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More Veterans Need to Opt-in to VA’s Test Plan To Fix Appeals

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By Debbie Gregory.

Any time a veteran files a claim for disability that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) rejects, they have the right to appeal. But the average wait before a final decision is six years — and one service member has even waited 25 years. As a result, the number of pending appeals has increased sharply, rising in the past two years alone from 380,000 to now 470,000 pending appeals.

The first pilot program of the new law, the Appeals Modernization Act of 2017 called the Rapid Appeals Modernization Program (RAMP), is off to a slow start.

A lot of veterans have received information about, or invitations to join RAMP. The new law will be fully implemented in 2019, but in the meantime, the pilot program allows the VA to test how appeals will be handled in the future.

The law is meant to jump-start appeals reform within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), with an eye toward ending the backlog.

To date, VA has sent veterans 15,000 invitations to try out the new RAMP process. About 3 percent of those who have been contacted opted into the program.

But members of Congress and GAO said they were concerned that VA’s sample size for the pilot is too small.

“If you can’t gather and analyze the data, we’re just going to be whistling in the wind,” committee Chairman Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) said. “When we start this RAMP up full, essentially a year from now, this is a massive change in how things are done at the VA. With so few people … how do we encourage more veterans to switch to a system they know to one right now that’s new and untried?”

VA said it would continue to work with veterans service organizations and Congress to help encourage their members and constituents to consider trying the department’s new system.

So far, VBA has been processing those appeals within 37 days, and 61 percent of veterans have won their appeals — significantly higher than the 25 percent of veterans who typically earn a positive decision.

Once VA fully implements RAMP,  veterans with high-level claims will have a decision in 125 days and cases that go to the Board of Veterans Appeals will be finished within about a year.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Vet Suing VA for Therapist’s Sexual Advances

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By Debbie Gregory.

Ami Diane Phillips, a Department of Veterans Affairs therapist, is at the center of a $500,000 lawsuit against the VA.

Luke Kirk, a veteran who was being treated by Phillips, alleges that he suffered emotional distress due to sexual advances, and that Phillips punished him when he refused to marry her.

In January, 2017, Phillips was convicted of two misdemeanors for making up a story that Kirk was going to kill her, warning hospital staff that Kirk was either coming to the facility or going to hurt her family. But in fact she was seeking retribution against Kirk for saying that he was going to report her sexual advances.

Phillips began treating Kirk in November 2015, according to the lawsuit. But she’d begun forming a social relationship with Kirk by late April 2016 while still providing care to him.

“Phillips engaged in behavior that fell below the professional standards for a social worker, including physically touching, hugging, and kissing during mental health treatment sessions,” according to the lawsuit.

“Phillips used her position and influence to induce (Kirk) to trust her enough to agree to a personal relationship with (her) that ended only when Phillips tried to kill herself and/or (him) during a social outing to the beach,” the lawsuit claims.

They exchanged 4,000 text messages between their personal cellphones, went out for drinks and Phillips would even visit his home.

At one point, she asked Kirk to marry her and raise an adopted child together, the court documents claim, but he rebuffed her advances.

Kirk claims the VA should be liable for his therapist’s misconduct.

Kirk has suffered “from fear of criminal prosecution, interference with his progress in therapy, loss of trust in other medical or mental health providers” along with a slew of emotional issues because of the ordeal, according to the lawsuit.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Army Develops VR Game to Prep Teachers for School Shootings

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By Debbie Gregory.

With mass shootings sadly becoming a regular occurrence, the U.S. Army and Homeland Security are working to create a virtual reality experience they hope will help train teachers  how to react in the event of a school shooting.

It’s a grim project, but one that the creators hope will help teachers stay calm in a real emergency.

The VR experience allows role-playing, and multiple players take the role of a teacher trying to keep students safe during a shooting; a law enforcement officer trying to apprehend the shooter; and the shooter.

The project is based on a multipurpose Homeland Security simulator called the Enhanced Dynamic Geo-Social Environment (EDGE.) In 2016, the Army and Homeland Security released a similar virtual reality experience aimed to train both fire and police departments how to handle school shooting response.

