Veterans for Common Sense

Airman, wife die in shooting – – SWAT officers find couple dead after standoff in North Las Vegas

February 21, 2009, Las Vegas, Nevada – A Nellis Air Force Base airman and his wife died in what is believed to be a murder-suicide Friday in a North Las Vegas apartment.

The deaths ended a roughly two-hour standoff with North Las Vegas police, during which the airman, an Iraq war veteran who might have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, shot at police.

Police said a third party, a friend of the wife’s, called police about 5:30 a.m. claiming that the gunman was holding a gun to his wife’s head inside the apartment, Sgt. Tim Bedwell said.

Officers made contact with the man at a ground-level unit at the Craig Ranch Villas apartments, 370 Casa Norte Drive, near Commerce Street and Lone Mountain Road. He retreated into the apartment and fired shots through a window at police, Bedwell said.

When SWAT officers entered the apartment about 8 a.m., they found the two people dead from gunshot wounds.

Authorities have not released the names of the couple, but sources said the airman was Jason Matthew Klinkenberg.

A marriage license application from Clark County identified Klinkenberg as 25 years old. The application shows he married his wife, 23-year-old Crystal Klinkenberg, in July 2007.

Nellis Air Force Base officials would say only that the airman was a vehicle operator with the 99th Logistics Readiness Squadron.

A friend who said he served with Klinkenberg in Iraq said that Klinkenberg battled post-traumatic stress disorder and had back problems that required him to have several surgeries.

The friend, who declined to give his name, said Klinkenberg was traumatized by an incident with a rocket propelled grenade and, later, when a man set himself on fire in front of him.

This information could not be independently confirmed Friday.

Nellis spokeswoman Capt. Amanda Ferrell said base officials are looking into the airman’s career, including his deployment in Iraq in late 2005.

“We’re researching any history regarding his career that might have had an impact on the incident,” she said.

In an interview last year regarding how the base handles PTSD cases in its active duty ranks, Nellis psychologist, Lt. Col. Kevin McCal, said the base doesn’t have a specific program to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder among active duty troops. Focus is put on awareness and hope that those with PTSD voluntarily seek help through the base’s mental health program, he said.

Neighbors claimed to hear fighting coming from the apartment about an hour before police were called. When officers arrived, neighbors said they heard officers shouting for “Jason” to leave the apartment.

Officers did not return fire when the gunman shot at them because they were unsure whether the woman inside was in danger, Bedwell said.

“We always err on the side of caution when there is another person inside,” he said.

Several surrounding apartments were evacuated, Bedwell said.

Juan Jose Nevarez was one of several neighbors forced to leave around 5:45 a.m. He watched events unfold from another part of the complex and said he saw about 100 police and SWAT officers hustling around the complex.

“There was a whole army,” he said. “I have never seen so many (officers).”

Management of the Craig Ranch Villas complex would not comment about the incident or status of the tenants in apartment number 1158.

Irene Delatorre said she heard the fighting from her home behind the complex around 4:30 a.m. She said she heard a male voice but never the sound of gunshots.

Officers rushed through the backyards of the homes that back up to the brick wall facing the apartment, Delatorre said.

Delatorre and other neighbors were taken to a nearby elementary school until about 9 a.m.

The Clark County coroner’s office will determine whether the incident was a murder-suicide, Bedwell said.

Bedwell said police did all they could to help the people inside the home.

“This is a horrible outcome for everyone at the scene,” he said.

Las Vegas Review-Journal writer Brian Haynes contributed to this report. Contact reporter Maggie Lillis at mlillis@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279. Contact reporter Lawrence Mower at lmower@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0440. Contact reporter Keith Rogeers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.

Advocates offer free peer-to-peer support, crisis line, case assistance

February 21, 2009 – After Private Paul Bridges saw his buddies die in Iraq in a Humvee in February 2006, his mental state began going downhill, said his father, Terry Bridges.

Three months later, a mental health counselor told his chain of command that Bridges needed to leave the theater immediately. His weapon was taken away.

