This Community Wants Veterans as Residents, So It’s Providing the Down Payment on New Houses

In Braidwood, a town of about 5,000 people in northern Illinois, sit vacant dilapidated homes and empty lots full of weeds growing taller than fire hydrants. The roads are so rough and pothole-riddled that the post office threatened to cut off delivery.
Back in 2009, a developer started construction on a new housing subdivision — the Townes of Braidwood — but filed for bankruptcy before its completion. This left those who’d already purchased houses in a major jam, so the homeowners appealed to their town for help.
This year, the village of Braidwood finally purchased the vacant lots in the subdivision and came up with a plan to fill them and stabilize the neighborhood. And it’s a good one: They’re offering to supply the down payment on a home for any veteran or first responder that wants one.
Through the Illinois program Welcome Home Heroes, Braidwood will give veterans who want to buy a lot in the subdivision a $10,000 state-funded grant, and any firefighters, police officers, or other first responders will be provided a $7,000 grant. According to Jessica Bourque of the Morris Daily Herald, all veterans in Illinois can receive an $18,000 grant to be put toward housing on top of the $10,000 that Braidwood is offering.
Restoration America, a nonprofit that helps revitalize abandoned properties, will build 35 new houses in the subdivision that will first be offered to veterans and emergency responders, though anyone can purchase them.
Braidwood Mayor Bill Rulien told Bourque, “Veterans, as a group, are people that are good at volunteering, that are good at teamwork, that will help their neighbors. They are people you want in your community.”
Braidwood is located 18 miles south of Joliet, Illinois, where the new Edward Hines Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic has just been completed. Charles Konkus of Restoration America told Bourque, “Our goal here is to get veterans into new housing and have them serviced by the new veterans hospital in Joliet.”
Rulien and Konkus will visit nearby veterans events in the coming months to let former soldiers know about the housing available to them. And with any luck, the once-beleaguered Townes of Braidwood will become a great place to live in.
 

When a Veteran’s Wheels Stopped Turning, These Police Officers Got Him Moving Again

Pushing a non-functioning 300-pound motorized scooter an entire mile doesn’t sound like the easiest task. In fact, it sounds downright quite difficult.
Yet that’s just what some San Diego police officers did Memorial Day weekend.
Officers Eric Cooper and Milo Shields were out on patrol Sunday afternoon when they spotted a man on a scooter that had stopped working.
The stranded scooter driver, 67-year-old Gilbert Larocque, is a veteran disabled from injuries he sustained in combat as a door gunner in the Army during Vietnam. As a result, he relies on the vehicle to get wherever he needs to go.
Once the officers determined the scooter’s battery was dead, they considered driving Larocque to his home in the Hickman Field Trailer Park a mile away — but then he’d be stuck without his wheels.
So the officers decided to push Larocque home on his scooter, as you see in this video. “We thought it was going to be like pushing a shopping cart, but we were fighting against the transmission the whole time,” Cooper told Lyndsay Winkley of U-T San Diego.
“Being a veteran myself, I was gracious for his service to our country. The least I could do was push him,” Shields told Monica Garske of NBC San Diego.
“We think about veterans one day a year. We should think about them more,” Shields said.
Still, the officers are confident that it doesn’t take a cop to help out a citizen. “I have no doubt that other citizens of San Diego would have stepped in and done it if we had not,” Cooper said.

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These Arkansas Police Officers Play Wingman to an Elderly Man on a Mission

