in the last twelve years two point six million americans have served in iraq and afghanistan nearly seven thousand of them made the ultimate sacrifice many others are coming home profoundly changed by combat nearly fifty thousand have serious physical injuries some are suffering from psychological injuries including post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury some are unwilling to admit even to themselves the damage that they have suffered a few fall into self destructive behavior and come into contact with the criminal justice system minnesota is leading the way in dealing with these factors the state passed a law encouraging treatment for incarceration it identifies a trends in the courts it seeks to ensure that their service to our nation is taken into account  the intense stress and mental and emotional toll that condit can have the washington county attorney's office is one of the first in the state to implement this new approach other counties from we took the best of several programs that we found in the country and tried to take those pieces and put them here and do it at no cost to the county taxpayers and we managed to do it at when it started we kind of cobble it together but i think it's once brant devoted some time to it i think he's brought it to a level that other counties want to emulate night i thank him for that we've had people come from all state county from carver county from s county stearns county you know we had a lot of inquiries about how we were working our program and what peta done here in washington county in this is a great forum for us to share what we've learned with these folks over the state  and we've been meeting and we've identified a need and now we're trying to figure out what to do and so our city one of our city attorneys or any courtney was at a continuing ed training and she heard the washington county attorney's office do their presentation and what they're doing here with their victim their veterans program and so she shared that with our group i then contacted the washington county attorney's office and they were actually going to come up here and then it turned out that there was a lot of interest in this area so they hosted this event here today kind of an open house and a forum on what they're doing and so it's basically kind of an educational session for us to figure out what they're doing what will work for us and what we're going to do we actually have a meeting tomorrow after this it's our monthly meeting and so it was really good timing so we're going to meet tomorrow and kind of top you know talk about what we learned here today and where we want to go from here this program is i think very critical in washington county and i'm happy to support it i'm very proud of the efforts of our county attorney pete or put for taking this on our veterans are very special people watching county is proud to be a yellow ribbon county and the city of woodbury is also proud to be a yellow ribbon city and we have many cities throughout the county that are yellow ribbon status so we do want to give additional support to veterans if they do have issues with law enforcement again this is not necessarily to just let them off the hook so to speak it is to recognize the additional challenges that being in combat and serving our country can place on an individual so we do recognize that well particularly given the circumstances that they have lived and fought under overseas some of them two and three and four or more times having been deployed so i  think we would be short sighted and damn insensitive not to recognize that you know a steady diet of that environment takes a toll on the human psyche everybody has a breaking point and for us to think that those folks are indestructible is irresponsible in my opinion and soul in full support i was just worried nationwide initiative and hopefully someday it will be this very important program which is because of the problem that kids have nowadays coming back i know when i was in vietnam i spent off fourteen and a half months but once i was done i was done in fact the reason i spent fourteen and a half months is extending my tour for two months because they had a program if if you came back stateside and had only  months left in the military that they give you an early out so i extend my service over there you know i was in the infantry and you know when ended up in the bush for those extra two and a half months it was still worth my while now you know these kids go over there and they go over there for one two or two tour tours i know guys who's been over there for three tours and  feel and you know you're always in danger you don't know of somebody's going to shoot you or blow you up or there's nothing to do or yeah  definitely plays on your mind without a program the county is stuck with people going through the criminal justice system having to pay for treatment mental health therapy costs and all that as part of the criminal sentence and now with the veterans program the v picks up all those costs which can be significant and so it not only saves the county money but it gets the help that these veterans need so it's a win for everybody in my view washington county attorney pete or put he has put his heart and soul into this effort and again our veterans are treasured individuals we want to make sure that they have the support that they need because this also extends to their families we don't just look at the short term gains we are looking long term and so this can affect many generations to come if you have a veteran coming back from active duty deployment and they have post traumatic stress disorder and if they again i have a legal problems then again if they're incarcerated for long periods of time obviously you're going to be family members and children can also have issues then as well so we certainly want to honor their service to our country and also though look practically at at this population of individuals and see where we can mentor and advise them and try to do additional program work with them i realize too that actually the veterans that go through this program this is not an easier path for them to pursue so actually it's additional effort it's i want to commend anyone who did that who does commit to this it's really sad here as a district court judge i see a lot of people coming through the criminal system but even in the family courts and i just don't think we realize the impact that the wars and the service that our our men and women have have done and what that's how that's impacted them and in other ways and so i think just an awareness and i know there's some you know some criticism about maybe people shouldn't make a special court just for them and i think that we need to recognize as you know the county attorney as has