Reports on families of crime victims reflection of veterans' families

In each of these articles what comes after violent events for families are told.

Collateral Damage: Advocates Aim To Save Children From Impact Of Violence
Collateral Damage: Families Struggle To Care For Victims Of Violence

Lloyd Fox • Baltimore Sun-TNS / Alice Oaks holds the Christmas ornament that will be hung on the tree at the Survivors Against Violence Everywhere (SAVE) holiday gathering in remembrance of her two sons that were both killed. SAVE holds an annual event for those that are impacted by the loss of a family member or friends from violence.

Collateral Damage: Relatives Of Murder Victims Struggle With Grief

All of what they are going through is what families of veterans go through when they face the outcomes of inept attempts to avert them.

Families struggle with health issues after homicide,

Scientists at Johns Hopkins and other institutions have found that grief can cause biological changes.

The immediate grief after a death can weaken the heart and increase the risk of heart attacks. The lingering anger associated with this grief can also cause heart problems, a Harvard University study found. Other research connects intense grief to high levels of stress hormones, a weakened immune system and trouble sleeping.

Relatives interviewed in Jeanna M. Mastrocinque’s York College study attributed illnesses such as cancer, heart attacks and death to their grief. Many complained of feeling physically sick, and some lost so much weight that they dropped three or four clothes sizes. One described it this way: “I think this has changed me on a molecular level.”

Mastrocinque’s study recommended that primary care physicians pay more attention to the health status of the relatives of the murdered, given all the problems they reported.

“Homicide is one of the leading causes of death for many age groups,” said Mastrocinque, an assistant professor of criminal justice. “I don’t think people think about how much homicide ripples through communities.”

Michelle Randolph considered herself fairly healthy before her only child, Wesley Lewis, 19, was found murdered in August 2010. After his death, the Baltimore woman couldn’t control her blood pressure and suffered from panic attacks and depression.

They also suffer after family members come home from combat where they risked their lives to save others yet fell so hard that they ended up being killed by police officers.

The next time you read about a veteran and police officers facing off, remember, after the headline comes the reality of the event for the families and the officers. Remember, as with the above reports, families often suffer in silence and people walk away from them when they need support the most.

The next time you read about a veteran, remember one more key detail in all of this. They were willing to die for the sake of someone else and shouldn't have died because we managed to pay more attention to the "crime" in the headline instead of the people assuring us they were doing everything possible to help them come home.

Police officer-in-training arrested

Waters served 3 tours and has PTSD. The woman he is in a relationship with went to court to try to get the charges dropped. The video on this article has a lot more information than the print report.

Police officer-in-training arrested for strangling woman
WCTI 12 News
Kyle Horan
Jan 02 2015
JACKSONVILLE, ONSLOW COUNTY -

NewsChannel12 talked with the victim in this case on Friday. She says she's not seriously injured and that Waters suffers from PTSD. Warrants state Waters does own a PTSD dog. The victim indicated she wanted the charges dropped. There's no word yet if that has happened.

A police officer-in-training, who is also a Marine Reservist, is arrested for allegedly strangling a woman in Jacksonville.

According to warrants, Cody Lloyd Waters, 26, is accused of strangling a woman with both of his hands, hitting the woman in her head and face, and then pushing her to the ground. It happened at an apartment on Western Boulevard in Jacksonville.

Waters is a Lance Corporal in Marine Corps Reserves and was training to be a police officer for Kinston Public Safety. According to Kinston Public Safety Director Bill Johnson, Waters had worked for the police department just one day before being arrested for felony assault.
read more here

Christopher Thomas, OEF OIF Veteran Killed In Avalanche

Gazette Premium Content Rugged, outdoor experiences brought peace to soldier who died in avalanche, friends say 
The Gazette
By Maria St. Louis-Sanchez
Published: January 3, 2015

A Colorado Springs man who died in an avalanche Wednesday was a soldier and experienced outdoorsman who knew the risks and dangers of life and chose to take them anyway, friends said.

Whether serving three combat tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan or climbing mountains, friends of Christopher Thomas said the 39-year-old embraced challenges. "He was extremely experienced and prepared," said Joy Burton, a family friend who knew Thomas through Living Earth Church in Denver, a church centered around neo-paganism.

"He purposely sought out challenges and experiences in the wilderness. I think it helped him with his last tour overseas."
read more here

Man Facing Charges After Fort Campbell Soldier Shot

Ft. Campbell soldier shot on New Year’s remains critical 
Leaf Chronicle
Tavia D. Green
January 2, 2015

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – A Fort Campbell soldier who was shot by the father of her child on New Year’s Day remains in critical but stable condition at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Clarksville Police report the victim, 22-year-old Chelcee Sine-Garza, was shot by Malcolm R. Turner multiple times at her Cranklen Circle home around 12:50 p.m. following an argument, according to a Clarksville Police report.

When Clarksville Police arrived, they found Sine-Garza laying on the ground bleeding. She was covered in blood and had several gunshot wounds to her body, but was alert and able to talk, according to the report.

