SWAT rampage destroys Iraq vet's home over guns

[rocktivity]

5. This story is bizarre even by Moonie Washington Times standards

Last edited Tue Feb 13, 2018, 10:57 PM - Edit history (6)

Sgt. Corrigan volunteered to serve for a year in Iraq from 2005-2006...Among other duties, the sergeant would go out on patrol with the Iraqis, clear routes of IEDs...Sgt. Corrigan never fully recovered emotionally from the combat and continues to have vivid nightmares that gave him insomnia...He says that in his daily life now, he’s still looking for the “IED triggerman”...The Veterans’ Affairs (VA) hospital gave him medication...(H)e was tasked to prepare a mental health manual for his soldiers on mild traumatic brain injury and suicide prevention.

Someone with problems that prevented him from being re-deployed and puts him on medication for nearly four years was asked to work on a suicide prevention project? They really ARE short-handed!

On a pamphlet from VA hospital, he saw a link to a website VeteransCrisisLine.net. On it, he found a number for a counseling hotline, which turned out to be a suicide hotline...When he called it a little before midnight...The woman asked for his name, address, phone number, whether he was active duty, if he was using alcohol or drugs, and his unit. Then she asked if he had any firearms...He had recently moved...but had not registered them because he thought the process was too convoluted and risky.

Nonetheless, if it was required by law, he should have done it. Or did he not want to take the "risk" of losing his weapons due to his mental condition?

“I told her, ‘I don’t have the gun out.’ And she kept saying, ‘Put down the gun.’ She talked like I had the gun in one hand and my cell phone in the other...She insisted I repeat the words, ‘The guns are down,’” he said. “I finally got agitated and said, ‘I shouldn’t have called’ and hung up.” Then, Sgt. Corrigan took a prescribed sleeping pill and went to bed. (He was) jolted awake four hours later...

I once dialed 911 when I meant to call 411. I explained my mistake and apologized. Then, because I'd seen episodes of Cops when they were sent to check on people who had called 911 and hung up, I made a point of saying goodbye AND waiting until they said goodbye to me before I hung up. They called me right back.

You'd think that someone allegedly studying crisis intervention would know better than to hang up on a hotline like that at midnight. And if the hotline operator was so sure that he was suicidal, how come it took four hours for the cops to turn up? I know that the Washington DC area isn't used to major snowstorms, but don't their response vehicles have all-weather tires?

Part 2 of the story, meanwhile, reads like an episode of Reno 911. I'm not unsympathetic towards the guy, and I hope that all charges are eventually dropped. But this arrest didn't happen out of the blue -- there's enough blame to go all around.


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