Michigan County Veterans Affairs Director Use Position to Take from Veterans

Emails: Michigan county's veterans services director sought cash, gifts from veterans 
Stars and Stripes
Published: January 8, 2015

A county’s Veterans Affairs director in Michigan resigned Monday after emails were published in which he is shown to be demanding payment or other favors of veterans whom he had been helping with their health benefits.

Former Calhoun County Veterans Affairs Office Director Scott Losey asked for “a few dead presidents,” “Christmas presents” and other gifts from veterans seeking the department’s help, according to emails obtained by media outlets. WOOD TV

In emails obtained by media outlets, former Calhoun County Veterans Affairs Office Director Scott Losey asked for “a few dead presidents,” “Christmas presents” and other gifts from those seeking the department’s help.

In one of the emails, dated Oct. 20, 2011, Losey wrote about the hard work he’d done at his own home for one veteran.

“We will discuss a gentleman’s agreement to compensate for my personal time,” Losey wrote. “I have worked cases for veterans who reside outside Calhoun County over the past couple of years with the same kind of agreement. I will not gouge you like your Social Security lawyer. Perhaps 7 to 10 percent is typically the agreement. I have had veterans screw me over big time as well. Does this sound cool?”

 “Also, where is my Christmas present,” Losey wrote in all capital letters in one email in December 2009. “Just so you know, my wife and I like to go out every once in a while for dinner…”
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Boise Police Department Awarded for Efforts to Help Veterans in Crisis

Chief accepts award on behalf of community veterans resource network
Boise Police Department
News Release
Michael F. Masterson
Chief of Police
Contact: Lynn Hightower
Communications Director
Thursday, January 08, 2015

On average, Boise police officers encounter approximately one veteran per week facing a crisis and in need of assistance, and officers are provided the opportunity to aid in referring the veteran to one of the network partners. These interactions demonstrate the value of the program, and that its objective is being met.

Boise Police Chief Michael Masterson thanked and congratulated members of the group Joining Forces for Treasure Valley Veterans for their work over the past five years. The group, brought together by the Chief and other members of the Boise Police Department is made up of over 50 organizations across the Treasure Valley providing community resources for local veterans in need. Masterson credits the success of JFTVV for the Boise Police Department recently being named the recipient of the annual IACP and Cisco Systems Community Policing Award for 2014. This is the second straight year that Boise PD has received the prestigious international award.

“This award is not the work of any one person, or a small group of people, or even one organization,” Masterson said on Thursday. “This award is a coordinated community response involving dozens of people across the Treasure Valley coming together with great ideas and a dedication to helping the men and women who served our country and helped give us the quality of life that we enjoy here in Southern Idaho.”

In July 2009, Boise police confronted one of Idaho's most decorated soldiers, George Nickel, a military veteran diagnosed with PTSD and suffering from a traumatic brain injury, in a deadly force encounter.

Fortunately, no one was hurt. This encounter became the focal point for a community policing initiative called Joining Forces for Treasure Valley Veterans that has not only saved lives but has led to a plethora of improved services for military veterans in crisis.

Boise police played the lead role in facilitating 50 stakeholders from a variety of disciplines who meet monthly to coordinate a multitude of veterans resources including housing, transportation, employment, alcohol and substance abuse treatment, suicide prevention, coordination of benefits, education counseling, and veterans treatment court services. What started with a small group of criminal justice system professionals has expanded to a coordinated community response (CCR). The network currently consists of 86 individuals representing 21 different community based organizations supporting their active military and veterans. It's a no cost, highly successful, community-based initiative, focused on building trust, communication, and cooperative relationships which can be easily replicated and transferred to other communities.

