NYPD Officer Larry DePrimo proves compassion lives in Manhattan

UPDATE Shoeless man in viral photo was homeless veteran

Larry DePrimo, NYPD Cop, Buys Homeless Man Boots (PHOTO)
Newsday
By Anthony M DeStefano
Posted: 11/29/2012

You have to like what NYPD Officer Larry DePrimo did for a barefoot man in Manhattan one frigid night this month. In fact, more than 260,000 Facebook users have "liked" DePrimo's actions, a number that's growing every day.

After a tourist from Arizona snapped a photo of DePrimo, of Holbrook, giving the man socks and boots to ward off the cold, the image became an instant hit on the NYPD's Facebook page.
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UPDATE
Photo of NYPD officer giving boots to barefoot man warms hearts online
Cop keeps receipt in his vest 'to remind me that sometimes people have it worse'
NBC News
By J. DAVID GOODMAN
On a cold November night in Times Square, Officer Lawrence DePrimo was working a counterterrorism post when he encountered an older, barefooted homeless man. The officer disappeared for a moment, then returned with a new pair of boots, and knelt to help the man put them on.

The act of kindness would have gone unnoticed and mostly forgotten, had it not been for a tourist from Arizona.

Her snapshot — taken with her cellphone on Nov. 14 and posted to the New York Police Department’s official Facebook page late Tuesday — has made Officer DePrimo an overnight Internet hero.

By Wednesday evening, the post had been viewed 1.6 million times, and had attracted nearly 275,000 “likes” and more than 16,000 comments — a runaway hit for a Police Department that waded warily onto the social media platform this summer with mostly canned photos of gun seizures, award ceremonies and the police commissioner.

Among all of those posts, the blurry image of Officer DePrimo kneeling to help the shoeless man as he sat on 42nd Street stood out. “This is definitely the most viral,” said Barbara Chen, a spokeswoman for the department who helps manage its Facebook page.

Mr. Cano volunteered to give the officer his employee discount to bring down the regular $100 price of the all-weather boots to a little more than $75.

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Photo of NYPD officer giving boots to barefoot man warms hearts online Cop keeps receipt in his vest 'to remind me that sometimes people have it worse'

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Friends of Crystal Nevarez Lugo raise money to bring her body home

Friends of murder-suicide victim raise money to help bring her body back home
KFOX
By Veronica Macias
Nov. 28, 2012

EL PASO, Texas — Friends of a Socorro woman found dead near a Juarez landfill after her husband allegedly killed her started the grieving process by raising money to bring her home.

Crystal Nevarez Lugo's body was found 300 meters from a Juarez landfill wrapped in a pink blanket, said Mexican authorities. Officials also said a note helped them find the body of 20-year-old Lugo on Tuesday afternoon.

Mexican officials were given information from El Paso authorities about an alleged confession from Johnny Ray Nevarez, the husband of Crystal Lugo.

El Paso County Sheriff Deputies found Nevarez's body after he shot himself in the desert of the Hueco Tanks area on Monday.
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Dad says PTSD is behind the tragic death of his son and daughter in-law

Vietnam Veterans digging their own graves, for real

I am beginning to think my forehead has so many wrinkles because of Vietnam Veterans. They amaze me all the time. For a generation of veterans so mistreated when they came home, they managed to do more for other veterans than any other group. Now, after all they've done, New Jersey Vietnam Veterans are taking on starting their own cemetery.

New Jersey veterans band together to bury their own
By Jana Winter
Published November 28, 2012
FoxNews.com

A group of veterans from New Jersey are building the state’s first nonprofit cemetery -- a graveyard exclusively for men and women who have served their country.

The veterans have secured a 66-acre parcel in the state's northwestern Sussex County, and hope to break ground by Memorial Day. But they’re in dire need of funding and corporate sponsorship to complete the Northern New Jersey Veterans Memorial Cemetery.

