you, as we are so much wiser than you people.
The Legislature took most types of commitment for treatment away in the early 1980′s, as the idea that some people do need help is offesive to the mindset of the liberal left, those people merely have a different viewpoint. So it is very hard to get them nto the mental health pipeline, until they do go and do something strange, or violent, or just obnoxious, and wind up in the hands of Law Enforcement. The compassion of the Left is really only directed at themselves, so they can feel so good about themselves for being so open minded, that they just have to hug themselves. Meanwhile, there are people out there, some of them homeless, wandering in thier own little world, with no help being offered in finding thier way back. It is so much easier to blame the victims in this case, so the funds that could have gone to treating them can go in the pockets of Friends of Obama, like Solyndra.