The hard truth about Alzheimer’s is that the disease can cruelly wipe a patient’s memories away. For Doris Amrine, that’s the exact scenario she faces each day as she slowly loses the person she’s known and loved for more than 60 years: Her husband Melvyn.
But as you can see in the CBS News report below, even if Melvyn can’t remember all the details of their life together, his love for his wife isn’t just about the memories. It’s an instinct.
This past Mother’s Day, unbeknownst to anyone else, the Little Rock, Arkansas man set out on a mission — to buy flowers for his wife, something he’s done every year since Doris gave birth to their first child. When his family noticed he was missing, they called the police. The officers soon found him wandering two miles from home.
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Even though he requires assistance to walk, Melvyn was “adamant” about buying the flowers, Sgt. Brian Grigsby and Officer Troy Dillard said. So instead of taking him home, the officers went beyond the call of duty and took him to a store to purchase a bouquet. One officer even covered the difference when Melvyn came up short at the cash register.
“We had to get them,” Grigsby told CBS. “I didn’t have a choice.”
The incredible gesture clearly made the desired impact. “When I saw him waking up with those flowers in hand, it just about broke my heart because I thought ‘Oh he went there to get me flowers because he loves me,'” Doris said.
This longtime couple proves that loves conquers all.
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After Newtown Shooting, This Critical Program Helps Police Deal with Mental Health Emergencies

In the wake of school shootings like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary, understanding mental health issues has become a major concern in the national dialogue. For authorities, part of that is having the skills to identify red flags, and in a criminal situation, to know when someone is in need of help.
Recognizing mental health has become a priority for the state of Connecticut. To educate workers, authorities have created the Crisis Intervention Team, which trains police officers in understanding how to recognize and respond to the spectrum of behavioral and mental health issues, according to NPR. The program, which is one of about 2,7000 across the country, teaches policemen everything ranging from assessing suicidal people to implementing de-escalation techniques. On Wednesday, Connecticut lawmakers even passed a bill that requires police officials across the state receive similar training.
Lance Newkircher, a patrol officer in Fairfield, Connecticut, said that it’s not difficult to interview “the person who just stole four tires from BJ’s” and get that person to admit what’s going on. But “it’s incredibly difficult to get someone who believes they have an assignment from the FBI to really admit that they don’t, and [that] they do need help, and it’s time to go and talk to somebody at the hospital. So that’s the skill set.”
Newkirchen is one of 18 that are part of Fairfield’s Crisis Intervention Team, which was launched about three years ago. (In total, there are 107 officers on the town’s force.) Members attend statewide workshops and seminars, which encourage police officers to foster relationships not just with their communities but with mental health providers as well.
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Newkirchen points out that having this type of training gives officers a better understanding of a situation before they enter it. For example, if a policeman receives an emergency call from a house he has already visited responding to a suicide attempt, he has the details he needs to assess what happened before he gets there.
For Fairfield, that training is important. Newkirchen estimates he gets two to three calls per eight-hour shift regarding mental health.
“I would say 50 percent of the time, [the calls we get] are calls like this — where we are making, I think, a huge difference,” he told NPR. “We won’t be back, and that family has a very different sense of what we do as police officers.”
That’s a critical step in fostering a relationship between authorities and their community. As we grapple with national tragedies like Newtown, it’s vital that authorities understand the role that mental health can play in any situation.
“You know, protocol for a police officer is always, ‘Protect yourself,’ ” said third-year John McGrath. “To be able to learn what they’re thinking and what’s going on in their mind, kind of gives you a better perspective of what’s going on and what you’re able to do to further protect yourself and to protect them.”

Meet a Former Big-City Police Chief Who Wants to Turn American Law Enforcement on Its Head

Past behavior doesn’t always predict future behavior. Norm Stamper is a case in point. Stamper was the Seattle Police Chief in 1999, when hundreds of people protested the World Trade Organization meeting. Under Stamper’s direction the police opted to disperse the protesters with tear gas. The tactics resulted in Stamper’s resignation and prompted him to begin a period of “very painful learning,” he told Sarah Stuteville of Seattle Globalist. He told her that using chemical agents to disperse the protesters was “the worst decision” of his career. Ever since, Stamper has been studying law enforcement in other countries to find techniques and ideas that could be effective for the American justice system.
In his book Breaking Rank, Stamper advocates some controversial law-enforcement ideas, including legalizing drugs, abolishing the death penalty, and relying more on citizens for enforcement than police. He told Stuteville that the drug war has incarcerated far too many people, especially minority men. “We’ve got the drug war raging since 1971 and pitting police against low-level, nonviolent drug offenders, creating natural animosity and tension between police and the community—in particular young people, poor people and people of color,” he says, pointing to Portugal, which decriminalized drugs in 2001, resulting in a decrease in drug use and overdose deaths.
Stamper says we can learn from communities in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where women gather to bang pots and pans outside the homes of men who abuse women, creating a ruckus to publicly shame the men and raise awareness of the problem. “I think we should return to the earliest days of primitive law enforcement,” he told Stuteville, believing that America can “have citizens that are attuned to, and actually carrying out, a public safety role.”
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You’ll Never Believe What This Peace-Promoting Sculpture is Made Of