“The more experience you have, the better your chances of survival are,” said Tamara Griffith, a chief engineer for EDGE. “So this allows you to practice and have multiple experiences (and) know what works and what doesn’t work.”

Teachers in the school-specific version get prompts to do things like lock the doors and windows, and they can give students instructions like “follow me” or “find a place to hide.” To create the most realistic scenario possible, EDGE engineers listened to dispatch audio from both the Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook shootings.

No one can say for sure if this technology would have saved some of the victims in Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on Valentine’s Day, among them teachers protecting their students.

Geography teacher Scott Beigel was killed after he unlocked his door so that he could let students inside his classroom and shelter. Assistant football coach and security guard, Aaron Feis, used his own body to shield students as gunfire rang out in the school. Athletic director Chris Hixon, a former Navy Reservist, also lost his life.

The updated virtual reality simulation aimed at teachers will be released in the spring. And unfortunately, it can’t come soon enough.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Army Veteran Shot By Police at Clinic Seeking Help for Mental Problems Faces Charges

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By Debbie Gregory.

An Army veteran is recovering from a serious, but not life-threatening gunshot wound to the upper chest after he brandished a knife and was shot by police at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ clinics in White City, Oregon.

Gilbert “Matt” Negrete had sought help for paranoid delusions. He has been charged with attempted assault, unlawful use of a weapon, menacing and other crimes.

His father described the knife as a paring knife. “It’s a tiny little knife, but I’m sure to them it looked huge,” he said.

VA police had tried “less-lethal force options” to disarm Negrete before one of the officers fired.

Matt’s father, Gilbert, said he drove his son to the clinic in an attempt to get his son treatment for paranoid delusions that led him to believe he was being monitored and watched.

Days before the incident at the VA, police had arrested Negrete on charges of driving under the influence of a controlled substance and attempting to elude police. Prior to that, he was arrested for disorderly conduct following a September assault for punching a man in the nose who was trying to break up a bar fight.

Matt Negrete’s estranged wife, Alyss Maio, said that “he wasn’t like this before he deployed.” Her husband’s mental health problems first manifested after he returned from a 2009 Iraq tour and a 2011 Afghanistan tour with the Army’s 10th Mountain Division in Fort Drum, New York, she said. He’d served as a helicopter electrician, diagnostician and technician before his honorable discharge, she said.

“Within 30 days of his coming home, it was very clear he had changed,” she said.

Negrete started drinking more and harbored “a lot of anger” he wouldn’t discuss, according to Maio, who has three children with him.

Maio said her husband’s problems ebbed and flowed after he was discharged.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

 

Rape Conviction Overturned by Military Court Due to Jury Composition

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By Debbie Gregory.

The nation’s highest military court has thrown out the 2012 rape conviction of a Coast Guard enlisted man because admirals and prosecutors packed the seven-member jury with five women, four of whom held jobs as advocates for victims of sexual assault.

In a 5-0 ruling that could change how the military conducts sex abuse trials, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces tossed out the conviction of Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class John C. Riesbeck.

The decision speaks to the way politics influences command choices regarding military justice. From the Coast Guard commandant down to an appellate court to the original trial judge, the high court said all contributed to a “stain on the military justice system.”

Riesbeck claimed a biased jury panel had infringed on his right to a fair trial after he was convicted. He was sentenced to three months’ confinement, demotion, and a bad conduct discharge.

Four admirals had a hand in the final panel: Coast Guard Commandant Paul F. Zukunft; Vice Adm. Manson K. Brown, then-commander of Coast Guard Pacific Area & Defense Forces West; Rear Adm. Christopher Colvin, then-Pacific Area deputy commander; and Rear Adm. June Ryan, then-Pacific Area chief of staff.

The Coast Guard is part of the Department of Homeland Security, but its 40,000 personnel — about 10 percent of whom are women — come under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, as do all military personnel.

“It is gratifying to see a female judge pushing back against the ‘Me Too’ meme by insisting on due process for the accused Coast Guardsman as well as the accuser in this case,” said Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness. “The court also deserves praise for holding accountable Admiral Zukunft, who was involved in what Judge Margaret A. Ryan described as ‘gender-based court stacking’ with professional victims advocates.”

