Veterans and Law Enforcement: A New Deal Aimed at Preventing Crime?

When veterans of the War on Terror end up in crisis with a law enforcement officer, it’s a life-changing event. Some cities and states are adopting new, alternative judicial streams to prevent future offenses.

By Guy Gambill, Guest Contributor

Guy Gambill served in the U.S. Army and was honorably discharged in 1985. He is an advocate of judicial diversion programs for veterans and the former director of research and policy at the Veterans Initiatives Center and Research Institute in Minneapolis, MN. This article was written especially for Catalyst.

Some veterans of the War on Terror (primarily the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan) are running afoul of the law, but is the deck of cards stacked against them? And are they any different from veterans of other wars? Many believe that psychological problems resulting from their combat experience set a good many of these veterans apart.

The bigger issue is whether law enforcement officers, and even our courts, should deal with these veterans differently from others who come in contact with the judicial system. If they are given a second chance and a shot at mental health counseling, will they avoid a repeat offense?

Perhaps now is the time to recognize the unique issues facing these combat veterans and deal with them in a constructive manner that benefits the service members, their families, and the country they have served so well.

According to a RAND Corporation report released in February 2008, 11.2 percent of returning military personnel deployed to the war arena now suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression as a result of their service, 7.3 percent suffer from PTSD or major depression and have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and another 12 percent have suffered a TBI only. Thus, approximately 320,000 veterans of the War on Terror have sustained a TBI and more than 300,000 have suffered either major depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.

A major diagnostic tool used by mental health professionals, the DMSR-IV, provides some insight into why PTSD causes behavioral problems for some vets. Those suffering from PTSD are prone to overreacting, hyper-vigilance, exaggerated reflexive reactions to situations perceived as threatening, the tendency to self-medicate, and the tendency to flash back to a traumatic event. Some of the behaviors used to adapt to these symptoms, resulting directly from front line combat, include the tendency to drive fast and to avoid enclosed spaces or roadside obstacles perceived to be a threat. These behaviors greatly enhance the likelihood that these veterans will attract the attention of law enforcement and be detrained, arrested, or confined.  The results could be disastrous for a veteran returning from the War on Terror who is suffering from one of these symptoms or experiencing one of these adaptive behaviors.

For sake of comparison, the 1985 congressional National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study reported that 11 percent of Vietnam veterans had been convicted of a felony and 34.2 percent had been arrested for a misdemeanor. Walter Lunden, in a 1952 article in the The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science, noted that between 1946 and 1949, nearly 40 percent of all new admissions to 11 Midwestern prisons were combat veterans of World War II. Given wide additions to federal and state criminal codes, it seems likely that the current generation of combat veterans will come into unprecedented contact with our criminal justice systems.

It is extremely important that we distinguish carefully, wherever possible, between criminal intent and mental health issues. We need to make sure, through early intervention and proper treatment, that our returning heroes are not circulated through multiple judicial systems unduly. Give the nature of military culture, Army and Marine Corps veterans in particular often find it very difficult to ask for help. Consequently, the first time they may ask for help is when they are in crisis and dealing with a law enforcement officer, and how that law enforcement officer or other first responder handles the situation could change lives forever. Thankfully, law enforcement officers and judges have been among the first to step up to the plate in responding to the difficulties experienced by some of our returning heroes.

Many in the law enforcement community believe there is a solution in the provision of special services for returning veterans or in the development of special judicial streams to divert returning veterans in crisis from the conventional judicial system. Lieutenant Jeffry Murphy, a 38-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department, has been instrumental in developing a 40-hour veteran-specific crisis intervention training module to train police officers to respond to combat veterans experiencing a mental health crisis. John Bennett, a former deputy with the Sequoya County Sheriff’s Department in Oklahoma who now serves with the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs, proved key in setting up a veterans’ court in Tulsa, OK, that is a branch of the existing specialty (drug) court, and is currently assisting with an expansion of that court to Oklahoma City. Judge Robert Russell in Buffalo, NY, was among the earliest to take up the challenge of implementing a veterans’ court in that state. The Buffalo court has since been replicated in Rochester, NY. The New York courts are independent of existing drug and mental health courts.

In 2006, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger became the first state executive to sign state-wide veterans’ diversion legislation into law. Then, in 2008, veterans advocates Hector Matascastillo, Brockton Hunter, and I followed suit with an amendment to Minnesota’s Pre-Sentence Investigation Statute. The amendment would grant members of the bench additional discretion to divert combat veterans with diagnosable psychological trauma from jail to an appropriate treatment regime. Connecticut, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, and Oklahoma have all been considering the introduction of either veterans’ court legislation or diversion legislation at the state level. The Veterans Initiatives Center and Research Institute, of which I was formerly the director of research and policy, has been heavily involved in public education efforts at the state and national levels, and we hope to work closely with law enforcement and corrections staff on these important issues.

The unprecedented deployments of National Guard and Reserve elements to the War on Terror have included large numbers of law enforcement officers. Law enforcement personnel naturally understand and empathize with combat stress due to the nature of their professions and have been among the first to step up and work with conflict veterans. It is of paramount importance that officers understand and continue to take leadership roles in service to our combat veterans. Such responses are fiscally wise, just, and simply the right thing to do.