indicated that if we break it we should fix it and you know these men and women have served our country and helped us and i think the least we can do is try and come up with a creative way to help them i don't think it's a free ticket by any means there's things they have to do to get through this process and hopefully that will help them become more productive citizens and help them deal with whatever issues they face as a result of serving this is one way that you know i'm able to think people for their service that has served in i think it's you know i think it bears reminding that we say all the time thank you for your service and you have to do something about that so this is just a great opportunity for me to do what i can to thank those men and women who serve for the country i think the first special record i was aware of is in the late eighty's they came up with a drug court and since then drug courts have been very effective in dealing with people that are chemically painted i think the figures show some real dramatic turnaround in people's lives which prior to that was simply thrown in jail and does nothing to resolve it and so the drug court model was the one a lot of folks started working off of and this is just an offshoot of that to what they cost specially court but it's a court designed to deal with a certain population in our case returning combat vets in drug court drug addicts in mental health court those with persistent mental illness those can be terribly effective  that's why i'm glad we're part of it i think it's absolutely imperative that we recognize what our veterans have been through and that we make some accommodations some people don't want to hear that some senate's think that we're providing a a free pass or a quote unquote get out of jail free card but the way i look at it is that the right consideration is being given to the right person at the right time for the right reasons these people have made tremendous sacrifices so that we may all sleep easy and under the blanket of freedom every night and so if anybody deserves any special considerations  it would be that demographic not to mention that i too am a veteran so i have a special place in my heart for anybody who who has served their country we get together the group and discuss  understand what went through well yes i do understand what you went through you know i have been in combat been wounded been shot at and blown up and i've had to shoot people and kill people get through when i came back it was quite the ride i think one of the main things about the veterans court another problem solving courts is that it does increase public safety it increases public safety by getting those people who need services the services that are out there they're available for them and recognizing it so our hope is that we're increasing public safety by having a veterans court and connecting these men and women with the services that get them the help they need actually in stearn county we have a drug court i'm not involved in the drug court i when i was doing the juveniles we have a family dependency treatment court which is like a drug court for families and then we also have a felony level domestic violence court and i'm one of the lead judges in that specialty court so now we're looking at this i don't know if we're going to do another exactly specialty court with veterans but maybe kind of a veterans protocol and see you know a way to deal with these folks kind of like an intensive supervision program and probation or something and family dependency treatment court because i have some direct involvement with that those are for families whose children are either placed out of the home or are perhaps facing a home placement and if the parents have a chemical issue so we intensely supervise these family these people and they come back every day i was kind of equate it with wait what the wait was clinics are our weight watchers program you know you're it's accountability if you come in every week and we make these folks come in every week and tell us how they've been doing and you kind of give them just words of encouragement to get him through the next week and it's really the family dependency treatment court was designed to keep these families together ultimately helping the families and else ultimately saving taxpayers money so we don't have to pay for those on a home placements so that's the goal for that one and i think in the drug court now i'm not involved in the drug court but i think it's a model a little bit after or actually the family dependency treatment court is modeled after the drug court same kind of thing we have people who are involved and have chemical issues and sometimes they get stays of adjudication which means that as long as they successfully complete the program maybe their charges will be reduced or even dismissed at the end you kind of depends on how successful they are and again the goal here is to rehabilitate those those people and get them out back into society i mean we can certainly lock them up costing the taxpayers lots of money to  and pay for their you know their medical needs or whatever and we can lock them up for a period of time but if they've not learned anything they'll just go back to what they were doing the same way with our domestic violence court that's a little bit different that's more of an accountability court and we are we've gotten some grant funding and we also have a special attorney in the legal aid system who is designed to work specifically with the victims of our domestic violence court and so they are now armed with their own attorney and and that's a whole different role we never even thought of or tell we did our training so that's really empowering for those women victims and then we bring the men in we have three different phases and you know they slowly get through the process and they come in every week they're in phase one phase two it's every other week phase three is just once a month and then they transition to regular probation and hopefully they moved on and never see him again in the criminal court system that's the goal so it's not only punish people and hold them to account for their criminal behavior but it's also to prevent crime and future crime and when you see people coming in the door if there is a way you can address their issues so that you never see him again that's worth exploring the punishment pieces frankly i'm amazed at some of the people who volunteer to come into our  veterans program because what we're going to ask of them is far more honor us than if they just went into court and took their lumps and that's always impressed me so it's certainly not a get out of jail free card that we're putting on the table not at all it's you know important and and you know i had the combat