The objectives that the Joining Forces for Treasure Valley Veterans Network expected to accomplish include:

1. Develop a better understanding of services' available in the community for military veterans and their families
2. Develop a higher level of trust among partners through frequent meetings and partnerships
3. Improve the quality and timeliness of services provided to veterans
4. Identify the resources available to veterans in their communities and make them widely known to other veterans in need of services could obtain access

In 2010, the Boise Police Department worked together with Sergeant George Nickel to document his 2009 police interaction. They created a video that included the audio recordings from the dreadful night to capture the intensity of the situation. The intent of this video was to provide an opportunity for other law enforcement agencies to learn from a real-life situation of a police interaction with a veteran suffering from PTSD.
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Pentagon still playing "budgetary shell game" after sequestration

Pentagon to request 20 percent less for war funding, officials say
Bloomberg News
By Tony Capaccio
Published: January 8, 2015

"It's a budgetary shell game for getting around" the caps imposed by the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration, Harrison said in an email.

Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division salute as soldiers killed in an improved explosive device strike are flown from Combat Outpost Nalgham to Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan on August 11, 2011.
LAURA RAUCH/STARS AND STRIPES

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon will request about $51 billion in war funding for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, a 20-percent reduction from the $64 billion Congress approved this year and the least since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials and congressional aides said.

The Overseas Contingency Operations funding, as it is known, will be sent to Congress in addition to basic defense spending of about $534 billion when President Barack Obama offers his proposed fiscal 2016 federal budget Feb. 2, according to the officials and aides, who asked not to be identified before the details are made public.

While the decline in war funding largely reflects the continued withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan — from the 10,600 now there to half that planned by year-end — it remains enough to draw questions about why the Defense Department shouldn't pay to fight wars as part of its basic mission.

"The continuing drawdown in Afghanistan is not having a proportionate effect on" the war budget because it's "being used for a lot of things other than Afghanistan," said Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst with the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.

"It's a budgetary shell game for getting around" the caps imposed by the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration, Harrison said in an email.
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PTSD: "I was an iron soldier"

The Iron Soldier 
A DECADE REMOVED FROM THE TRAUMAS OF IRAQ
FORMER ARMY TANKER AGIFA CONSTABLE IS STILL TRYING TO COME HOME
APP
Ken Serrano

The perfect enemy 
CHAPTER ONE

“I just kept playing sane, acting like I was normal, like I was OK. I knew I had PTSD, but I thought I could fight it alone.” Agifa Constable


Agifa Constable jiggles a bottle of anti-anxiety pills so fiercely it sounds menacing.

The 34-year-old Iraq War veteran stalks through his garden apartment, pops the cap and throws two pills in his mouth.

"I'm rattled," he says, his body visibly tense, his movements sharp and erratic.

Constable served as cannon loader on an Abrams M1A1 tank, spending 17 months in combat in Iraq before it ended for him 10 years ago.

"I was an iron soldier," he says. "I was trained to suck it up and drive on." 

With his razored Mohawk, prizefighter's physique and piercing stare, Constable looks ready for combat. But on the inside, the former tanker admits he is coming apart — trapped within his own emotional armor.

For more than 10 years, he's battled post-traumatic stress disorder, like more than 200,000 other U.S. veterans who returned with the condition from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Constable has "severe PTSD" based upon multiple traumas during combat, according to a report submitted to a judge by clinical psychologist Mark Siegert.

The veteran also suffers from brain concussions and amnesia, among other mental and physical injuries, Siegert said. Shinbone fractures have left Constable with a limp.

Of the men and women who receive treatment for PTSD, most will recover, experts say. But it's not at all clear if Constable will be one of them.
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Fake Marine Gamer Expert in "Snipeing" at Sniper School

Fake US Marine/disabled Vet unmasked by US Marines
Live Leak

This is a re-edit to include multiple parts originally posted by Vince Bania.

New Orleans - A Gamestop employee was recently scrutinized by Vince Bania and a fellow US Marine after their suspicions were aroused over his military service record: "My buddy and I decided to visit my local Gamestop. We found a game, went up to the counter to complete the transaction. Searching through my wallet for the exact change, the guy at the register happened to catch a glimpse of my military id. He says "I have one of those too."