Military training has always been prized by police departments when hiring new officers with many departments paying hires more money and granting them additional authority. For example the LAPD last month approved “advanced-step hiring” for those with military experience. This initiative adds as much as $7,400 to an officer’s salary.

This practice has become extremely popular as police departments have strayed further from the officer friendly image to a tight reined military like operation. The equipment and personal to fight tactical military like operations here in our cities are demanding a premium.

Now with the latest pentagon report on military wellness showing nearly 50% of current service personal suffering from psychological problems one has to wonder what this means for the near term future of law enforcement -  and our safety. As we prepare to pull out of Iraq tens of thousands of solders are going to be returning to our society with a large number of those returning to their previous law enforcement positions or moving into the law enforcement field.

The study by the Army Mental Health Advisory Team concluded that:

• Nearly 10% of soldiers have intentionally mistreated non-combatants or damaged their property without cause.
• Less than half of all soldiers would report a comrade for unethical behavior including murder.
• More than 40% of our soldiers believe in using torture to save the life of a fellow solider. That is of course a very emotional and touchy subject because in that scenario the life of an American hangs in the balance. However, nearly as many believe in using torture simply to gather intelligence.

Obviously whatever one may think of the war I believe the consensus is that our soldiers deserve respect and assistance with integrating back into society. We cannot however bring these men and women back and have them start patrolling our streets without absolute certainty that the emotional scars they have suffered are healed.

Having lost a family member to an insurgent sniper early in this war I have the greatest amount of respect for our military men and women doing their jobs with honor. This is however a very real problem that could have far reaching repercussions in our society for many years to come if not addressed immediately.