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Former Marine Staff Sgt. Joe Chamblin Wins Again in Court

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By Debbie Gregory.

Once again, a military court has voided the conviction of former Marine Staff Sgt. Joe Chamblin, who was filmed urinating on Taliban corpses during a 2011 deployment to Afghanistan. The video was first posted by TMZ in January 2012, prompting an international backlash.

Chamblin was sentenced to 30 days’ confinement. The resulting demotion to sergeant ultimately ended his Marine Corps career.

Last November, five years after the initial sentence, the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the case be set aside because of apparent unlawful command influence, which occurs when a senior military officer uses his or her position of authority to influence legal proceedings. The ruling cited the actions of now-retired Gen. James Amos, who was commandant of the Marine Corps from 2010 to 2014, and some of his senior staff members.

Then-Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, who was initially appointed to oversee the sniper prosecutions, testified that Gen. Amos met with him and told him the defendants needed to be “crushed” for their actions.

Waldhauser, now a four-star general overseeing U.S. Africa Command, later told Amos that he had decided against sending any of the Marines to a general court-martial, the military’s most serious form of trial.  Shortly thereafter, Waldhauser was replaced by another general.

According to Waldhauser, Amos said at the time that he had “crossed the line” in his previous conversation and was removing Waldhauser as a remedy.

The Marine Corps failed to notify the accused Marines and their attorneys why Waldhauser was removed.

The appellate judges also considered the decision by the Marine Corps’ top lawyer at that time to remove another attorney on the case who had protested what he considered the “irregular classification of evidence.”

The ruling specifically blamed Amos for complicating the case.

The government has two months to decide whether to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF) to consider the case. For the military, CAAF is the final appellate step before the Supreme Court.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

When the U.S. Coast Guard & Navy Took Down Head of the Cuban Mafia

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By Debbie Gregory.

The USS Thomas S. Gates (CG-51) was a U.S. Navy flight-I Ticonderoga-class cruiser that was named after Thomas S. Gates, Secretary of Defense in the last years of the Eisenhower Administration (1959–1961).

The ship was the only vessel of the class to be named after a person; all of the other cruisers are named after famous battles in American history. But that’s not the Gates’ only claim to fame.

On March 21, 2004, the Gates rendezvoused with cruise ship Celebrity Summit, of Royal Caribbean International Cruise Lines, in the central Caribbean. The cruiser’s embarked USCG Enforcement Detachment boarding team, with the cooperation of the cruise ship’s captain and security force, apprehended Jose Miguel Battle, Jr. the suspected leader of La Corporación, an organized crime outfit aka the “Cuban Mafia.”

La Corporación worked in cahoots with the Italian mob and grew into an enterprise worth more than a $1 billion. La Coporación frequently used intimidation, contract murders, and arson.

In 2004, both the Battles were arrested in a huge federal sweep that targeted their gang. Battle Sr. died in custody three years later. Battle Jr. served more than a decade in federal prison, and was released in November, 2017.

According to “The Corporation: An Epic Story of the Cuban American Underworld” an upcoming book by T.J. English, the Pentagon and the chairman of the Celebrity Cruise Lines arranged a rendezvous point for the two ships to meet. The team had 12 hours to detain Battle Jr. before the cruise ship returned to Costa Rica territorial waters.

At least six members of the Coast Guard law enforcement detachment, clad in tactical gear and face masks, boarded the cruise ship and in just a matter of minutes, Battle Jr. was in custody.

Hollywood has since taken interest in the Battle family’s story. The movie, currently titled “The Corporation” is due to be produced by Paramount and Leonardo DiCaprio, starring Benicio del Toro as Battle Sr.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Are Fitness Apps Compromising our Military?

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By Debbie Gregory.

A fitness app’s heat map could pose risks for security forces around the world by revealing the location of where they are exercising, causing the U.S. Central Command to refine its privacy policies.

