AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine lawmakers are celebrating approval of a law that creates a special treatment court for veterans suffering from drug addiction and mental illness.
The bill sponsored by Rep. Maeghan Maloney was presented in memory of Justin Crowley-Smilek of Farmington, an ex-Army Ranger who returned from Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder and was shot and killed after he threatened a Farmington police officer with a knife.
Crowley-Smilek was in and out of court several times, including the day before his death, when he was ordered to seek psychological help.
The new measure, signed into law by Gov. Paul LePage on Wednesday, requires courts to screen veterans who enter the system and to coordinate with administrators at the Togus Veterans Affairs office to ensure veterans know about treatment programs.
Special treatment as the article says. I thank our veterans for all they have done but I can not agree with any law that gives someone special treatment. What about other front line people whom become addicted; i.e. police, fire personnel, medical personal, etc. The law must be equal for all to have validity otherwise it is everyone for themselves!
Is it the begining of a two tired legal system ?
Are some more American than others ?
I know who thinks so, and this is their doing.
I agree, and I do thank our Veterans for all they have done, I know several, but look, this is the state playing a reverse discrimination role, if you got mental problems you still go to court, unless, you are a veteran, then by all means Togus gets notified and a screening process begins, and as much as I would hate to say it, I am sure the results would not be the same if a different agency that would screen a non veteran. I am going to say it, equal treatment, this really serves as no excuse and a waste of time. It is a shame now that other front line people are kicked to the curb, apparently we thank a Vet, but not a cop who might have had to shoot someone to protect, after all it is in their motto.
I respectfully disagree with your opinion because of your inference to the “frontline people” enduring the same stress’ as life in a combat zone is. If you think finding yourself in a situation where you literally soil yourself on a regular basis is quickly gotten over by just heading back home and talking 15 minutes with a mental counselor then you would be very wrong. Because our vets endure “special” life events, they deserve special handling in courts designed to handle their very unique situations. If we didn’t send our vets into the hell of war then I’d say no special treatment also. But we do and that’s exactly why They need their own court.
As if our courts didn’t have enough to do already! Hopefully the Governor is going give more money to the courts to hire the additional staff they will need to deal with this new law.
You mean you hope Mr. LePage is going to give “Something” to assist this cause. At the moment his only plan is to allow the Federal government to pay for the entire program. It’s all a win-win-win for Paul. He gets good press for supporting something that’s clearly close to most folk’s hearts. It doesn’t cost him a dime. If it ends up flopping, he’ll come out shouting about wasteful spending by the Feds. If it helps, he’ll say “Oh yah, I supported that!” Leaving all of those who know the truth about Paul LePage to simply shake their heads and wonder, “Does anyone believe anything this guy says he stands for?”
Read the bill, then you won’t be making ignorant remarks. You’ll find it addresses your inflammatory remarks.
http://www.mainelegislature.org/LawMakerWeb/summary.asp?ID=28004342
Please tell us exactly why Dan Troop’s remarks are ignorant and inflammatory and, after you’ve done that, quote the language in the bill that addresses the remarks that you say are inflammatory. I’ve read the text of the new law – An Act To Establish Veterans Treatment Courts – and don’t see it. I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that I’d like you to point it out so I can understand your argument.
Surething. Dan inferred the Gov. would “Hopefully” give money to the courts. If he’d read the article REAL SLOW he might have glimpsed the part about asking for Fed dollars (and I’m only assuming defense funds since that’s where most Vet monies come out of). Now as you requested here is what I was referring to:
3. Federal funding; contracts; cooperative agreements. The State Court Administrator, district attorneys, the Department of the Attorney General, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Defense, Veterans and Emergency Management, the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Health and Human Services and private service agencies may seek federal funding as it becomes available for the establishment, maintenance and expansion of veterans treatment courts and for the provision by participating agencies of treatment to participating veterans. The Administrative Office of the Courts may enter into contracts and cooperative agreements with the departments and agencies to provide treatment and other social services to participants. The departments and agencies shall collaborate and, to the extent possible, provide financial and other assistance to the judicial branch in order to establish and maintain veterans treatment courts. I hope this helps you understand where I was coming from.