“There’s a real need for a veterans cemetery in this part of New Jersey," said Vietnam veteran John Harrigan, 65, who has made the cemetery his crusade since 2008. “There’s close to 100,000 vets up here."

The closest veterans cemetery to Sussex County is the Brigadier General William C. Doyle Cemetery in Gloucester County, a more than two-hour drive that widows tell Harrigan they are unable to make.

Harrigan, president of the Sussex County chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America, said the group has been working for more than four years to secure funds and overcome legal hurdles to make their dream happen. Their website www.VVA1002.org has detailed plans, architectural renderings and information on how to donate to the project.
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Give An Hour expands to help Hurricane Sandy First Responders and survivors

She secures treatment for vets' invisible wounds
November 28, 2012
By Catherine Laughlin
For The Inquirer

The unkempt man was wearing fatigues, standing in the street and holding a sign that read, "Vietnam vet. Please help. God bless."

The year was 2005 and Barbara Van Dahlen, a licensed clinical psychologist, was driving with her then-9-year-old daughter, who asked why the man was begging in the world's richest country.

It was a moment that helped propel Van Dahlen into her official mission, the founding that year of Give an Hour, a national nonprofit providing free mental health services to military personnel and their families affected by the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other post-9/11 conflicts. (Give an Hour recently expanded to include victims and first responders dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.) Since 2007, Van Dahlen has mobilized 6,500 licensed professionals, who have given away 70,000 hours of therapy set up through giveanhour.org.

The organization runs on a $1.5 million budget - grants, sponsorships, and private donations - with 17 employees who help train providers. In addition, hundreds of volunteers counsel at schools, and take part in suicide-prevention conferences and other outreach organizations.
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Dad says PTSD is behind the tragic death of his son and daughter in-law

Only on ABC-7: Johnnyray Nevarez's father speaks out about his son's murder-suicide.
Jimmy Nevarez says Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome or PTSD is behind the tragic death of his son and daughter in-law, Crystal Nevarez-Lugo.
ABC
Ashlie Rodriguez
Reporter
Nov 28, 2012

EL PASO, Texas
The father of 27-year-old Johnnyray Nevarez speaks out about his son's murder-suicide.

Jimmy Nevarez says Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome or PTSD is behind the tragic death of his son and daughter in-law, Crystal Nevarez-Lugo. It's an interview you'll only see on ABC-7.

"There's a lot of kids coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan that are coming back with PTSD," said the father of Johnnyray Nevarez, Jimmy Nevarez.

And 27-year-old Johnnyray Nevarez was one of them.

Johnnyray served in the Marines from 2003 to 2007, fighting in the bloody battle of Fallujah. He saw his friends killed by an IED blast only he survived. His broken ribs healed, but he could never forget that moment. After his first tour, his family tells me they could see the toll it took on their ambitious son. His father, Jimmy Nevarez, said one night he found his son hiding underneath the bed in fetal position, reliving his wartime terror. But, Jimmy says, Johnnyray only showed love and kindness toward his family.
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Friends of Crystal Nevarez Lugo raise money to bring her body home

Ft. Leavenworth Iraq Veteran ordered into PTSD treatment

Soldier in double fatality to undergo PTSD program
November 28, 2012

ROLLA, Mo. (AP) — An Iraq war veteran will undergo treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder before being sentenced in a double fatality accident in September 2011.

A Phelps County judge on Tuesday ordered 25-year-old John D. Mazurek of Crocker to complete a PTSD program at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.

Mazurek pleaded guilty to first-degree involuntary manslaughter and second-degree assault in the accident that killed 57-year-old Wilberta C. Randolph of Meta and 85-year-old Helen K. Wieberg of Jefferson City.
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Groundbreaking ceremony for the Education Center at the Wall

Ground breaking at the Education Center
11/28/2012 02:28 PM CST

Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, Jan Scruggs, founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, and Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, participate in a groundbreaking ceremony for the Education Center at the Wall in Washington, D.C., Nov. 28, 2012.