“The coalition is in the process of implementing refined guidance on privacy settings for wireless technologies and applications, and such technologies are forbidden at certain coalition sites and during certain activities,” a Central Command spokesperson said.

Strava, a social network for athletes, and allows its users to share their running routes that show up on a global heat map. From the site, it’s possible to identify individuals’ running routes, and around military bases users had posted profile photos of themselves wearing military uniforms.

Although the Strava tool doesn’t offer a real-time view of the battlespace, it demonstrates that U.S. military personnel might be vulnerable because of their unsecured consumer tech.

The outlines of known military bases around the world are clearly visible on the map, especially in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, where few locals own exercise tracking devices.

The situation came to light when 20-year-old Australian student Nathan Ruser noticed that, since most of Strava’s users are Westerners and there aren’t many Strava users in the Middle East, Central Asia and Northern Africa, the Strava workouts that do appear in those regions likely represent the activity of Western troops.

Others began noticing Strava workouts in Iraq, Somalia and Niger that seemed to represent secret military outposts.

In response to the Strava heat map revelations, a Pentagon spokesperson said that it was considering additional security training for service members.

But Strava has a good fix for U.S. military personnel: just opt out of sharing data with the company.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Due to Federal Law, VA Won’t Research Effects of Marijuana on PTSD and Chronic Pain

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By Debbie Gregory.

Due to federal restrictions, the Department of Veterans Affairs will not conduct research on the effectiveness of medical cannabis on post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic pain.

Although doing so would not be illegal, there would be a lot of red tape to cut through.

The announcement is a huge setback for those who have advocated for medical cannabis to be a potential alternative to narcotic and opioid-heavy treatment plans that many VA patients are enrolled in.

There is a plethora of scientific research establishing medical marijuana as a safe and effective alternative to pharmaceuticals. Perhaps that has contributed to the majority of Americans supporting the legalization of cannabis for medicinal purposes.

Included in that majority are U.S. military veterans and veteran caregivers. According to a recent American Legion poll,  82% of respondents supported the legalization of medical cannabis, and 92% supported expanding research into the medical benefits of the drug.

Additionally, a number of veterans organizations have been pushing for research into the drug as a possible treatment option for many of the ailments that affect veterans, most notably PTSD and chronic pain.

Twenty-nine states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam have legalized medical cannabis programs

The news that the VA will not conduct research into medical cannabis comes just after the department broadened its guidelines for patients to openly discuss their cannabis use with VA physicians. While it is unlawful for VA doctors to prescribe marijuana as it is a Schedule 1 substance, in states where medical marijuana is legal, VA providers are allowed to discuss marijuana use with veterans and adjust treatment plans as necessary.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Marine Veteran Works to Rebuild His Life

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By Debbie Gregory.

Following his honorable discharge from the military, a former Marine was convicted of a crime and deported to Mexico.

At 19 years old, Marco Antonio Chavez enlisted in the Marine Corps and served for four years. The son of Mexican immigrants, he grew up in the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant.

In 1998, Chavez was convicted of animal cruelty and served 10 months in prison. An immigration judge considered his conviction an aggravated felony, which led to his deportation in 2002.

Chavez is believed to be one of hundreds of U.S. veterans who have served in the armed forces but were later deported after getting into trouble. He had the misconception that because of his service, he was automatically a U.S. citizen.

He moved with his family to Mexico, and his wife, who does not speak Spanish, commuted across the border for work. Eventually his family moved to Iowa, leaving him in Mexico.

Chavez was able to return home to the United States after California Gov. Jerry Brown pardoned him and an immigration judge ruled to restore his U.S. residency.

Chavez was invited by Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-CA) to be her guest at the 2018 State of the Union address.

Politics aside, Chavez has a clear message: “Veterans should not be getting deported. Anybody picking up a firearm to defend this country shouldn’t be deported.”

It’s been a tough road back for Chavez as he works to rebuild his life. He and his wife have divorced, and he is working to re-establish his relationship with his children.

“It’s like coming out of high school with nothing,” he said. “I’ve got to start over. That’s kind of what it’s like. I am getting another start, but a late one.”

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.


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