But nearly six months later, on Nov. 2, 2006, still in Iraq and working 12-hour days, Bridges shot himself with his roommate’s weapon.

“His command let him down,” said Terry Bridges, who has received no answers about why his son remained in Iraq. “It was something that could have been prevented.”

He said the military needs to train noncommissioned officers not to treat troops as malingerers when they exhibit mental health problems, and also train troops in how to react and protect their comrades who might be contemplating suicide.

“We can’t do anything for Paul. But if we can help change the culture to understand that just because a soldier doesn’t have an arm blown off, or a hole in the stomach, it doesn’t mean soldiers aren’t wounded … maybe it will prevent this from happening to others,” he said.

Bridges and his wife, Sherryl Marsh, are joining forces with other families of suicide victims in the military through the nonprofit Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors to help prevent suicide in the ranks and assist families of suicide victims.

In fact, Bridges is working with the family of a sailor who recently killed himself.

“TAPS has seen a tragic increase in families whose loved ones lost their very personal battles,” said Bonnie Carroll, the group’s founder and chairwoman. “We embrace these families with a wide array of programs offering comfort and care, [and] a prevention program for battle buddies coping with the death of a fellow service member.”

TAPS offers peer-based support, crisis care, casualty casework assistance and grief and trauma resources, all free. Unlike most programs offered through the military, TAPS provides ongoing help to anyone grieving the death of a loved one in the military, regardless of the relationship to the deceased, where they live, or the circumstances of the death.

TAPS can also help connect service members, families and others to free, confidential, one-on-one, unlimited counseling through partnerships with the Veterans Affairs Department’s Vet Centers, Give An Hour and the Association of Death Education and Counseling.

In the past year, TAPS has seen a 25 percent increase in calls from survivors of suicide to its 24-hour crisis line, (800) 959-TAPS.

Missing support

Connie Scott believes a program like the battle buddies initiative might have helped save her son, Army Pfc. Brian Williams.

She will never know exactly what Brian saw in the days before he left Iraq to come home on leave in December 2006. But the day before he was supposed to return to Iraq, the 19-year-old killed himself in their garage.

“If only Brian could have reached out to someone who understood his pain,” she said. “He could have done that through TAPS. Everyone in trauma needs someone who understands.

“He was sent home in a critical state without a support group,” she said. “He had never been exposed to death before. I think he would’ve been OK if he hadn’t come home on leave … if he’d had the support of his Army buddies.”

Williams’ troubled mental state was worsened by an e-mail from his fiancée that he received at the airport while waiting to leave Iraq, in which she broke off their engagement because she had found someone else.

“He couldn’t sleep or eat and was withdrawn,” she said. “We walked on eggshells, not knowing what to say or what not to say. There was no Army base near me. I had no one to call. I didn’t know what to do.”
‘I’m a gunny. I’m fine’

Marine widow Mary Gallagher said she is confident that military leaders are sincere about trying to eliminate the stigma that clings to seeking mental health care.

She believes the stigma played a big role in keeping her husband from seeking help. Gunnery Sgt. James Gallagher hung himself in their garage at Camp Pendleton on May 23, 2006.

After his return from Iraq — where more than 12 people in his unit were killed, including the commanding officer — “Jim never spoke of anything,” she said.

When she tried to talk about his behavioral changes — sleeping more, not showering — “he told me, ‘I’m a gunny. I’m fine.’ ”

The stigma has to be dealt with, Gallagher said.

“Depression kills. Stigma kills. That stigma was a part of Jim. No way he trusted and believed in the system set up for him to get help. I know, in his state of mind, it would have meant the end of his career.”

Just a month before he took his own life, she said her husband helped stop one of his own Marines from committing suicide.

“Jim said, ‘Doesn’t he understand what he would put his family through?’ ”

‘I can’t rest’

Army officials saw a spike in soldier suicides in January. From what TAPS is seeing, February is no better. Kim Ruocco recently talked to four newly grieving widows of Army suicide victims, offering support from one who has been there.