OK, the funding for Veterans Courts “as it becomes available” may come from federal tax dollars.
It’s just that no matter what the Gov does, the trolls salivate at the chance to bash him. Hope I satisfied your comment
Sorry but what happened the Veitnam Vets and treatment for them??? This is bull crap and a waste of money….
I know what you mean. But veterans are all the rage now, the new chic, “thank you for your service”, PTSD, and all that.
Your freedom of speech to spew bottomless ignorance and disrespect is protected by the very Vets you now attempt to marginilize. Fortunately, you have no power over the willingly, deeply respectful Mainers who read your words for exactly what they are.
Be proud of yourself!
My, my, full of yourself aren’t you? My guess is that you’ve either never served or that you’re one of those vets who makes his whole life around his military service and then never really accomplishes anything. Anyway, just to set the record straight, I’m a vet myself, Vietnam ’67, three years in the Marine Corps, and four years in the Navy. I just don’t believe in special treatment for veterans in our justice system.
Respectfully, others disagree with you.
Some say they don’t believe in special treatment, so I guess we should paint over all those handicap parking spaces. As far as I have seen, cops and firefighters don’t face IED’s everyday, Don’t get shot at or face rocket attacks everyday (Potential is a distent second to it really happening). The people coming home today need the extra help that we never got when I and those who served with me received.
Handicap parking spaces have nothing to do with special treatment in the legal system. The American justice system is based on equality. That is why Lady Justice holds a scale and is blind folded. Not receiving proper VA treatment does not justify being given special legal treatment. That said, thank you for your service to our country.
You are welcome, I would gladly do it over if I were able.
I want you to know that it is very unusual to be able to have a civil disagreement on these blogs and that I appreciate our ability to politely disagree. Have a great evening.
Why not make the all the best parking veteran’s only ?
Grow up.
Grow up? Not the most intellegent reply I’ve ever read. I don’t consider Handicap parking the “Best” parking space considering what’s required in order to get that privledge.
Let’s not stop there. Outlaw Special Olympics, repeal the ADA, ban the NAACP, condemn the ACLU, abolish all special courts, there, equal treatment for all since we are now a third world nation.
I am so glad that this is now a reality. The article should have read “appropriate treatment” not “special treatment”. Thanks to Justin’s family for pursuing this. I hope that this might avoid another tragedy.
Veterans should get EVERYTHING and ANYTHING they need without question. Remember without them we are at the mercy of the world.
NO! Unless they were drafted they took a job just like any other working person. They knew the risks and the benefits when they joined. All men are created equal and should not expect entitlement. I would rather be at the mercy of the world than be under military rule. On and by the way you should not have false idols!
We are all the mercy of the world anyway.
Special treatment for soldiers sounds like a way to be more at
the military’s mercy.
I hope you avoid disgruntled Staff Sargents.
Agreed, but lets get them everything and anything before they enter the court system. Remember it was a US citizen he beat half to death with a flashlight and a US citizen he tried to kill with a knife.
My feeling was that if this bill had been in place, Justin may have been remanded to a VA facility for some months, or even a year, and not have just been released without good treatment. Perhaps he may have been remanded even before the incident with the flashlight. I’m just hoping that this bill can coerce of force treatment on veterans, just as we were coerced to do out duty in a war zone, and that may help protect the public and the veteran. I would prefer to hear about a veteran living at a VA hospital facility for a year or two, in a very kind setting with other veterans, than out committing crimes or being shot by police.
There was a VA facility near Roanoke, Virginia, that used to house several hundred vets with psychiatric problems resulting from their service, who were too ill to live in the community. A friend on CNN iReport told me that these veterans from the past were outsourced to a private agency during the past ten years.
