Kansas Police Officer's Widow working to break silence after husband's suicide

KCK sergeant's widow says police departments can't sweep suicide under the rug anymore

KSHB 41 News
By: Sarah Plake
Feb 26, 2019

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — "On April 22, 2015 my late husband, Sgt. Brett Doolittle of the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department, ended his life," Lindsey Doolittle said matter-of-factly.

Facing the reality is what helps her survive.

Doolittle came home that Wednesday evening like a regular day. She parked her car in the back garage.

"That's when I saw my husband. He had ended his life. He had died by depression, but the tool that he used was helium," Doolittle said.

She found Brett in the garage below the house, where he would spend time creating art.

It'll be almost four years since that devastating day.

"I forced myself to come down here. I mean, I live here. I force myself to do the uncomfortable so I can live," said Doolittle.
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WWI veteran finally received Purple Heart

Troubled hero gets his heart: After 100-year wait, WWI veteran awarded posthumous Purple Heart

Livingston County News
By MATT LEADER
FEBRUARY 24, 2019

Martin Jacobson survived the suffocating clouds of mustard gas that blistered soldiers’ skin and lungs alike; he survived the German bullet that tore through his leg as he sought refuge in a corpse-filled foxhole; and he survived the exploding artillery shell that sent 16 pieces of burning hot shrapnel to lodge in his 24-year-old body.

Jacobson survived the horrors of World War I; made it back home; got married; started a family. But the trauma of his service stayed with him and, more than a decade after his medical discharge, it caught up with him in an upstairs bedroom of his Painted Post home.

The afternoon of Jan. 22, 1929, Jacobson put a shotgun to his chest and pulled the trigger. He was 34s year old and left behind a wife, Leona, and a 15-month-old daughter, Barbara Louise.

Jacobson left no note, but his poor physical and mental condition almost certainly led to his suicide.
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Toledo Police Officer Found Dead at Home

Toledo officer found dead inside home in possible suicide

THE BLADE
February 26, 2019

A Toledo police officer was found dead inside of his home in western Lucas County on Tuesday during a welfare check by sheriff’s deputies.

Officer Jeffrey Payne, 53, did not report to work as scheduled on Tuesday, which prompted the welfare check, said Lt. Kevan Toney, spokesman for the Toledo Police Department. While the investigation by the sheriff’s office is ongoing, indications are that the death was a suicide.

An autopsy by the Lucas County Coroner’s Office is scheduled for Wednesday. The Lucas County Sheriff’s Office is investigating.

Officer Payne was hired by the Toledo Police Department on Jan. 24, 1997, and served in field operations most of his career, Lieutenant Toney said. Officer Payne was trained as a traffic accident reconstructionist and negotiator.
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380 patients at Walter Reed who are on the national kidney transplant list

‘I don’t want to die’: 380 Walter Reed patients are looking for kidney donors

Military Times
By: Natalie Gross
February 26, 2019

Touched by stories like Dadzie’s, Desgoutte-Brown is trying to spread the word about her beloved patients, in hopes that others in the military community would consider coming forward as potential donors.

BETHESDA, Md. — “I don’t want to die.”

Navy wife Phyllis Obeng Dadzie, 25, went into kidney failure after giving birth to her son, Prince Charles, last August. (Charles Agyeilarbi)

Phyllis Obeng Dadzie said the words quietly, but with a slight chuckle, as though it was obvious. She was sitting with her husband, Navy Chief Petty Officer Charles Agyeilarbi, in a small room at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, shivering under a pink winter coat that covered her small frame.

Seven months ago, Dadzie, a native of Ghana, was a healthy 25-year-old, pregnant with the couple’s second child. But in August, complications during the third trimester and the birth of their son, Prince Charles, sent Dadzie into stage 5 kidney disease and, ultimately, to Walter Reed, where she now gets dialysis three times a week.

She’s fully aware of what could happen if she doesn’t get a new kidney soon, but she’s not ready to give up — not with a 2-year-old and a baby at home who need their mom.

“I just want to get a new kidney and live (for) my kids again,” she said. “That’s all that I pray for every day.”

