USA TODAY International Edition
SOME BRING WAR HOME WITH THEM
William Thomas, a retired Newark police sergeant, left his home in a body bag. To his dismay, he was still very much alive. A team of police officers and medical technicians had strapped his limbs together, stuffing his body into a mesh sack to restrain him after he tried to fight them off.
Six hours earlier, Thomas, a decorated narcotics investigator and a veteran of the New Jersey Air National Guard, tortured by post- traumatic stress disorder ( PTSD) as a result of his service in Iraq, had downed a fistful of prescription sleeping pills with an entire bottle of Bermuda rum. He collapsed onto his stepson’s bed, calmly waiting to die. This was the second time since returning from war and rejoining the police force that he had tried to take his own life.
The debate over the militarization of America’s police has focused on the accumulation of war- grade vehicles and artillery and the spread of paramilitary SWAT teams. What has gone largely unstudied, however, is the impact of military veterans migrating into law enforcement. Even as departments around the country have sought a cultural transformation from “warriors” to “guardians,” one in five police officers are literally warriors, returned from Afghanistan, Iraq or other
assignments.
The majority of veterans return home and reintegrate with few problems, and most police leaders value having them on the force. They bring with them skills and discipline that police forces regard as assets. But an investigation by the USA TODAY Network and The Marshall Project indicates that the prevalence of military veterans also complicates relations between police and the communities they are meant to serve.
To the obvious question — are veterans quicker to resort to force in policing situations? — there is no conclusive answer. Reporters obtained data from two major- city law enforcement agencies and considerable anecdotal evidence suggesting veterans are more likely to get physical, and some police executives agree.
But any large- scale comparison of the use of force by veterans and non- veterans is hampered by a chronic lack of reliable, official record- keeping on police violence.
Some other conclusions about military veterans in the police force emerged more clearly:
Veterans who work as police are more vulnerable to self- destructive behavior — alcohol abuse, drug use and, like Thomas, attempted suicide.
Hiring preferences for former service members that tend to benefit whites disproportionately make it harder to build police forces that reflect and understand diverse communities, some police leaders say.
Most law enforcement agencies, because of factors including a culture of machismo and a number of legal restraints, do little or no mental health screening for officers who have returned from military deployment, and they provide little in the way of treatment.
When Thomas returned to Newark, the police department offered no services for returning veterans, and he says he probably wouldn’t have applied for help anyway, fearing a stigma. “I just went back to work like nothing happened,” he says.
He lasted eight days in police uniform before his first suicide attempt. Tormented by memories of an explosion at the Baghdad airport that killed a favorite K- 9 patrol dog, unnerved by crowds, spooked by loud noises and argumentative with superiors, “I tried to eat my gun,” he says.
His wife drove him to a nearby veterans hospital, where Thomas was diagnosed with severe PTSD. Thomas, now 57, is an advocate in the non- profit military and veterans support group Wounded Warrior Project.
Policing has long been a favored career choice for men and women who have enlisted in the armed forces.
Today, just 6% of the population at large has served in the military, but 19% of police officers are veterans, according to an analysis of U. S. Census data by Gregory B. Lewis and Rahul Pathak of Georgia State University for The Marshall Project. The attraction is, in part, the result of a web of state and federal laws — some dating back to the late 19th century — that require law enforcement agencies to choose veterans over candidates with no military backgrounds.
Official data on police officers who are veterans are scarce. Nearly all of the 34 police departments contacted by The Marshall Project declined to provide a list of officers who had served in the military, citing laws protecting personnel records or difficulties in compiling a list. The Justice Department office that dispenses grants to study policing said it had no interest in funding research into how military experience might influence police behavior.
But even those who advocate hiring combat veterans as police officers have raised alarms. The Justice Department and the International Association of Chiefs of Police put out a 2009 guide for police departments to help with their recruitment of military veterans. The guide warned, “Sustained operations under combat circumstances may cause returning officers to mistakenly blur the lines between military combat situations and civilian crime situations, resulting in inappropriate decisions and actions — particularly in the use of less lethal or lethal force.”
In New Mexico, Albuquerque police officers have fatally shot 35 people from January 2010 to April 2014. Thirty- one percent were shot by officers who were veterans, police records show. Neither the department nor the city attorney responded to questions.
In two other cities that provided data — Boston and Miami — internal police records indicate that officers with military experience generate more civilian complaints of excessive force.
In Boston, for every 100 cops with some military service, there were more than 28 complaints of excessive use of force from 2010 through 2015. For every 100 cops with no military service, there were fewer than 17 complaints. Spokesman Michael P. McCarthy said the department would look into the disparity.
In Miami, based on data from 2013 through 2015, for every 100 veterans on the force, 14 complaints were filed; for every 100 officers without military service, 11 complaints were filed.
When police officers return to work after a military deployment, federal law prohibits their departments from requiring blanket mental health evaluations. Because of the Americans With Disabilities Act, police departments can’t reject a job candidate for simply having a PTSD diagnosis.
The only time most of America’s law enforcement officers are required to sit for a mental health analysis is during the initial hiring process, and the rigor of the screening varies widely. Fewer than half of the nation’s smallest police departments do pre- employment psychological testing at all, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Although up to 20% of those deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have PTSD, only half get treated, according to a 2012 National Academy of Sciences study.
Advocates say the safety net for struggling officers at most police departments is minimal to non- existent. Even departments sensitive to mental health are in a difficult position: Top brass needs to be able to take unstable police officers off the street lest they hurt someone or themselves on the job. Yet officers must feel they can ask for help without jeopardizing their careers, or “you're never going to get cops to come forward” for treatment, says Brian Fleming, a retired Boston police sergeant who ran the department’s peer support unit from 2010 to 2014.
The lack of official attention in many cities has spurred police unions and individual officers to construct their own safety nets, programs where officers can open up about pain they would never show at a station house.
“I’ve never been at a roll call and someone says: ‘ Know what, Sarge? I feel sorta sad today,’” says Andy Callaghan, a Philadelphia police narcotics sergeant who spends his spare time at the Livengrin Foundation for Addiction Recovery outside Philadelphia. “Early intervention is the key. Waiting for someone to self- destruct is what we do, and it's terrible.”
“I’ve never been at a roll call and someone says: ‘ Know what, Sarge? I feel sorta sad today.’ Early intervention is the key.” Andy Callaghan, a Philadelphia police narcotics sergeant and counselor