“It’s brought me back to square one,” said Ruocco, whose husband, Marine Corps Reserve Maj. John Ruocco, killed himself in a hotel room near Camp Pendleton, Calif., three months after returning from Iraq. “I’m exhausted with the subject of suicide, but I can’t rest because there’s too much to be done.”

Ruocco and another widow of a Marine suicide, Carla Stumpf-Patton, have begun coordinating TAPS’ nationwide peer support group program specifically for survivors of suicide.

Family members and others often say they realized later that there were red flags, and they want other people to be aware.

“You don’t want to wait until your family is in crisis mode to learn about it. Prevention and education are the key,” said Stumpf-Patton, whose husband, drill instructor Sgt. Rich Stumpf, killed himself in front of recruits and other Marines at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., in 1994.

Not everyone shows the same signs, said Ruocco.

“Looking back, there was a drastic change,” she said. “He lost a ton of weight, he was irritable and angry. I attributed it to the pressure and stress of coming back from war, and no time off. How do you separate that from a deeper problem?”

But, she added, “if there’s a drastic change and the person doesn’t seem like the person you knew, you need to get help. Don’t assume it’s normal.”

Chaplains are a first line of defense, as are VA’s Vet Centers, which are confidential.

“If I’d known, I would have taken him there at Christmas,” Ruocco said. “There’s a Vet Center 20 minutes away” from their home in Massachusetts.

But service members’ peers have to be watchful, too, she said.

“People have to start taking notice when something isn’t right. Peers have to watch over their peers psychologically, too. They need to talk about it. Realistically, most are suffering in silence.”

Veterans rights activist Paul Sullivan said he was deeply disturbed by the report, especially Turner’s finding that less than 60 percent of soldiers who return from deployment to a recruiting assignment have been fully vetted for psychological problems. “The senior leaders at the Pentagon threw these Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans to the wolves by ordering them to recruiting duty in a known toxic command environment without sufficient mental health screening,” said Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense.

Recruiters had history of low morale; Report shows climate in Houston Army battalion bad since 2006

February 20, 2009, 7:12PM, Houston, Texas – The Army had ample evidence of low morale and poor leadership at the Houston Recruiting Battalion from internal investigations and inspections dating back to 2006, roughly three years before a brigadier general’s report uncovered the same problems at the battalion following a string of suicides among recruiters there.

According to documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle through a Freedom of Information Act request, Brig. Gen. Frank D. Turner’s investigation confirmed what the Army already knew about the poor command climate at the Houston battalion.

Three of the four suicides examined in the general’s probe, which concluded in December, occurred in the last two years. The documents released to the Chronicle this week raise new questions about what the Army did to address concerns raised by recruiters in Houston prior to those deaths.

In an interview today, Turner said he tracked the follow-up process that took place after each of the previous investigations and inspections of the Houston battalion and found that, in most cases, steps were taken to “cut the cancer” out and improve recruiters working conditions and morale, but he said more could have been done. “In hindsight, maybe different actions were warranted,” he said.

Turner said the Army has already taken “very concrete steps” in response to his report, including replacing leaders at both battalion and brigade levels.

“I’m convinced that good has come out of this,” he said.

Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, head of U.S. Army Recruiting Command, could not be reached for comment today.

Four recruiters assigned to the Houston battalion killed themselves between January 2005 and September 2008, including two who hanged themselves within weeks of each other last year. All four soldiers had served in Iraq or Afghanistan before being reassigned to recruiting duty, a job considered one of the most stressful in the Army, especially in wartime.

Following inquiries into the suicides by the Chronicle, Sen. John Cornyn wrote to Secretary of the Army Pete Geren in October to request an investigation.

The documents released to the newspaper include Turner’s final report, memos, e-mails, records of phone conversations and sworn statements related to the suicides in the Houston battalion. Many of the documents are heavily redacted.