Dadzie is one of about 380 patients at Walter Reed who are on the national kidney transplant list — from troops and military dependents in their young twenties to military retirees who’ve dedicated their lives to service.
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"I just tried to be there,” Chaplain Ron Link explains life as responding to responders

Always on call: Meet the chaplains who assist sheriff's office during crises

Dawson County News
Jessica Taylor
Feb. 26, 2019

Each year they receive 40 hours of training from the Georgia Sheriffs' Association to maintain their certification, which they said reinvigorates and motivates them to keep answering the calls from dispatch.

Dawson County Sheriff's Office Chaplains Ron Link and Dr. Charles Blackstock. - photo by Jessica Taylor 

"I just tried to be there,” Ron Link said as he recounted his first call from dispatch. “I didn’t know what I was supposed to do but it turns out I was doing what I was supposed to,"

Link became a chaplain for the Dawson County Sheriff's Office three years ago, and vividly remembers his first call to a scene: a devastating house fire.

Dr. Charles Blackstock, the lead chaplain who has served in the role for 10 years, was in Atlanta, leaving Link with the responsibility of responding to the call alone.

"I had no formal sheriff’s office training. I just went out there to try to be a help," Link said. "It was kind of overwhelming. It was a really bad scene."

It was a house fire, and someone’s significant other was inside. All Link could do was stand outside with the husband, comforting him as authorities conducted their investigation.

"I didn’t know what the procedures and processes were. I didn’t know who to talk to. All I knew was there was somebody there that was in real, emotional crisis and so I went over and stayed with him until his family arrived," Link said.

It was his first taste of what his new role as a chaplain entailed.

For Blackstock, a pastor at Lighthouse Baptist Church, stepping into the role was a little bit easier. With his ministerial background, he was rather comfortable with providing faith-based support to the sheriff's office staff and the community.

As chaplains, Blackstock and Link voluntarily assist the sheriff's office by delivering death notices, consoling emotional victims at crime scenes and emergencies and supporting the sheriff's office staff through counseling and helping officers cope with traumatic events.

How they go about providing assistance from scene to scene varies with every call.

"You never know what you’re going to get called on to do," Blackstock said.
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Why is this important?

In 2008, I became a Chaplain with the IFOC and received Certification in Crisis Intervention, among other things, plus an award for my work focusing on PTSD prevention for first responders. For the next two years, I trained in many more programs to help avoid the worst results of their service from taking hold. While I no longer wear the badge, I carry the valuable lessons I learned with me everyday.

Why would I do that?
I am a ten time survivor of facing death during traumatic events, including when my ex-husband decided he wanted to kill me, and almost did.

Throughout my life, my family was doing the intervention without knowing it. Sure, I had nightmares, flashbacks, and all the other symptoms of PTSD, but it did not have a chance to take hold because it was addressed right away.

Through the research I had done for a couple of decades, I learned that there is a 30 golden window to battle trauma and take back control of my life. The symptoms had started to go away within the first month, and I was on the road to recovery.

Every now and then, things pop into my mind, but the memories no longer control my life. 

The worst one was when my ex stalked me, ignored the restraining order and every time I heard a muscle car engine rev, it sent a electrical charge through my body and I wanted to run. That went on, even after moving to Florida, far from where he lived, and long after I married my current husband.

When my cousin sent me a copy of his obituary, I stopped freaking out from the sound and began to enjoy the noise again. That comes in handy considering what I do on PTSD Patrol with car shows...although I still do not like my first reaction when I come across a Cutlass. I take a deep breath and move on to interesting pictures to take.

Knowing what all those times did to me, it was easy to understand what it was like for all the veterans and responders were dealing with, and being a family member of a Vietnam veteran, I also understood what it was like on this side of the trauma.

All of this goes into what I have done with my life since 1982, and what I do everyday. So if you find some comfort on this page, gain some knowledge, or decide that you can just copy it, now you know what is behind all of it.

Healing requires what Chaplains do because they are trusted with being able to listen without judging, comfort when needed and let you know that minute you start to address what happened, that is the minute you begin to heal as a survivor of it. 

First I listen. Most of the time, it is over a cup of coffee or at an event when someone sees what I am wearing. A shirt with PTSD Patrol or my Point Man vest, lets them know I am someone willing to listen.

Then I guide them to understanding what PTSD is and let them know how to kick it out of their new normal as a survivor. And then...it is time to work on the spiritual side of healing so they can come out on the other side even better than they were before. You know, like me! 

None of what I do would have worked had I not had the life I had...or learned to become a leader to healing those who risk their lives to save people like me all the time. 