The veterans in Los Angeles are suing the VA because they have leased out the land for golf courses and other commercial enterprises to make more money for the VA. What is the purpose of a VA facility? To become a profit making corporation, or to serve veterans?
The VAMC at Togus was the very first VA hospital in the land. I think about 20,000 homeless vets used to live there at the turn of the 19th/20th century. I say homeless, because people with disabilities were usually cared for at home with their families at that time. There’s a lot this government can do, particularly for it’s war veterans, that it doesn’t have the will to do, and that’s only my opinion. I realize others have other points of view.
sorry but this guy was a low life criminal. the liberal media has turned the villain into the victim . do you people even have any empathy for the guy he brutally attacked in Farmington. Military service shouldn’t become an excuse to be a jerk the rest of your life and have a state sponsored excuse to victimize innocent people..
I’m not familiar enough with that case to agree with you ,
but you sure made me wonder if a drug running fireman should have special
treatment in court, too ?
Oh yeah, he was vet, too, so would indeed have gotten the special court ,
if he were arrested before being murdered.
It’s important to remember that the accused murdered of the fireman did NOT report the reason for the death threats. If the accused had merely confessed to whatever drug addiction or debts he had, the police could have easily arrested the veteran from Florida, confiscated his cash, guns and drugs, and the accused would not have been put in the position of being accused of murder.
Granted, the accused local Maine man might have had to go to trial or treatment for his own drug problem, but the incident would have ended there, with the veteran from Florida being arrested, and the whole incident would have been prevented.
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, REPORT IT. How many Maine people knew about this drug connection but didn’t report it at all. I would imagine that some of the accused friends (at least one or two) might have known about the drug connection, and certainly the girlfriend of the murdered veteran from Florida knew about it. So why was everyone silent before the murder took place, and how much of a different outcome it would be if we only looked out for our own BEFORE THE TROUBLE HAPPENS.
I remember one tine in Nam, several guys in my platoon were wasted on drugs or alcohol. They were complaining about the Major officer in command of our unit. When one man started to talk about shooting him, the others encouraged him, but when he actually grabbed his M-14 rifle to assassinate our Commanding Officer, they wrestled it away from him (took a good minute….LOL), and cooled things down.
SOMETIMES, IT’S REALLY IMPORTANT TO INTERVENE BEFORE SERIOUS CRIMES OCCUR.
I think this bill is about warding off serious crime, rather than giving someone a get out of jail free card. Thanks for allowing me to share. Best wishes. Roger.
I think jerk is a very kind word to describe what Justin did. Your comment is spot on.
Dear Sleepy… Many of the things soldiers do in a war zone is what you would consider being a jerk in civilian life. We try to kill people, or take over their land or country. In the process, being lonely, we often visit whores, and because the country is in disarray due to the war, many women who are displaced from the families become prostitutes. Then, there is the drugs and alcohol military people use to deal with all of the enormous stress of being forced by military law to be away from their family and community in a hostile, overseas war zone.
Granted, many veterans will come home to commit crimes, and many people who never were veterans commit crimes. I don’t think this bill gives veterans a special break, but I think it tries to give judges a chance to REMAND veterans to in-patient treatment programs, BEFORE THEY COMMIT SERIOUS CRIMES.
There is are many chapters of the Vietnam Veterans of America in various prisons across our country, usually in the LIFER or life sentence area. Does out society want to reach out to stop those veterans BEFORE they commit crimes, or is it just interested in forgetting the war, and now they can save money because they don’t have to buy those cheap, SUPPORT THE TROOPS magnets, made in China, at Wal-Mart? The price tag of a war is borne by veterans, but the public wants it, “on the cheap,” with the President encouraging others to spend and enjoy the good economy, and let’s get a tax break to boot. That’s the way I see it. Roger.
All I can say is “You should have been there.”
In the USA……no person is above the law.
Hey Obama – bring ALL the troops home now so we won’t need these courts.
Does this sound familiar?: “We hold these truths to be self-evident,All men are created equal”
— United States Declaration of Independence
This ‘special Law’ makes some people more equal than others.
