A Clay County woman's family said it's seeking justice after their loved one died shortly after being shocked 10 times with Taser guns during a confrontation with police.
The family of 56-year-old Emily Delafield said it would take the Green Cove Springs Police Department to court, according to a WJXT-TV report.
In April 2006, officers with the police department said they were called to a disturbance at a home in the 400 block of Harrison Street just before 5 p.m.
In a 911 call made to the Green Cove Springs, Delafield can be heard telling a dispatcher that she believed she was in danger:
Dispatcher: And what's the problem?
Delafield: My sister is waiting on my property.
Dispatcher: Your what?
Delafield: My sister (inaudible) is on my property trying to harm me.
Officers said they arrived to find Delafield in a wheelchair, armed with two knives and a hammer. Police said the woman was swinging the weapons at family members and police.
Within an hour of her call to 911, Delafield, a wheelchair-bound woman documented to have mental illness, was dead.
Family attorney Rick Alexander said Delafield's death could have been prevented and that there are four things that jump out at him about the case.
"One, she's in a wheelchair. Two, she's schizophrenic. Three, they're using a Taser on a person that's in a wheelchair, and then four is that they tasered her 10 times for a period of like two minutes," Alexander said.
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Thursday, September 20, 2007
Colbert Report: Bush keeping trauma vets in Iraq for their own sake
Colbert: Is the answer to the trauma of returning vets not to bring them home?
Mike Aivaz and Muriel Kane
Published: Wednesday September 19, 2007
Susan Sarandon appeared on Tuesday's Colbert Report to discuss her new film, In the Valley of Elah, which concerns a military cover-up of the murder of an Iraq War veteran
"I think it might start a dialogue about the fact that, actually, war changes you," said Sarandon. "There's a big disconnect between the politicized war and the actual war. ... All the guys who got us into this war never went to a war. They avoided a war, so they don't really have any idea what war means.
"They didn't avoid this war," objected Colbert. "They actively went after this war,"
"You're saying there's some trauma these people experience and they have to deal with that when they come home?" asked Colbert. "Isn't the answer, maybe, to not bring them home? I mean, the president has done his part in that regard."
click post title for link and the video
Mike Aivaz and Muriel Kane
Published: Wednesday September 19, 2007
Susan Sarandon appeared on Tuesday's Colbert Report to discuss her new film, In the Valley of Elah, which concerns a military cover-up of the murder of an Iraq War veteran
"I think it might start a dialogue about the fact that, actually, war changes you," said Sarandon. "There's a big disconnect between the politicized war and the actual war. ... All the guys who got us into this war never went to a war. They avoided a war, so they don't really have any idea what war means.
"They didn't avoid this war," objected Colbert. "They actively went after this war,"
"You're saying there's some trauma these people experience and they have to deal with that when they come home?" asked Colbert. "Isn't the answer, maybe, to not bring them home? I mean, the president has done his part in that regard."
click post title for link and the video
Survivors cope with guilt over grenade heroism
Survivors cope with guilt over grenade heroism
By Gregg Zoroya - USA TodayPosted : Thursday Sep 20, 2007 12:45:05 EDT
Army Staff Sgt. Ian Newland spotted the enemy grenade inside the Humvee. Almost simultaneously, he saw Spc. Ross McGinnis, 19 — a gunner standing in the turret of the vehicle — lower himself onto it.
“I saw him jam it with his elbow up underneath him,” said Newland, who was sitting inches away. “He pressed his whole body with his back [armor] plate to smother it up against the radios.”
The heat and flash of an explosion followed, and McGinnis was killed. Hours later, after surgery for shrapnel wounds, Newland realized the enormity of what happened: McGinnis had sacrificed himself to save four other soldiers in the Humvee on Dec. 4.
“Why he did it? Because we were his brothers. He loved us,” Newland said.
Since the Iraq war began, at least five Americans — two soldiers, two Marines and a Navy SEAL — are believed to have thrown themselves on a grenade to save comrades. Each time, the service member died from massive wounds.
Heroic acts mark every war. Among the most remarkable involve self-sacrifice.
“What a decision that is,” said Frank Farley, a Temple University psychologist who studies bravery. “I can’t think of anything more profound in human nature.”