How our soldiers are dying at home

Invisible wounds: How our soldiers are dying at home

According to the VA, 20 veterans who served take their own life every day.
ABC 7 News 
Jeff Butera
February 25th 2019

FORT MYERS, Fla. - This month, Air Force senior leaders issued a memo, calling for a culture change in that military branch. They were concerned after 11 airmen and Air Force civilians committed suicide in just the first four weeks of 2019.

The numbers of suicides among active-duty members of the Army, Navy and Marines have also gone up recently or remained steady.

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Veterans return to Vietnam on Honor Flight

Vietnam vets depart on two-week Honor Flight

WBAY Action 2 News
By KATI ANDERSON
Feb 25, 2019

Veterans are returning to Vietnam for a one-of-a-kind Old Glory Honor Flight trip, their journey started Sunday morning in Menasha.

“For the Vietnam Veterans, this is their welcome home, this is our thank you to them,” said Dawn Putzke, whose dad is on the trip.

She was one of the many family, friends, and fellow veterans giving a proper farewell to the veterans as they got on the bus to head to the airport.

“It means the world to us, I can't even summarize how much it means to our family to have our father get selected to go on this trip,” said Putzke.

She says her family's ties to the military is why she also decided to serve her country.

“With our father being a veteran, my grandfathers being veterans, my uncle being a veteran, it was a positive choice to go in and serve our country and follow in their footsteps,” said Putzke.

Terry Therrien served in the First Calvary division in Vietnam. While on this trip, he hopes to honor other veterans who never made it home.

“One of the things that I really want to do is get up in the central highlands where I was stationed there, and say a prayer for the all mighty people who made the ultimate sacrifice and thank them for that,” said Therrien.
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Rep. Mark Takano discovered veteran suicides from WPO instead of VA?

Wonder what Rep. Mark Takano would think of the WPO suicide article of veterans killing themselves in VA parking lots...if someone told him how many others they missed? 

The other thing is, why did he have to find out from the Washington Post instead of knowing what was going on from the VA?

Bringing Congress to the fireside

The American Legion
FEB 26, 2019

Highlights

Privatization of the VA

Sen. Isakson: “We’re not privatizing the VA. Period. We’re going to make sure that the VA doctors and the Choice doctors understand that a veteran deserves the first chance (at) good care. We’re going to make sure that the standards are equal and the access is equal. We ain’t privatizing nothing. However, if we find a private-sector doctor … who doesn’t do a good job, we’re going to … not use him anymore. And if a (VA) doctor doesn’t do a good job, we now have the Accountability Act to get rid of him.”

Sen. Tester: “None of the four of us on this stage want to privatize the VA. When we talk about access standards, we need to go back and ask, ‘Why are we even here?’ We’re here because veterans couldn’t get their health care in a timely manner. These access standards, it is so imperative that we get them right.”

Rep. Roe: “What I’m most interested in is you getting timely quality care. I don’t care where it is. If the VA can provide that care, that’s great. The quality of care you get is what I am most interested in. You getting the care you need in a timely way. That’s not privatization. That’s quality care.”

Reducing suicides in the veteran population

Rep. Isakson: "On the suicide issue … it is not exactly what a lot of us think it is. In many cases it is somebody reacting to the hand dealt to them in life. Which in some cases could not be the fault of access to a counselor, but the fault of somebody who treated them for a disease and didn’t do a very good job of it. They’re suffering from that disease. We had a lot of guys that came home from Vietnam that would not have come home from any other war … because our medicine improved. But because of that a lot more of them have needs that are much greater than the average veteran who survived. We’ve got to make sure that all of our medical services to those vets are good so they don’t get into a case where they’re frustrated.”

Sen. Tester: “We’ve got to continue to work to try to find what we can do to stop this horrible thing from happening. There is still a stigma around mental health and suicide we have to figure out how to break. I think the (veterans service organizations) can help with that area a lot. This is the 21st century. We know a lot more about the mind than we did in the ‘50s, the ‘60s and ‘70s. I can tell you unequivocally that people that get help can have mental health conditions fixed just like you fix a broken arm or a dislocated knee. We have to work as a group, as a society, to try to reduce the stigma as we try to take money and put it into areas that do the most good.”