The Warrior SAW, Suicides After War

RELEASE DATE FOR THE WARRIOR SAW, SUICIDES AFTER WAR
Well it is the end of March and it is still not finished. To bring justice to the families of these veterans it has taken longer than I thought it would. There is too much information that has to be in this book.
With the fact congress and the DOD have wasted about a billion dollars on "suicide prevention" I decided that the release date will be, appropriately enough April 15, 2013, tax filing date.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Letter to Jean Baptiste Le Roy, 13 Nov. 1789

I doubt Franklin thought of how the two of them would end up being connected for so many military families.

UPDATE
The Warrior SAW, Suicides After War, release date has been changed. There are too many reports coming out too fast to keep this work up to date. The expected date of release has been moved to late March so check back to get your first copy of it as soon as it is done.

There are things in this book that need to be talked about from real research to real healing and help for families to be able to help them. None of this is hopeless.

The Warrior SAW, Suicides After War
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
November 28, 2013

On January 31, 2008 I posted When will they notice us falling into darkness? 31 minutes after it was posted.

Army suicides up as much as 20 percent
By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writer 31 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - As many as 121 Army soldiers committed suicide in 2007, a jump of some 20 percent over the year before, officials said Thursday.

The rise comes despite numerous efforts to improve the mental health of a force stressed by a longer-than-expected war in Iraq and the most deadly year yet in the now six-year-old conflict in Afghanistan.

Internal briefing papers prepared by the Army's psychiatry consultant early this month show there were 89 confirmed suicides last year and 32 deaths that are suspected suicides and still under investigation.

More than a quarter of those — about 34 — happened during deployments in Iraq, an increase from 27 in Iraq the previous year, according to the preliminary figures.

The report also shows an increase in the number of attempted suicides and self-injuries — some 2,100 in 2007 compared to less than 1,500 the previous year and less than 500 in 2002.

In January of 2013 there will be a new book on military suicides.

There are now 782 posts on Wounded Times with Military Suicides and 101 Attempted Suicides. To read the numbers going up is heartbreaking because of how much we've known on how to prevent them and for how long we've known it.

In 1995 Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character was released in paperback. Had his work been put into practice, we wouldn't have seen all of this agony.

Up until I found his book, I had to go to the library and read clinical books that helped me understand what PTSD was. The problem was that there was nothing I could find to help me with what I was going through. I was so blown away by Shay's work that I emailed him.

I didn't think someone as important as he was would ever respond to me, but I wanted him to know how much his book meant to me.

I didn't get an email back but about a week later there was a letter in my mail box from Dr. Shay. I had my email account set up wrong and he was not able to respond to me. This man took the time to find me by searching the Web. We ended up emailing back and forth until 2001 when he tried to get his publisher to take on my book, FOR THE LOVE OF JACK, HIS WAR/MY BATTLE. After September 11th, we talked about how Vietnam veterans would experience "secondary stressors" after the attack and they would discover what they thought they "got over" was only sleeping. It would send most of them into extreme PTSD. It did and reports came out later in October of 2007 148,000 Vietnam Veterans sought help in just 18 months. This was proof our fears were correct.

Had the VA and the DOD listened to Dr. Shay, or anyone else working on PTSD before it became the topic of OEF and OIF veterans, their lives would have been spared the horrors, stigma and denials. Less parents would have had to bury their children because they could not survive surviving war.

This interview is from 2010.


When I've read what "experts" had to say on PTSD and military suicides, few come close to what Shay tried to do. There are now over 17,000 posts on this blog about our veterans and our troops.

So now after all these years, after all the hogwash I've read and failures by the military to prevent suicides and erode the stigma, we've reached the point where there are now over 1 active duty member committing suicide a day, more attempting it and 18 veterans a day taking their own lives.

This cause me to try to bring the numbers into human terms. Coming soon is my second book on military suicides compiled from news reports.