Survivors, while deeply grateful for their lives, find the aftermath complicated. According to interviews with a dozen surviving soldiers, sailors and Marines, there remains an overpowering sense of guilt and an unspoken feeling that they need to be worthy of the sacrifice.
click post title for the rest
By Gregg Zoroya - USA TodayPosted : Thursday Sep 20, 2007 12:45:05 EDT
Army Staff Sgt. Ian Newland spotted the enemy grenade inside the Humvee. Almost simultaneously, he saw Spc. Ross McGinnis, 19 — a gunner standing in the turret of the vehicle — lower himself onto it.
“I saw him jam it with his elbow up underneath him,” said Newland, who was sitting inches away. “He pressed his whole body with his back [armor] plate to smother it up against the radios.”
The heat and flash of an explosion followed, and McGinnis was killed. Hours later, after surgery for shrapnel wounds, Newland realized the enormity of what happened: McGinnis had sacrificed himself to save four other soldiers in the Humvee on Dec. 4.
“Why he did it? Because we were his brothers. He loved us,” Newland said.
Since the Iraq war began, at least five Americans — two soldiers, two Marines and a Navy SEAL — are believed to have thrown themselves on a grenade to save comrades. Each time, the service member died from massive wounds.
Heroic acts mark every war. Among the most remarkable involve self-sacrifice.
“What a decision that is,” said Frank Farley, a Temple University psychologist who studies bravery. “I can’t think of anything more profound in human nature.”
Survivors, while deeply grateful for their lives, find the aftermath complicated. According to interviews with a dozen surviving soldiers, sailors and Marines, there remains an overpowering sense of guilt and an unspoken feeling that they need to be worthy of the sacrifice.
click post title for the rest
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Chip away at PTSD? Try a jack hammer and get it done!
Health officials chip away at PTSD stigma
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Sep 19, 2007 12:55:30 EDT
The concept of getting rid of a stigma can be a little nebulous, but experts on a post-traumatic stress disorder panel offered up some concrete changes that could help people overcome years of stereotypes.
“Mental health issues are in many ways the top issue of veterans of our generation. It needs to be treated like a pulled hamstring,” said Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, at a forum sponsored by the Military Officers Association of America and the U.S. Naval Institute.
And he said he thinks the military is ready for that change.
“Beyond all the macho and hard-headed culture, I think we understand we have to perform,” Rieckhoff said.
If service members get the help they need, they’ll perform much better on the battlefield, he said. But convincing them that a trip to mental health won’t ruin their careers can be the toughest issue.
Marine Col. Keith Pankhurst, Combat/Operational Stress Control Program Coordinator for the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, said it wasn’t very long ago that he believed Marines who had PTSD just didn’t have what it takes to serve.
“I would have been the first to say, ‘What kind of weakness is that?’” He said. “It took a lot of education to overcome that attitude.”
go here for the rest
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/09/military_ptsd_070919w/
It's great they are doing this but it is so late in coming they need to pull out the biggest jack hammer they can find to totally get the stigma out of PTSD. I can't count how many blogs I go into and get sick because they are attacking veterans with PTSD as if getting wounded is now something they should be ashamed of.
The recent "war" movies coming out cause outrage from "war bloggers" when they say it makes the rest of the "troops" and the "veterans" look bad. It makes them all come of as "crazy" and all kinds of other remarks. They do this because they don't understand what PTSD is. In the process of defending their own ego problems, they end up attacking combat wounded veterans instead of helping them heal. What is it with these people when they think the "brotherhood" should end when one of them needs help? Twisted!
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Sep 19, 2007 12:55:30 EDT
The concept of getting rid of a stigma can be a little nebulous, but experts on a post-traumatic stress disorder panel offered up some concrete changes that could help people overcome years of stereotypes.
“Mental health issues are in many ways the top issue of veterans of our generation. It needs to be treated like a pulled hamstring,” said Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, at a forum sponsored by the Military Officers Association of America and the U.S. Naval Institute.
And he said he thinks the military is ready for that change.
“Beyond all the macho and hard-headed culture, I think we understand we have to perform,” Rieckhoff said.
If service members get the help they need, they’ll perform much better on the battlefield, he said. But convincing them that a trip to mental health won’t ruin their careers can be the toughest issue.
Marine Col. Keith Pankhurst, Combat/Operational Stress Control Program Coordinator for the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, said it wasn’t very long ago that he believed Marines who had PTSD just didn’t have what it takes to serve.
“I would have been the first to say, ‘What kind of weakness is that?’” He said. “It took a lot of education to overcome that attitude.”
go here for the rest
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/09/military_ptsd_070919w/
It's great they are doing this but it is so late in coming they need to pull out the biggest jack hammer they can find to totally get the stigma out of PTSD. I can't count how many blogs I go into and get sick because they are attacking veterans with PTSD as if getting wounded is now something they should be ashamed of.