Rep. Takano: “Next week we’re intending to have a roundtable on veteran suicide. I want my committee members on a bipartisan basis to deepen their understanding of the complexities of addressing veteran suicides. We know the majority of veterans committing suicide are not connected to the VA. We definitely need organizations like The American Legion to help us come up with strategies to reach those veterans who are not connected to the VA.”

Rep. Roe: “We were spending $8 billion a year and haven’t moved the needle a bit on the suicide rate in this country. We need to be doing something different.”
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UPDATE
More from this event

Bill Would Allow Last WWII Medal of Honor Recipient to Lie in State at Capitol
Military.com
By Richard Sisk
26 Feb 2019

A bill that would have the last Medal of Honor recipient from World War II lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda gained bipartisan backing Monday from the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House Veterans Affairs Committees.

"I can't think of anybody who would vote against that," Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Georgia, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said of the bill introduced in January by Rep. Carol Miller, R-West Virginia, which would direct a state funeral for a member of the "Greatest Generation" who earned the nation's highest award for valor.

State funerals, and lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda, are reserved for current and former U.S. presidents and those deemed to have rendered "distinguished service." The late Sen. John McCain was granted the honor last August.

Army Gens. John J. Pershing and Douglas A. MacArthur had state funerals, but there has never been one for an identified enlisted service member. (There have been state funerals for the "Unknown Soldiers" of World War I and World War II.)

All four living recipients of the Medal of Honor from World War II were enlisted. They include former Marine Warrant Officer Hershel "Woody" Williams of West Virginia and three former soldiers: Tech. Sgt. Charles H. Coolidge of Tennessee, Tech. Sgt. Francis S. Currey of New York and Technician 5th Grade Robert D. Maxwell of Colorado.
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Soviets plotted to target and discredit the men, then considered “high-value targets,”

COLD WAR TARGETS

Stars and Stripes
By Matthew M. Burke and Marcus Kloeckner

Disgraced U.S. Air Force officers were set up, newly uncovered Stasi documents reveal uncovered Stasi documents reveal

According to 250 pages of Stasi files obtained by Stars and Stripes from the German government, the Soviets plotted to target and discredit the men, then considered “high-value targets,” culminating on the night of the crash.

For nearly 40 years, Bill Burhans has steadfastly maintained he wasn’t drunk when, as an Air Force lieutenant colonel driving fellow U.S. military liaisons home from a holiday party with their Soviet counterparts in East Germany, he lost control of the car, careened up an embankment and slammed into a bus.

When the car came to a stop on Dec. 29, 1979, Air Force Lt. Col. James Tonge, his passenger, called to him to move the car to the shoulder. But Burhans sat frozen, except for his trembling hands.

It was as if he’d been “hit in the head with an ax at the slaughterhouse,” Tonge would later tell U.S. investigators in a sworn statement.
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Disabled veteran's German Shepherd service dog brutalized by groomer

Florida groomer picks up tail of disabled veteran's service dog, spins it until it breaks: sheriff

The 8-year-old German Shepherd was so hurt that its tail had to be amputated.
WTSP News
Author: Andrew Krietz
February 25, 2019

"The video is so graphic that I will not post it on Facebook, but trust me when I tell you that it is one of the most difficult things I have ever had to watch in my 39 years of Law Enforcement because of the horrific and cruel way the pet was treated," Ivey wrote.

TT underwent emergency surgery to amputate its tail and is recovering. Its owner is devastated, the sheriff said.

SATELLITE BEACH, Fla. — A Florida sheriff says he has no problem taking your butt to jail if you hurt an animal in his county.

It's the least of what Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey wrote on Facebook while describing a horrific act of animal cruelty -- so much so that he said it's probably one of the worst cases in his 39 years of law enforcement.

A disabled veteran had his service dog, a German Shepherd named "TT," set for a grooming appointment. James Cordell Doughty Suthann was tasked to take care of the 8-year-old dog. Video tells the rest of the story, Ivey said: The contract employee got upset when the dog would not stand still. The sheriff wrote Suthann grabbed TT's head down "so tight that the dog could no longer move and was obviously in pain."

At one point, Ivey said he saw Suthann lift the dog up by its tail -- and off the ground, causing her to spin a complete 360 degrees. The tail became broken to the extent it could not be reattached.

Suthann wasn't done there, the sheriff said, as he took the nozzle used to bathe the dog and struck it in the back of the head.
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