In his report, Turner wrote that the Houston battalion has suffered from a poor command climate for years.

“The climate has been fostered by the leadership styles of several senior leaders, an unhealthy and singular focus on production at the expense of soldier and family considerations, persistent long hours and weekend duty with no predictability of time off,” he wrote.

As early as March 2006, documents show, an inspection by the Army Inspector General’s office revealed below average morale and micromanagement at the Houston battalion. A year later, an official with the Army’s Family Readiness Group visited the battalion in the wake of Sgt. Nils Aron Andersson’s suicide on March 6. The official found low morale in March 2007 and no improvement in August 2007.

In July 2008, a team from the Army’s Equal Opportunity Office once again noted low morale in the unit, and reported that the battalion commander’s policy of 13-hour work days was being abused by the station commanders and company leadership. Recommendations included “treat soldiers with dignity and respect” and “eliminate leading by intimidation and threats.”

Recruiters described a group known as the “Mafia,” a close-knit clique of Houston battalion commanders and permanent recruiters who operated outside the bounds of accepted policies and practices and closed ranks to protect its own.

“Soldiers feared reprisals for making negative comments about company leadership teams,” Turner wrote.

Recruiters also felt that their long work hours prevented them from maintaining strong personal relationships, he wrote. One recruiter said in a sworn statement that he didn’t know if he was going to be able to make his wedding even though he put in for the time off over weeks in advance. “I was told the day before my wedding that I would be off,” the recruiter wrote. “That is just an example of what we have to go through … And this causes animosity at home because my wife and I cannot plan.”

On July 2, 2008, the battalion commander, whose name has been redacted from the documents, sent an email to all commanders and 1st sergeants saying he’d been receiving too many calls about leaders violating policy and making recruiters work from 5:30 or 6:30 in the morning until 9 or 10 at night.

The commander wrote that the battalion was experiencing a tough period in recruiting but soldiers needed some predictability of their schedules despite the long hours.

“I’ve received 3 calls in the last 30 days on folks that were promised birthday and/or anniversary off and were called back to work on the day of the anniversary and during the birthday and/or anniversary party when they already had family and friends at their homes,” the commander wrote. “Absolutely poor leadership tactic, so let’s watch ourselves.”

In the same email, the commander stated he’d also been hearing complaints about abusive leadership in the battalion.

“I am also getting numerous calls on recruiters being called ‘dirtbags’ or ‘useless’ when they do not accomplish mission each month,” he wrote. In one case, a recruiter who produced more contracts than necessary three months in a row fell short of his goal on the fourth month. “[H]e was called a dirtbag and useless AND his wife was on listening in on the phone call, etc. . Again, this type of tactic is not leadership and must cease immediately,” the commander wrote.

Exactly one month later, Turner has confirmed, commanders inappropriately humiliated Staff Sgt. Larry G. Flores Jr. at low-production counseling session in which Flores and other recruiters who failed to meet monthly quotas had to defend their work ethics before a panel of superiors.

Flores friends and colleagues have said the 26-year-old station commander later told them the battalion’s command sergeant major had pressured him to admit he was a failure and that he wanted to quit, so it would make it easier to kick him out of recruiting or even out of the Army. Turner has said he believes the humiliating episode played a role in Flores’ suicide a week later.

Six weeks after Flores death, Sgt. 1st Class Patrick G. Henderson, 35, became the fourth Houston-based recruiter to commit suicide in less than four years when he hanged himself in a shed behind his home. Henderson and Flores served in the battalion’s Tyler company.

Cornyn met with a dozen recruiters at their station in a River Oaks strip mall this morning and spoke at a press conference afterward. He said was impressed with the objectivity of Turner’s report and said he hopes to follow up with congressional hearings.

The Texas Republican said he hasn’t had a chance to read the report, which was delivered to his D.C. office this morning, but he has been briefed on it.

