I would like to take an opportunity to introduce myself and my organization and those goals I hope to accomplish for the foreseeable future in NYC. I originally traveled to this wonderful city in late July as a participant in a series of short films (teasers) being produced by filmmaker Patrick de Warren as part of an awareness documentary he is pitching to PBS on veteran suicide prevention.

I was invited by RIP Medical Debt founder Jerry Ashton who has also seen medical debt as a major contributing factor in veteran suicide. As formerly incarcerated three times myself (DUI, Marijuana), I have seen that suicides in both the veteran and the general community have ties to the criminal justice system to include crushing court fines and fees for minor infractions. Those same unpaid fees and fines of $3,200 from my case when my probation was terminated have been sent to collections and my credit is wrecked. The Maricopa County Veterans Treatment Court denied my petition to have the fees set aside (“forgiven” as I worded it).

Background

While serving in the Persian Gulf in 1980 aboard the USS San Bernadino (LST -1189) during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, a Marine who had received a ‘bad’ letter from home obtained the weapon from the sentry guarding the armory positioned near the flight deck and our gear and committed suicide with an M-16. A few years earlier and while still in high school in the copper-mining community of Morenci, Arizona; a friend and Vietnam veteran who worked with my father, had gone to work one night and committed suicide. I was the Honorary Pallbearer for Richard Harvey’s funeral. While the actual suicide in 1980 was traumatic, cleaning the blood and brain matter from the deck ‘cloverleafs’ before the helicopter could come in has haunted me still to this day. For the remainder of the WestPac, a stark reminder of the Marine Pfc. Bradley Johnson’s suicide speckled our gear with droplets of his blood.

My struggles have taken many twists and turns over the years, but none other than that after an arrest for DUI and marijuana possession in October 2014 after taking the truck keys from my brother and his friend who was insisting on driving after a night of drinking. I had had a few beers myself earlier in the evening, but nothing in hours. My brother’s friend was insisting on driving home and there was an argument. I took the keys but was immediately pulled over by a Gilbert Police Officer who had been sitting in his vehicle about fifty feet away as I left the parking lot. It was while I was in the veteran’s ‘pod’ in Maricopa County Jail waiting for my brother to bail me out that I overheard a tense one-sided phone exchange between another veteran and someone on the other end of the call. Two hours after that phone call the veteran took apart a razor and committed suicide in his jail cell. I was released a few days later and spent three days after getting home with a construction blade in my hand trying to figure out to commit suicide without getting blood all over my studio apartment with only a shower and no bathtub.

Brady Violations

For that arrest, in 2018 I was sentenced to four years of probation for the DUI and a ‘stipulated’ term of two years in prison for the first-offense possession of one-third of one gram of marijuana. At sentencing, the Court reminded me that, “being a veteran is not a ‘get out of jail free’ card” and that’s what I get for ‘using’ service-connected PTSD as an ‘excuse’ for criminal conduct because I had told the Court that my actions that night were a result of, “having my brother’s back.” My repeated requests for the blood evidence to be retested fell on deaf ears while being berated for the “exact same behavior” of a DUI’s in 2002 and 1998. I never challenged the test results of previous arrests but felt that my rights had been violated in this one. Further research identified an arresting police officer with dozens of citizen complaints, three federal lawsuits, and numerous interagency violations to include falsification of incident reports, but who was never neither sanctioned nor placed on the Arizona’s list of Brady violators. Not until I took my appeal ‘pro per’ and received the case file was it revealed the blood evidence had indeed gone missing in a drawer for more than a year. Only after a confrontation with the Gilbert PD Chief after I was released did the department admit to the misconduct, yet still refused to sanction the officer with a history of such ‘behaviors.’

It was only after arriving to the prison yard and speaking with hundreds of other veterans that it was realized how extensive the anti-veteran sentiment was in the Arizona Court System and how poorly the Phoenix VA was addressing complaints of misconduct in the felony courts. Numerous veterans told me of prosecutors and judges making inappropriate and discriminatory comments to veterans in open court. It is no less derogatory nor discriminatory to tell someone, “Being a veteran is not a ‘get out of jail free’ card” as it would be to use that in the context of “being a Jew” or “being black” or “being gay” as a ‘get out of jail free’ card. I can’t go back 40 years to when I became a veteran, and neither should the courts be able to go back 40 years to justify the use of derogatory and discriminatory comments just for being a veteran.

Catholic Charities MANA House

In early 2016 I became homeless and was referred to MANA House (Marine, Army, Navy, Air Force) a veteran’s transitional program exclusively for eligible veterans in the Grant Per Diem (GPD) program. The program was founded by a Vietnam veteran to provide housing and transitional services for 49 veterans experiencing homelessness for which I was the front desk clerk for nearly two years. In addition to front desk, myself and Army Veteran Herbie Davidson ran the outreach program for veterans, either living in area camps or at the Phoenix homeless shelter CASS, which provided hot meals, showers, computer and laundry access, and clothing to approximately 100-120 visits each month.