Ok lets end all special courts, drug courts, family courts, juvenile courts, small claims court, appellate court. Lets adopt Sharia law instead. Get some education before you try to sound American.
Yeah, and the guy that helped pen those words, Thomas Jefferson, got rich off of his slaves, had sex with his slaves, and turned his African American children in to slaves. And then, he helped in the long process of killing off most of the Native Americans in America, and so that phrase, ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, takes on a new meaning.
Emphasis on the word CREATED, What they do after they are created is the kind of person they become.
I doubt this law gives war veterans special treatment, any more than the services I get at the Veterans Administration are called special treatment.I did get a draft notice, but those who enlisted for a more professional wages and better treatment than us draftees got (they actually pay civilians to serve you your food…LOL..what happened to the beloved, Kitchen Police…LOL) are not allowed to quit, as civilians are. You can’t quit, walk off the job, or stage a strike, without being put in the brig or the stockade, often for many years. You end up with a criminal record if you quit, whereas not so in civilian life.If you are a war veteran, you get sent overseas to some war zone the President wants you to fight in, and you risk your life, and can’t come home at night to see your kids. Often, you get sent back, over and over again, while your friends back home party, improve their job skills, play with their children, and enjoy their freedoms. I put my name in and asked to serve a second tour in Vietnam, but I have friends who were Navy SeaBees who were sent over several times as ordered, due to lack of personnel. And anybody who thinks engineers have it easy should listen to a veteran I met at the VA hospital in 1981, who described how he went to a Vietnamese hut to tear lumber off of it that had been stolen the night before, only to have a young Vietnamese boy open the door and stick an AK 47 in his belly. His life was over, as far as he thought. And, no, he didn’t go to Vietnam to harass civilians, or recover lumber they had stolen, but he was acting under the orders of one of our Presidents and the government he administers.I don’t see much different in the war policies of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Millhouse Nixon, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama, so this is not a political argument, but merely noting that no matter which party is in power, these same types of events occur.Then, because everyone wants to, “spend,” as George W. Bush advised us Americans to do, the civilians are NOT….nada…..rationing gasoline, food, or consumer products, but merely have arguments on social media about the war and how they want lower taxes. As has pointed out, when I was in Vietnam, David Petraus was in college at West Point, Bill Clinton was telling us he was a conscientious objector overseas at a college in England, and Richard Cheney was getting one of his five draft deferments. Newt Gingrich was not in the military, as far as I know. As you can see by watching, WOODSTOCK, THE MOVIE, the 1960s party went on unabated, and there was no need for the President to reassure Americans that they could spend, because in the 1960s, people were already doing that.THIS IS THE B.S. OF THE AMERICA I GREW UP IN. While the government drafted me to try to kill people I did NOT hate, my peer group was partying at Woodstock, making fun of us and the government that coerced us to do what nobody else wanted to do. And it’s 2012, and NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED, as far as I can see. I see a bunch of pampered civilians, in this case, about 98.5% of the population, who got a tax break and a great economy, while the other 1.5% of Americans paid a price overseas in our President’s war zone.This young Maine man you see in the picture above fell 30 feet from a helicopter in a war zone, along with the other stresses he was ordered to undertake. I don’t know how a special veterans court would have treated him, but I assume it would have mandated inpatient psychiatric treatment for his own safety, and closely monitored him, finding a place where he could be as well as he could be, and safe for society. He would have been a lot better off in a veterans facility than trying to fit in with and pretend to, “readjust,” as if these terrible events had never happened to him.I wanted to see someone in authority dead when I left Vietnam, in the unit I called the 101st Heroin/Race Riot/Fragging Division, in 1972, but am fairly peaceful as a person. I am also VERY ANGRY, and have to isolate myself from others to protect them and me. I am not able to deal with my emotions regarding other human beings for a long period of time (a job, an intimate family