The Warrior SAW, Suicides After War will be released in January of 2013

Combat stress: As old as war itself
Monday, 15 August 2005
By Richard Allen Greene
BBC News

Emotional turmoil

Dr Jonathan Shay, a US psychiatrist who has worked with Vietnam veterans for many years, says combat stress is an age-old problem - certainly one known to the ancient Greeks.

In his book Odysseus in America, he argues that the Homeric hero was a severe combat stress case - a loner and deceiver who had murderous rages.

Society has a duty to its soldiers, advocates say "Combat stress is as old as the human species," he says - and, in a way, a very normal phenomenon.

"It is an absolutely valid adaptation to survive in a horrific situation. In war, people really are trying to kill you. You are surrounded by enemies and have to be prepared to kill instantly to survive."

Soldiers - and civilians caught up in war - become hyper-vigilant, unnaturally alert and focused.

And combat can have a devastating effect on a person's emotional health.

"We shut down all emotions that do not serve survival - grief, sweetness, fear," Dr Shay says.

But one emotion may remain switched on, he adds: anger.

"So a veteran comes home with all emotions shut down except for anger. Guess what this does in the family, in the workplace. It's a problem," he says.
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Mental Health Crisis Leaves 13 Year Old Dead

Mental health advocates say I-10 traffic death shines light on state crisis
Tania Dall
Eyewitness News

METAIRIE, La. -- Mental health advocates are sounding the alarm after the tragic death of a 13-year-old boy Tuesday afternoon on I-10 in Metairie.

State police say the teen was being transported to a mental health facility 50 miles from home.

The deadly accident slowed traffic to a crawl along I-10 eastbound between Cleary Avenue and Causeway Boulevard. Emergency crews were on-scene responding to a frantic 911 call and attempted to save the young teen's life.

"A juvenile, a 13-year-old, was inside a van. He was being transported to southeast Louisiana for medical purposes. There was an altercation inside the van and they had to pull over to the shoulder," said Louisiana State Police Trooper Melissa Matey.

State police say 13-year-old Jeremiah Williams jumped out a Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals van that had stopped along the shoulder. Investigators say Williams crossed five busy lanes of I-10 and then attempted to cross back when he was hit by on-coming traffic.

"He then decided to come back towards the right shoulder so he again started to cross over those lanes of travel. He was struck by a tow truck in the center right lane. He was transported to the LSU center where he later died from his injuries," Matey said.
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Why would a good reporter get lazy on military suicides?

For Tacoma military base, a grim milestone in soldier suicides
Joint Base Lewis-McChord passed an unwelcome milestone in 2011, recording more soldier suicides than in any previous year. Twelve soldiers took their own lives in 2011, up from nine in 2010 and nine in 2009, Army I Corps spokesman Lt. Col. Gary Dangerfield said. The total could grow as the Army completes investigations ahead of its annual suicide report next month.

Notice the reporter? ADAM ASHTON; TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE
Notice the date? Published: Nov. 27, 2012


So why at the end of this year, after all these reports, was it necessary to release a report that was already known last year?

JBLM suicides hit grim milestone in 2011 ADAM ASHTON; STAFF WRITER Published: Dec. 30, 2011

One service member commits suicide every two days, attempts every two hours September, 2011.

While this report was bad, the fact that almost half of the military suicides happened after they went for help to heal.

By November the news came out about Every 80 minutes another veteran commits suicide and attempted Marine Corps suicides. "11 Marines attempted suicide in October, raising that year-to-date figure to 163 for 2011."

By December "Army has identified 260 potential soldier suicides for 2011"

It turned out that Army Suicides Up 80 Percent Since Iraq War Start

Where are the questions that need to be asked? Where are the stories on families trying to keep their veterans alive or the parents trying to stop blaming themselves after they couldn't? Where are the questions asking about who the hell is being held accountable for any of this? Where are the reports on the failures of the "resiliency training" and suicide prevention the military has been doing for the last 10 years?

There are so many things that could have actually been helpful but this was re-released? What's going on here?