experience or you know i don't you know i'm in my past criminal attorney when i first started out of work for the district attorney's office in one of the counties in new mexico and then with the united states attorney's office for the district of new mexico  some criminal experience not for a long time but you know the program not about criminal or civil brand handled more for the criminal aspects of it but you know just  reviewing reviewing the files and the individuals involved i think that's one of the more important aspects of our program is  not the criminal aspect that's the easy part we do work very closely with the veterans administration we don't have a formal program but the reason we were here today was to take a good look at this program to see which way we should go in terms of you know how big or where do we where we start i get a representative from the bench from the city attorney's office from community corrections from the police department and they have been actively working together kind of doing a kind of an informal and i don't want to call it a veterans court but an informal protocol so that when we recognize  veterans in crisis we pulled all the right resources together to help get them the services they need our mission as prosecutors do the right thing the right person and this gives us one more tool to do the right thing and that's why i'm so excited about it and plus when you look at the data behind it these veterans courts and very low reset of this trade in other words people who successfully complete these kinds of programs we don't see him again they're back with their families their back rays and their kids and that's a good thing i think when someone comes in the criminal justice system the courts are obligated to send them to treatment either chemical dependency or mental health they're both that treatments expenses and here we have partnered with the veterans administration they pick those costs up instead of directly from the county budget so i think it's good for the county taxpayers i think it does save money and the fact that you can stop someone from coming through the court system again and again and again saves significant money hard to measure but every time someone comes to court it costs a great deal of time and money to deal with them what if we can get them to stop that and start behaving and address the issues that drove them to that would be a great thing and that's what is driving our mission here you know our mentor program which is done by john larson a volunteer mentor coordinator and church  irish civil division chief are based on working with fallen tears in the community who volunteer who are have served with the military and are willing to come back and give back by  being a mentor to some of the individuals who are on our veterans program so it's an opportunity to serve in a volunteer capacity with the program we've just had a great interest from those folks out in the community who want to help support the program see the program grow and see that actions who need help get the help they need and so they're supportive and it's been a really good challenging dynamic mentoring program that we've developed and then additionally partner up with the probation agents from community corrections law enforcement officers we get referrals directly from them on the street it's a real team effort veteran service officer it's this veterans program is made up of a number of individuals two judges have volunteered their time it's just people who want to make the commitment above and beyond what they normally do every day that's what we're asking for if you can have some extra time that you want to put into this program that's it so we we haven't asked anybody for any money or any other resources other than those who want to volunteer to work on it and i think it's been a good success given that we do it on the cheese and i think also any additional mentors that we can find in the community we need to make sure that this is advertised and well known that we are looking for people to help us with this program to continue to make it a success i mean you can relate to him plus they can buffalo you you know i can give you a story can't say the old play you don't understand what i went through  same way you know he he was over there in combat and steve was over there in iraq they can't before us i think the key to our program is that you know we started it small and it's grown and it's grown with by making partnerships with a lot of different commands us faith in season partnering up and soley we've been making it bigger and bigger and i think that's a really good successes a couple of years ago a lot of folks  washington county didn't need a veterans court we didn't have the people coming through that there wouldn't be enough veterans to be worth our time to make and i think we proved them quite wrong within the last six months i've been here every single   it's not really a vets corps it's a diversion program so we can we tailored ours to be preprogramed so if the individual goes through the program you won't have a  record that's that's an important aspect of our program that's what we tried to tailor our program to because you know it's the record of me could be a misdemeanor and it's  on your record the person tries to get a job or something like that you know he's got that on the record cold we try to stay we like the fact that it's a pre plea type program and i'm very happy with the success that they've had with the program so far and i think it's very interesting and i think it's admirable that so many other counties have sent representatives here to the government center in stillwater to learn from our program so that they can roll it out and implement it in their own counties i'm really impressed with what washington county has done and the fact that they took time out of their busy schedule to present this open house and forum i think that's been well attended a lot of good information has been provided so thanks to them with iraq winding down and hopefully afghanistan winding down we're going to see thousands of veterans in our county much less the whole state and of those thousand we're going to see a few that are going to get into trouble with the criminal justice system and mostly it's because they act out their post traumatic stress or something related to that or depression or chemical dependency issues so we want to be there and do the right thing to the the veteran help society because in all things that bothered me before i went in are mean wouldn't bother me before i went and certainly did bother me when i got out i mean change of mindset and you know if you can keep them out of jail they give the individual a chance to decompress so to speak you know he could commit one crime a bar fight