Does a work of art have the ability to reduce violence in America and inspire others to work for peace? That’s the hope of students at Centaurus High School (CHS) in Lafayette, Colorado, who are collaborating on a new piece of artwork.
The 2012 Sandy Hook shooting motivated CHS students to research gun violence for their political action class. They tracked U.S. deaths due to guns after Sandy Hook to the end of 2013, tallying a total of 12,400 reported gun fatalities. Last May, in the middle of the lesson, a 16-year-old student at Centaurus attempted to detonate a pipe bomb at the school. Thankfully no one was hurt, as a teacher discovered the device and administrators evacuated the building.
The shaken-up students wanted to do something to impress upon others what they’ve learned about violence in America, so they came up with the idea of inviting a local artist to create a sculpture from melted guns. “We figured what better way to bring awareness to the issue than build a memorial for those who died where people walk by it every day and think, ‘What is this about?'” 18-year-old student Kenny Sweetnam told Elizabeth Hernandez of the Boulder Daily Camera.
The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office donated surrendered guns, teaching the students how to disarm them and supervising the sawing of the guns so they no longer functioned. Sculptor Jessica Adams is guiding the students as they use the melted gun metal to create a sculpture out of 12,400 rods, one for each gun victim in 2013, with longer rods for younger victims, symbolizing the length of the lives they were not able to live.
Sheila Dierks, a priest at the Light of Christ Ecumenical Catholic Church who is volunteering with the project said, “By transforming these guns into art, we’re giving less power to the gun and more to the power of change we hope to see.”
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MORE: Is Learning About Guns the Solution to Youth Violence?
 

Here’s a Smart Solution That Stops Immigrants From Being Robbery Victims

The recession and subsequent nosedive of the stock market during the late 2000s probably had you wishing that you had stashed all your money under the mattress instead of in mutual funds and stocks. But carrying your cash around or hiding it in your home isn’t safe, as immigrants who often lack access to traditional banking services know all to well.
Adrian Mendez of the Trenton, New Jersey Police Department told Carlos Avila of The Trentonian that keeping money at home or in a pocket turns immigrants into “walking ATMs,” frequent victims of robbery and violence. On March 30, Sergeant Mendez presented the Trenton police department’s plan to help keep non-U.S. citizens safe from robbery at a community meeting. One of the department’s key plans? Asking local banks (serving areas where many immigrants live) to open savings accounts for people — even if they can’t document their immigration status.
So far, TD Bank and Santander Bank have agreed: Anyone with either a Social Security Number or an Individual Tax Identification Number (which is issued by the IRS) to open an account. Immigrants who work but do not have legal status in the United States often receive an ITIN.
Alba Lopez, who leads a women’s group at the church where Mendez spoke said, “I think this is a very helpful gesture by the TPD [Trenton Police Department], because many of our congregants fear the police and don’t report crimes. This goes a long way to helping build good relationships between our community and the police.”
Mendez added that the police department is “interested in educating the Hispanic community about their rights and responsibilities.”
While Congress continues to debate federal immigration reform, this local connection between immigrants and financial institutions is just the kind of grassroots immigration advocacy that we like to see.
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Want to Avoid L.A.’s Most Dangerous Streets? There’s a Map for That