The recent "war" movies coming out cause outrage from "war bloggers" when they say it makes the rest of the "troops" and the "veterans" look bad. It makes them all come of as "crazy" and all kinds of other remarks. They do this because they don't understand what PTSD is. In the process of defending their own ego problems, they end up attacking combat wounded veterans instead of helping them heal. What is it with these people when they think the "brotherhood" should end when one of them needs help? Twisted!
Coburn burns veterans over guns
Where is the Republican Leadership? Stalled Suicide Prevention Bill Irks Iowa Democratic Veterans
by: T.M. Lindsey
Tuesday (09/18) at 11:16 AM
Like death itself, suicide is a nonpartisan issue, but Sen. Tom Coburn's, R-Okla., procedural hold on a bill that would help prevent suicide among veterans has thrown a partisan cog into the congressional machine. The Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention bill (S. 479), introduced in the House by Iowa Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-3rd District, sailed through the House in March, passing by a vote of 423-0. And now, Iowa Democratic veterans are speaking out against silence on the matter among the Republican leadership -- in particular, the GOP presidential candidates.
"This is clear bipartisan support for a bill of vital importance," said Bob Krause, chair of the Iowa Democratic Veterans' Caucus. "We are surprised that none of the Republican presidential candidates has publicly voiced objection to Senator Tom Coburn's action that continues to block debate on the measure in the Senate."
Coburn has vowed to continue his hold on the Joshua Omvig bill, introduced in the Senate by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, before the August recess. Coburn called the bill insulting to veterans and warned that its mandatory mental-health screening could harm their future job options. "I'm going to continue to hold this bill until we work on the issues to guarantee freedoms of the veterans in terms of the tracking," Coburn said on the Senate floor.
go to link above for the rest
He thinks suicide is ok as long as the veterans have a gun to do it with!
Col. Theodore Westhusing, suicide and Petraeus
New Military Report Acknowledges Signs of Police State in Baghdad
Huffington Post
Tom Hayden
September 18, 2007
Virtually ignored in last week's national debate on the US military surge was a report by military experts recommending that the Iraqi police service be scrapped because of its brutal sectarian character.
The scathing report stopped short of acknowledging that continuing US support for the Iraqi Security Forces is in violation of the 1997 Leahy Amendment barring assistance to known human rights violators.
So far representatives Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee have raised the issue with their HR 3134, which would end funding for the repressive Iraqi security forces. The Center for American Progress [CAP], headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, takes the same view in its July document, "Strategic Reset." Perhaps the most important sign of rising awareness is the new willingness of Senate leader Harry Reid to remove the provision for funding American trainers in the timetable legislation he is co-sponsoring with Sen. Russell Feingold.
The little-noticed new report exposes the lethal nature of the counterinsurgency doctrines promoted by Gen. David Petraeus and the official warfighting manual developed in collaboration between the Army, the Marines and Harvard's Carr Center.
In comparison with past public outcries about "tiger cages" and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, death squads in El Salvador and Honduras, or ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, there is little or no attention today to the issues raised in the new report. All the major Democratic presidential candidates support maintaining thousands of American trainers embedded with what the new report calls "dysfunctional and sectarian" forces. In short, whether intentional or not, all the major proposals on Iraq are based on a lower-visibility, lower-casualty dirty war reminiscent of Algeria, Central America, South Vietnam and, today, Afghanistan.
Gen. Petraeus was the commander of US transitional forces [MNSTC-I] in 2004-2005, in charge of training, arming and organizing Iraq's military and police forces. A scandal involving tens of thousands of missing weapons on Petraeus' watch has been pursued by the American Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction since that time.
A Petraeus subordinate, Col. Theodore Westhusing, committed apparent suicide on June 5, 2005, leaving a note which said,
"I cannot support a [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuses, and liars...I don't know who to trust anymore." [Newsweek, Aug. 20-27]
read more here
Huffington Post
Tom Hayden
September 18, 2007
Virtually ignored in last week's national debate on the US military surge was a report by military experts recommending that the Iraqi police service be scrapped because of its brutal sectarian character.
The scathing report stopped short of acknowledging that continuing US support for the Iraqi Security Forces is in violation of the 1997 Leahy Amendment barring assistance to known human rights violators.