relationship, etc..). I do not own a gun, but always have some weapon on me, or some plan of escape, should I be attacked, knowing that no matter what your plan is, it will fail. Look at Pearl Harbor and the World Trade Center. There is no perfect plan to stay safe in this hostile world, yet we all have fantasies of doing so. Sometimes I think the best weapons you can have are good cell phone and a Flip camera….LOL Keeps ya’ honest. I appreciate the good care I’ve gotten from the VA the past 13 years, but when I moved to Maine, as a 100% disabled veteran due to PTSD, I found the VA Mental Health program was understaffed. Even though things have improved quite a bit the past few years, I still hear these same complaints.Another Maine veteran who was severely wounded on the deck of the aircraft carrier when John McCain’s plane malfunctioned and sent off a missile while sitting on deck (circa 1967, I think), has found out that the VA will no longer pay for his outpatient psychiatrist to treat him, even though he is 100% disabled due to organ loss from the fire/explosion and PTSD, and is an officer in the Disabled American Veterans in Maine. If a Commander of the DAV can’t get his psychiatrist paid for by the VA, and he was physically wounded on an aircraft carrier off the coast of Vietnam, and is 100% disabled, then what chance do you think the average veterans has of getting good, mental health treatment.Therefore, to all of you pampered, crybaby civilians, I say, you are wrong, and war veterans really deserve this special court. And I have to laugh at myself, because many years ago, the WW II veterans used to call us Vietnam Veterans by that same, exact word; crybabies. LOL WW II veterans served in a united home front, where civilians rationed everything, and when they came home from the war, the women (NOT SUBJECT TO THE DRAFT LAWS) quit their jobs to start having babies, and the economy boomed for another 30 years. However, as I have learned, there was no Phil Donahue or Oprah, or social media, where those WW II vets could vent their feelings, as I am doing here, and there were many hidden problems swept under the rug during those years, as you’ll notice you never saw John Wayne star in a movie where he got treatment from the VA.You all have a nice day. It has been therapeutic for me to ventilate my feelings here. I’m a very angry citizen/veteran. PS You don’t have to agree with me, and if there are any of those WW II vets still out there, you have my permission to call me a crybaby. Because I feel like crying right now, but laugh it off or react with anger, instead. Serving in a combat zone is a painful place to be, something that really never leaves you alone. Roger Stavitz in Danforth, Maine.
Thank you Roger. Well said.
More than likely this “special treatment”, so many of you are quipping about, isn’t really anything special. I’m willing to assume it will be very similar to drug court or family court. If a veteran is arrested and prosecuted for a crime they will be mandated to seek counseling and treatment (drug/alcohol/PTSD) in lieu of spending time in jail (obviously dependent of the crime committed). I believe the premise is that; if Mr. Smilek had counseling and treatment after his first arrest, then maybe his other arrests and/or death could have been prevented.
By no means does this law make veterans exempt from prosecution, conviction or punishment. Lets face it our jails are already overfilled and costing tax payers a lot of money. Having these young men go to alcohol counseling and be on probation is a win-win for everyone.
You’re 100% correct Chris. For those who insist on being ignorant on this issue here ya go…
1. Definition. As used in this section, unless the context otherwise indicates, “veterans treatment court” means a specialized sentencing docket in select criminal cases in which the defendant is a veteran or member of the United States Armed Forces to enable veterans agencies and social services agencies to provide treatment for that defendant. The court does not provide treatment but contracts or collaborates with experienced and expert treatment providers.
I like the idea, now we have to open it up to all of us, not just veterans. People with drug and mental issues do not belong in prison for the most part. We need another step in the system.
I still want to know why this young man was not tased, and instead was ventilated by the Farmington cop. Will we ever hear how this was handled? Did the cop get off the hook and was it deemed a good kill? I have my own feelings on young cops and their ability to exercise the proper judgement when it all hits the fan……
What an absolute crock. Don’t want the U.S. Government to totally mess you up by having you do psychotic things to people around the world? THEN DON’T ENLIST!!!
As usual you’re crocked!
next: special courts for homosexuals and other perverts.