The story of Kitty Genovese’s murder in 1964 is practically American folklore — stabbed to death in a dark alley in Queens, N.Y., just outside the front door of her apartment building, with at least 30 neighbors within earshot. Intense media coverage focused on this last part, examining the bystander effect and why she died, despite dozens of nearby witnesses.
Stories like these are painful reminders that the most gruesome crimes can happen in broad daylight or with countless others present. So what can happen on far less populated blocks?
As Atlantic Cities writer Conor Friedersdorf writes, Los Angeles is void of what the late Jane Jacobs, an urban theorist, would call “eyes on the street.” L.A.’s design — spread out and dominated by highways — drastically reduces sidewalk populations that could deter, if not at least bear witness to, crimes.
But the Los Angeles Police Department is actively exploring ways to combat this inherent city problem. A new law enforcement tactic called “predictive policing” involves a computer program that analyzes all crime that occurs in an area and produces a map with boxes drawn around blocks where future illegal acts are most likely to occur. Each day, cops release a new map via social media with updated boxes so people know which cross-streets in their neighborhood need the most attention. A community-driven initiative like this allows cops to better plan their focus their attention.
“Cops working with predictive systems respond to call-outs as usual, but when they are free, they return to the spots which the computer suggests,” The Economist noted when the plan first came to light last summer. “Officers may talk to locals or report problems, like broken lights or unsecured properties, that could encourage crime.” And it works: The tactic coincided with a 12 percent reduction in property crime in one Los Angeles neighborhood.
Friedersdorf wrote about the expansion of his program; he and his neighbors received a message from the LAPD, which stated:
“In an effort to do this we are deploying as many resources as possible to the box areas. To further increase the effectiveness of Predictive Policing we are asking the public to spend any free time that you may have in these areas too. You can simply walk with a neighbor, exercise, or walk your dog in these areas and your presence alone can assist in deterring would be criminals from committing crime in your neighborhood.”
Unsurprisingly, Friedersdorf is eager to do whatever it takes to make his neighborhood within L.A.’s Pacific Division safer. “I’d change the route I take on dog walks to help out,” he writes. “And if lots of my neighbors do the same, it’ll be a sign of civic health. We’re all responsible for safeguarding our neighborhoods.”
Though city governments can often cause frustration, this attempt to galvanize citizens to pursue safety can also increase cooperation between Los Angelenos and their governing bodies. “This latest example is a good illustration of how transparency can help law enforcement to improve public safety,” Friedersdorf writes. “And if the experiment works, needed eyeballs will be dispersed to at-risk areas without the use of Orwellian surveillance cameras being installed all over the neighborhood.”

How Nasal Spray Changed This Community’s Attitude Toward Police Forever

Opiate addiction is taking a grim toll on our country. Seven years ago in Quincy, Mass., more than 90 people died of drug overdoses during a period of 18 months. That’s when the Quincy Police Department decided to look into training its officers in the use of Naloxone, or Nasal Narcan, a drug that “separates the opiate from the receptors in the brain, and allows the individual to resume breathing,” Lt. Patrick Lynn, the Commander of the Narcotics Unit of Quincy Special Investigations told Scott Simon of NPR.
When Quincy Police officers undergo their first responder training, they learn to identify the signs of a possible overdose. When signs of a drug overdose are present, they administer a dose of the Narcan up each nostril, and the results have been striking. Quincy Police officers have administered Narcan 221 times since the fall 2011, reversing 211 overdoses.
According to The Boston Globe, since 2006, health officials in Massachusetts have been distributing Narcan to people likely to come into contact with drug users–such as family members and homeless shelter workers–and the rates of overdose have dramatically reduced. Lt. Lynn told Simon that when the Quincy Police first implemented Narcan training, the overdose death rate fell 66% in the first 18 months, and continues to hold steady at a 44% reduced rate. Perhaps more importantly, people in the community trust the police more, especially since the creation of a good Samaritan law that promises officers won’t charge overdose victims with a crime if they’re found in possession of small quantities of narcotics. “The perception of the police in the city of Quincy is dramatically changed,” Lt. Lynn said. “It’s dramatically changing throughout the state. People are now looking at us as being able to assist them, as opposed to only enforcers of the law.”
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