Naval Postgraduate School Archives

clarke

Former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke has found himself in the middle of more than one controversy. One of the most divisive political figures in Wisconsin politics, Clarke recently resigned.

In addition to the fact that he may lose his master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School, the 61-year-old Clarke reportedly sent a famous F-bomb laden sentence to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Daniel Bice.

Bice emailed Mr. Clarke a series of questions asking how he felt about losing his round-the-clock, taxpayer-funded security detail, which reportedly cost more than $220,000 since January.

Clark’s emailed response to Bice was “F— you and the horse you rode in on. I’m David Clarke and I approve this message.”

CNN reported that Clarke’s master’s thesis, entitled “Making U.S. Security and Privacy Rights Compatible,” was found to have substantial portions of the submission that were plagiarized. In response to the report, Clarke called journalist Andrew Kaczynski, who broke the story, a “sleaze bag” and denied that he had plagiarized.

But on 47 occasions throughout the paper, Clarke credited sources with a footnote, but did not indicate with quotation marks that he is taking the words verbatim.

Per Naval Postgraduate School guidelines, “If a passage is quoted verbatim, it must be set off with quotation marks (or, if it is a longer passage, presented as indented text), and followed by a properly formulated citation.”

In Clarke’s book, Cop Under Fire: Moving Beyond Hashtags of Race, Crime and Politics for a Better America, he advocates for rounding up Americans who are perceived as threats, suspending their rights, holding them indefinitely, and trying their cases with military tribunals rather than in the court system.

Clarke issued a “retirement statement” to local media hours after his resignation was announced. “After almost forty years serving the great people of Milwaukee County, I have chosen to retire to pursue other opportunities,” Clarke wrote.

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.

By Debbie Gregory.

A new study may open doors to more effective treatment for veterans as they move from active-duty to life after the military, especially in light of the fact that Veterans may be more likely to commit suicide during the first year after they leave the military than after more time passes.

A new study at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, lead by study author Yu-Chu Shen, revealed that compared to those on active duty in the military, veterans out of the service for up to three months were 2.5 times more likely to commit suicide. Veterans who had left the service from three to 12 months earlier had almost triple the suicide odds of current members of the military.

The study didn’t examine why the suicide risk was lower during deployment than afterwards. But it’s possible service members benefited from the positive psychological impact of belonging to a group with a shared mission during deployment, Shen said, then had more time to contemplate any negative feelings about their experiences when they were no longer on the mission.

“Family members and community can be proactive to reach out to veterans if they recently experienced stressful events – not just limited to the stressful events we can capture in the data such as divorce or separation from the military,” said Shen.

Overall, there were 4,492 suicides in the study population.

In the Lancet Psychiatry, researchers reported that the strongest predictors of suicide were current or past diagnoses of self-inflicted injuries, major depression, bipolar disorder, substance abuse or other mental health conditions.

Compared with service members who were never deployed, those who were currently deployed had a 50 percent lower risk of suicide, the study found.

However, in the first quarter following deployment, service members had a 50 percent higher risk of suicide than their peers who didn’t experience deployment.

The study doctors and researchers hope to lower the biggest barrier to veterans receiving the care they need when they get home, and that’s the stigma surrounding asking for help in the first place.

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.