“I would say to the extent that these problems have been identified before and not acted on appropriately, that’s certainly going to be part of the subject matter of the hearing the Senate armed services committee is going to have in the very near future,” the senator said. “So this is not the beginning and this is not the end. I would say we’re sort of in the middle phase of this investigation, and we’ll see what we can learn from it.”

Veterans rights activist Paul Sullivan said he was deeply disturbed by the report, especially Turner’s finding that less than 60 percent of soldiers who return from deployment to a recruiting assignment have been fully vetted for psychological problems.

“The senior leaders at the Pentagon threw these Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans to the wolves by ordering them to recruiting duty in a known toxic command environment without sufficient mental health screening,” said Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense.

Houston Chronicle Reporter Lindsay Wise: lindsay.wise@chron.com

RESOURCES FOR SOLDIERS, FAMILIES

• Veterans experiencing emotional and suicidal crisis, as well as their concerned family members or friends, have immediate access to emergency counseling services 24 hours a day, seven days a week by calling 800-273-TALK (8255).
• For information on suicide warning signs visit www.behavioralhealth.army.mil.
• The Army’s Battlemind Training System is a mental health awareness and education program that helps prepare soldiers and their families for the stresses of war and assists with the detection of possible mental health issues before and after deployment. Visit www.battlemind.org.
• Soldiers in crisis should talk to their chaplain, chain of command or a fellow soldier immediately. They may also call Military OneSource at 800-342-9647 or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-SUICIDE.
• Call the Wounded Soldier and Family Hotline at 800-984-8523 or e-mail wsfsupport@conus.army.mil.

May 24, 2008 – A majority of Americans believe that wounded troops don’t receive high quality medical care in military and Veteran’s Administration hospitals, according to a new Harvard School of Public Health poll.

Military families share that view, the poll found, and are slightly more pessimistic than non-military civilians when it comes to rehabilitation and mental health care. A reality check: Those polled didn’t think care at major U.S. civilian hospitals was any better.

Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, director of strategic communications for the Defense Department’s military health system, said other recent polls show the same pessimism. But, Kilpatrick added, they “do not respond to the reality of the situation and they certainly do not correspond to what the service members themselves think.”

A March 2008 Zogby poll, he said, found that 77 percent of a sample of 435 soldiers wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan were satisfied with the military health system.

Veterans’ Affairs also defended its record. “For eight years in a row, the American Customer Satisfaction Index has shown that veterans are more satisfied with their health care than the average American. Those who use our system know its quality,” the VA said in a statement.

Harvard’s poll found that 59 percent of civilians and 64 percent of military families believed troops weren’t getting high quality care in military and VA hospitals. On rehab and mental health care, the percentages were 57 and 65, respectively.

Both groups were more upbeat about the quality of front-line care. According to the researchers, favorable publicity about front-line care and unfavorable news stories about military hospitals may help to explain the difference.

Two advocacy groups for veterans offered more mixed appraisals.

Paul Sullivan, director of Veterans for Common Sense, said that VA workers “are trying their best,” but that the department had been crushed by the Bush administration.

“The administration has concealed the suicide epidemic, that more than 650,000 veterans wait on average six months to have their disability claims reviewed, and that hundreds of thousands of veterans wait more than a month to see a VA doctor,” Sullivan said.

But when it comes to the medical care provided by the VA, the care is above average to excellent, Sullivan said.

David Autry, director of communications of Disabled Americans Veterans had a similar view.

“We know from a lot of studies that the veteran’s healthcare system is one of the finest in the world,” he said, “even if there is some unevenness in the system.”

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE.)

Republican John McCain won the Harvard poll, which asked which presidential candidate would do the most for military medical care.

Sullivan said that although the Veterans for Common sense is a non-partisan organization, its answer is different.

“Senator McCain votes in favor of veterans only about 30 percent of the time. In sharp contrast, Senator Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, votes in favor 90 percent of the time,” he said.

Harris Interactive, a polling firm, conducted the survey for Harvard’s public health school, interviewing 1,007 people by phone between April 30 to May 4. The sampling error was +/- 3.0 percent.