So far representatives Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee have raised the issue with their HR 3134, which would end funding for the repressive Iraqi security forces. The Center for American Progress [CAP], headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, takes the same view in its July document, "Strategic Reset." Perhaps the most important sign of rising awareness is the new willingness of Senate leader Harry Reid to remove the provision for funding American trainers in the timetable legislation he is co-sponsoring with Sen. Russell Feingold.
The little-noticed new report exposes the lethal nature of the counterinsurgency doctrines promoted by Gen. David Petraeus and the official warfighting manual developed in collaboration between the Army, the Marines and Harvard's Carr Center.
In comparison with past public outcries about "tiger cages" and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, death squads in El Salvador and Honduras, or ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, there is little or no attention today to the issues raised in the new report. All the major Democratic presidential candidates support maintaining thousands of American trainers embedded with what the new report calls "dysfunctional and sectarian" forces. In short, whether intentional or not, all the major proposals on Iraq are based on a lower-visibility, lower-casualty dirty war reminiscent of Algeria, Central America, South Vietnam and, today, Afghanistan.
Gen. Petraeus was the commander of US transitional forces [MNSTC-I] in 2004-2005, in charge of training, arming and organizing Iraq's military and police forces. A scandal involving tens of thousands of missing weapons on Petraeus' watch has been pursued by the American Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction since that time.
A Petraeus subordinate, Col. Theodore Westhusing, committed apparent suicide on June 5, 2005, leaving a note which said,
"I cannot support a [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuses, and liars...I don't know who to trust anymore." [Newsweek, Aug. 20-27]
read more here
From Queens to Kuwait, Where a Life Was Ended
Sgt. Denise A. Lannaman fatally shot herself in Kuwait last year.
From Queens to Kuwait, Where a Life Was Ended
In the space of three months last year, three members of the U.S. Army who had been part of a logistics group in Kuwait committed suicide. Two of them — a colonel and a major — had power over contract awards and had been accused of taking bribes just before they killed themselves.
The third was Sgt. Denise A. Lannaman of Queens. In a war that has cost the lives of more than 3,700 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis, the death of one woman by her own hand has attracted little attention beyond the circle of shattered family and friends.
Yet those who know her say that questions about Sergeant Lannaman’s death remain unsettled, and go well beyond psychic agonies that she struggled with her entire life. “From the day she was born, she was different,” Barbara Lannaman, her mother, said. “Life was just not satisfactory to her.”
Gifted as a mechanic, fastidious as an administrator, brave in a combat zone, Sergeant Lannaman at the end of her life had landed in a spot where, investigators say, officers were able to scoop up millions of dollars in bribes from merchants who wanted the contracts the Army awarded for everything from water to laundry.
Far as it was from the bombs that she drove past in Iraq, the logistics operation in Kuwait would lead to its own peculiar casualties.
That Sergeant Lannaman was in the Army at all — whether in Iraq or behind a desk — could be seen as a testament to her own shrewdness, or to the Army’s hunger for recruits in a grindingly long war.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, she spent nine years in the Navy, then bounced from job to job. By the time she was 42, in the spring of 2003, Denise Lannaman had been a firefighter, a sailor, a filmmaker, a scuba diver, a paramedic and an auto mechanic.
She also had been a frequent psychiatric patient, her family says, an iron-willed perfectionist who had dealt with life’s ragged edges by making four suicide attempts.
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Womack Army Medical Center braces for wounded
Womack prepares for returning boom
By Gregory Phillips
Staff writer
As head of Womack Army Medical Center, Col. Terry Walters is preparing for what she calls the coming storm of soldiers returning to Fort Bragg in the next year.
“There’s going to be huge medical fallout from this war,” said Walters, who has directed Womack since July 2006.
The conflict in the Middle East has led to the Army’s lowest fatality rate in the history of warfare, Walters said, but the Army’s medical system is a victim of that success.
More soldiers than ever are surviving serious injuries and needing medical care when they get home. The injured soldiers have overwhelmed some Army hospitals, including Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where neglect of patients was exposed earlier this year.
click post title for the rest
By Gregory Phillips
Staff writer
As head of Womack Army Medical Center, Col. Terry Walters is preparing for what she calls the coming storm of soldiers returning to Fort Bragg in the next year.
“There’s going to be huge medical fallout from this war,” said Walters, who has directed Womack since July 2006.
The conflict in the Middle East has led to the Army’s lowest fatality rate in the history of warfare, Walters said, but the Army’s medical system is a victim of that success.