Outreach to Incarcerated Veterans

Over the last three years since release from prison in 2019 I have taken my experiences from MANA House and Dept. of Corrections and applied that to assisting other veterans in jails and prisons across the country. Very few incarcerated veterans have online access to various VA-related tools such as MyHealtheVet and eBenefits, so most any dealings with Veterans Affairs must be done either by the VA’s prison outreach program, Veteran Justice Outreach (VJO), loved ones, or they can try to maneuver the system from a prison bunk. I founded Veterans Justice Project to specifically ‘Bridge the Gap’ between the incarcerated veteran and the VA with a Do-It-Yourself process for requesting documentation, filing claims, and applying for transitional services. In addition to specific requests from veterans, VJP publishes and distributes a monthly newsletter, ‘The Forgotten Veteran’ mailed directly to each veteran who requests them. The most reliable medium for providing outreach to the incarcerated veteran is by snail mail so the newsletter serves as double duty both as a source of articles meant to relieve tension, but also as a valuable informational tool on any number of topics from Agent Orange to Direct Deposit that can be instantly printed from .pdf and mailed directly to the veteran or loved one. Hopes are that more loved ones and prison officials will consult the Veterans Justice Project website as I work to finetune expansion of various sections and to increase turnaround time by supplying numerous solutions to the one fundamental problem of how is the best way to keep our incarcerated veterans engaged.

Veterans Justice Project is a limited-liability company I founded in Arizona (2020) to facilitate processing of VA claims, assuring documents get to the proper destinations, follow-up on research, and file criminal complaints on behalf of incarcerated veterans, if necessary. Those services are provided to the incarcerated veteran based on ability to pay but still never denied or withheld.

Outreach to Veteran’s Organizations

I am in the process of reaching out to other veterans’ organizations (for-profit & non-profit) to enlist their assistance in expanding the outreach program to incarcerated veterans, many who are wholly and solely reliant on the Veteran Affairs and the Department of Corrections to provide. It is not uncommon to see a valid claim denied a missing x-ray or a scheduled phone interview. It is my hope that Dept. of Veterans Affairs will provide a representative from each department to assure consistency and to establish a standardized set of policies and procedures specific to incarcerated veterans. This set of standards can then be provided to various agencies which might otherwise be hesitant to accept incarcerated veterans as clients. 

As I continue to pursue my own goals while also helping those where I can, I appreciate any opportunities to put my background in veterans’ transitional programs, suicide and mental health awareness, and as a formerly incarcerated veteran to work in providing assistance and hope to those other veterans who might otherwise be struggling but wary of reaching out because of misplaced stigmas.

Community Involvement 

Since arriving into the NYC shelter system, I’ve been exposed to a different style of cooperation between the many agencies and organizations dedicated to the well-being and success of the at-risk veteran, while at the same time promoting suicide prevention. As part of my journey from ‘homeless to homeness’ I am also supporting local veteran’s organizations. In the last month, I attended a conference for the Military Veterans in Journalism in Washington, DC and participated in a walk of 22 miles in Kingston, NY for the, ‘Walk in My Shoes” campaign of suicide prevention awareness sponsored by the Hudson Valley National Center for Veteran Reintegration (HVNCVR).

In addition to the above events I have participated in, I have already reached out to a (very) few friends and organizations I’m familiar with here in NYC for donations of Jeans, Jackets, and Boots (and other winter) clothing drive for Borden Ave Veterans Residence as part of ‘Donation Day’ already scheduled for November 8, 2022. I have also joined with a group hosted by Mr. Ashton, Veteran Mission Possible, dedicated to addressing suicide prevention solutions in our community. I look forward to the various events taking place here in NYC for Veterans Day including marching in the parade with dozens of other veterans as part of Borden Ave Veterans Residence. I also look forward to discussing other ways to continue to bring down the epidemic of veteran suicide through awareness and hope. It is my hope that anyone reading this will take a moment and visit the website and provide a comment or suggestion. Please also consider providing content for the newsletter in the way of instructions for completing forms, applications, and services for incarcerated veterans, as well as transitional services and opportunities once released. In the coming months, the NYC Dept. of Veteran Services is spearheading a campaign for housing and suicide prevention with a series of grants ranging from $25-100k. It is my goal to secure a grant for my project, Tell Your Story, which will encourage other veterans to ‘tell their story’ to the VA.

My experience with veteran suicide is at the heart of my words here. Providing hope, cooperation, and advocacy to those veterans most at risk of suicide and incarceration spreads to other veterans, who then spread it to other veterans. The result is less stigma and less suicide which is the basis of the documentary that originally brought me to NYC. Please feel free to reach out anytime.

Timothy Pena

US Navy (1977-81)

(602)663-6456

www.VetJusPro.com