Sine-Garza told police Turner came to the house with his wife in a blue car. They had an argument, and he shot her. She told the police Turner lived in Colorado and the car had a Georgia plate.
read more here

Where do homeless veterans come from?

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 3, 2015

Patricia Driscoll, president of the Armed Forces Foundation and CEO of Frontline Defense Systems, wrote "Put veterans back in their homes" January 2, 2015 on the Courier Journal. It was this part of the article that made me gag.

"One major sample released by the American Psychological Association estimates that two-thirds of homeless Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer from PTSD."

Two thirds of OEF-OIF homeless veterans have PTSD. That means they didn't get the help they needed when they got out of the military. It also means they didn't get what they needed while in the military either.

Epiphany

3. a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.
4. a literary work or section of a work presenting, usually symbolically, such a moment of revelation and insight.

My epiphany came in 2009 when I read about Comprehensive Soldier Fitness repeating the same failed attempts Battlemind tried to do. Comprehensive Soldier Fitness will make it worse May 29, 2009

"If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them."

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness was designed as a research project but the military bought into it and pushed it without even knowing if it would work or not. When it failed, they continued to push it no matter how deadly the results were.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, American Psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman, PhD, and Michael D. Matthews and was approved by the American Psychological Association.

Dark Side of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness
Mandatory "resilience training" program for all U.S. soldiers raises concerns.
by Roy Eidelson, Ph.D. in Dangerous Ideas
Published on March 25, 2011

Why is the world's largest organization of psychologists so aggressively promoting a new, massive, and untested military program? The APA's enthusiasm for mandatory "resilience training" for all U.S. soldiers is troubling on many counts.

The January 2011 issue of the American Psychologist, the American Psychological Association's (APA) flagship journal, is devoted entirely to 13 articles that detail and celebrate the virtues of a new U.S. Army-APA collaboration.

Built around positive psychology and with key contributions from former APA president Martin Seligman and his colleagues, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) is a $125 million resilience training initiative designed to reduce and prevent the adverse psychological consequences of combat for our soldiers and veterans.

While these are undoubtedly worthy aspirations, the special issue is nevertheless troubling in several important respects: the authors of the articles, all of whom are involved in the CSF program, offer very little discussion of conceptual and ethical considerations; the special issue does not provide a forum for any independent critical or cautionary voices whatsoever; and through this format, the APA itself has adopted a jingoistic cheerleading stance toward a research project about which many crucial questions should be posed. We discuss these and related concerns below.

So where did it begin? Where did homeless veterans come from? Why did they end up on the streets after surviving combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why didn't the families have what they needed to still stand by their sides after the stress of deployments ended and they were back home?

The logo for Comprehensive Soldier Fitness seems to have all the answers. After all, it has strong bodies and minds, spiritual strength and family support, so it all sounds so good.  They planned on us not paying attention.  They planned on us being too busy with reality TV shows to notice what the reality was for them.  They depended on us to let them just go on doing whatever they wanted to do.

Above all this crap, they actually felt sure no reporter would dare ask the questions that needed to be asked and answered.

They didn't count on the reporters with the Dallas Morning News and NBC out of Texas not only asking questions, but getting the answers.

About this series

“Injured Heroes, Broken Promises,” a joint investigative project between The Dallas Morning News and NBC5 (KXAS-TV), examines allegations of harassment and mistreatment in the U.S.’ Warrior Transition Units, which were created to serve soldiers with physical and psychological wounds. Reporters David Tarrant, Scott Friedman and Eva Parks based their findings on dozens of interviews with soldiers, Army officials and medical experts, and hundreds of pages of military documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Related Stories

Part 1: Wounded soldiers allege mistreatment in the Army’s Warrior Transition Units
Complaints about wounded warriors’ treatment pile upBenn sought to help, but PTSD hindered him
Editorial: Wounded warriors deserve better
Army orders new training for Warrior Transition Units

More from NBC 5

NBC 5 takes a closer look at Warrior Transition Units
Hundreds of soldiers allege mistreatment at Army Warrior Transition Units
Injured soldiers question training of WTU leaders

This is what Comprehensive Soldier Fitness did. It made them think they were weak and that is why they were suffering. When the DOD failed to reduce suicides, they came up with excuse after excuse. When they came home, the message had been delivered and their fate was sealed.

Families had nothing to fight for them with.

The VA has failed, but it began to fail when troops were first sent into Afghanistan in 2001 and they already had a backlog of claims from older veterans.

The DOD failed but they began to send soldiers out with the wrong idea already drilled into their brains.

Reporters failed when they ignored the cries for help. Other than printing heartbreaking stories after suicide, they didn't bother to find out why suicides went up after everyone was doing more.

Congress failed when they didn't bother to find out what they got wrong in other bills they wrote, passed and funded before they rinsed and repeated them.

Above all, we failed because we just didn't care enough to save their lives. So what do we do now there are even more home after combat in Afghanistan?