More soldiers than ever are surviving serious injuries and needing medical care when they get home. The injured soldiers have overwhelmed some Army hospitals, including Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where neglect of patients was exposed earlier this year.
click post title for the rest
PTSD veterans face combat and Katrina
PTSD has strong presence on Coast
Veterans face both combat and Katrina
By MEGHA SATYANARAYANASUN HERALD
BILOXI --The number of Gulf Coast veterans seeking treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder rivals that of major cities such as San Antonio, Minneapolis and Salt Lake City, according to an internal document obtained by McClatchy Newspapers through the Freedom of Information Act.
With the New Orleans and Gulfport facilities destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, the stress of nearly 1,400 veterans with PTSD and their 10,700 outpatient visits during 2006 fell on remaining facilities of the VA Gulf Coast Veterans Health Care System in Biloxi, Mobile, Pensacola and Panama City. The workload is intense, said Kelly Woods, assistant chief of psychology services in the Gulf Coast system. They see at least 20 people each month in a residential program and do at least 100 new and followup appointments each month in Biloxi and at other sites.
Many PTSD vets are from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, and the numbers needing treatment are expected to grow as more come home.
Several will have to deal with both combat stress and losses suffered from the hurricane, he said. PTSD symptoms, from the vague, "My wife says I'm different," to things like nightmares, violent outbursts and substance abuse, take months to years to surface. The combination of war and Katrina has pushed some to exhibit symptoms earlier. "Katrina was a trigger - I need help," Woods said. "Lots of guys lost their home while in an active war zone."
go here for the rest
http://www.sunherald.com/278/story/143265.html
Veterans face both combat and Katrina
By MEGHA SATYANARAYANASUN HERALD
BILOXI --The number of Gulf Coast veterans seeking treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder rivals that of major cities such as San Antonio, Minneapolis and Salt Lake City, according to an internal document obtained by McClatchy Newspapers through the Freedom of Information Act.
With the New Orleans and Gulfport facilities destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, the stress of nearly 1,400 veterans with PTSD and their 10,700 outpatient visits during 2006 fell on remaining facilities of the VA Gulf Coast Veterans Health Care System in Biloxi, Mobile, Pensacola and Panama City. The workload is intense, said Kelly Woods, assistant chief of psychology services in the Gulf Coast system. They see at least 20 people each month in a residential program and do at least 100 new and followup appointments each month in Biloxi and at other sites.
Many PTSD vets are from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, and the numbers needing treatment are expected to grow as more come home.
Several will have to deal with both combat stress and losses suffered from the hurricane, he said. PTSD symptoms, from the vague, "My wife says I'm different," to things like nightmares, violent outbursts and substance abuse, take months to years to surface. The combination of war and Katrina has pushed some to exhibit symptoms earlier. "Katrina was a trigger - I need help," Woods said. "Lots of guys lost their home while in an active war zone."
go here for the rest
http://www.sunherald.com/278/story/143265.html
Suicides in Military view from veteran
Suicides in Military at an All Time High
By John Waltz Published Sep 17, 2007
Click to contact me
Near the end of a long deployment, the thoughts of coming home fill your mind and your heart yearns for the familiarity of loved ones. Once getting home it all seems great until you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and realizing, you had the most horrific nightmare of your life. A nightmare so vivid you thought you were back on a patrol in a foreign country. The smells, the sights and the tastes are all there just like the day it happened. The days keep passing by and you start to isolate yourself, withdrawing from those around you. Every time you go out in public, you are on guard watching everything around you. The slightest sounds startles you and you have that feeling you are coming under fire. Your old friends call and ask if you want to go fishing but you tell them that you are just not feeling it. This soldier has no clue what is going on to him but can tell something is not right. What he is suffering from is a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) a recognized disorder by the American Psychological Association using the DSM IV.
READ MORE>>
By John Waltz Published Sep 17, 2007
Click to contact me
Near the end of a long deployment, the thoughts of coming home fill your mind and your heart yearns for the familiarity of loved ones. Once getting home it all seems great until you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and realizing, you had the most horrific nightmare of your life. A nightmare so vivid you thought you were back on a patrol in a foreign country. The smells, the sights and the tastes are all there just like the day it happened. The days keep passing by and you start to isolate yourself, withdrawing from those around you. Every time you go out in public, you are on guard watching everything around you. The slightest sounds startles you and you have that feeling you are coming under fire. Your old friends call and ask if you want to go fishing but you tell them that you are just not feeling it. This soldier has no clue what is going on to him but can tell something is not right. What he is suffering from is a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) a recognized disorder by the American Psychological Association using the DSM IV.
READ MORE>>
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