physical fitness aptitudes of the troops, and that's scary, because that's more costly. they're having more muscular skeletal injuries and we know we need to put ourselves in front of this issue. the other issue is the health costs. we know if we do this, and we do it right, we will save our health affairs and our tricare management some very significant dollars in their health costs. so i leave you that little tid bit if you can go back to your communities and think about it, it not only supports military children but your future citizens. thank you. >> thank you very much. miss thompson touched on an issue for our next speaker that is very important.

and i know as mayors we see veterans by no choice of their own, homeless or in trouble with the law because of their lack of resources. whether it be mental health issues, access to jobs or even just simple access to a roof over their head. and i was excited to hear about this next speaker. matt is a fourth generation marine who received combat action in iraq. following his discharge from the marine corps he attended oklahoma state university where he received his bachlt in political science. an m.a. from the university of oklahoma. matt is here to talk about veteran treatment's court and how they are impacting the lives of military families in our

communities. i know in the state of florida, they have rolled out this program. the u.s. conference of mayors has endorsed this program by acts of resolution, and we're here as mayors to partner, to again hopefully build public awareness and actually use our positions in local government to encourage local court systems in our communities to implement this type of diversionary program to help prevent the incarceration of veterans that have served our country but more importantly get their services and get the lengths of the as much ass that are out there. so let's welcome mr. steiner to our dias and i'll turn it over. >> thank you very much mayor

cooper and mayor mcelveen for allowing me to speak. i worked for the mayor of tulsa. i definitely have firsthand speerns what it's like to work with local government. i felt like i was back in combat in iraq with some of the issues we were dealing with on the local political level. i worked for mayor taylor, she implemented the third best court in the nation. she rallied the support of the district attorney's office, the court judiciary, the va to put a stand to stop having veterans become homeless, suicidal, ending up incarcerated. that's how i fell into this role. and afterwards, after i worked for the mayor of tulsa, i actually coordinated the tulsa

veteran's court and we became a national model. i went to grad school at the same time, and i can tell you, getting out of the marine corps i never thought veterans encarceration would be my business. but it's something i'm passionate about and certainly something every mayor here can implement into their community. i'm going to go through my power point. my contact information is in my folder, please feel free to contact me any time. we know the issues, we've been at war for about ten years now, we've never deployed our military like this before in the history of our nation. several units have gone like captain cooper said, seven tours, that's unprecedented. i know my grandfather went in on world war ii, he stayed there until the war was over. traumatic brain injury is something that you you can be on a convoy and there will be a

bomb hitting a dead dog or a daisy chain in the ground and it rattles the brain to the service member, that causes a traumatic brain injury. 70% of our members also have posttraumatic stress disorder. a lot of our veterans do come back strengthened by their military service there are quite a few suffering. because of that problem, one in six veterans have a substance abuse disorder. one in six that are are coming back to your communities have a substance abuse disorder, one in five have a mental health condition. as a result, some veterans turn to drugs and alcohol. can you have all the resources out there. being in the military, nobody's going to raise your hand and say, can we hug it out? can we talk about our feelings? it's not going to happen. as a result, they do turn to

drugs or alcohol. and because they turn to drugs or alcohol, some may end up in the criminal justice system like we're seeing. instead of incarceration, we want to give them rehabilitat n rehabilitation, which the solution is veteran's treatment court courts. veterans treatment courts fall into the history of drug courts. the first drug court began in 1989 in miami-dade florida, at the time, miami was experiencing too many drug -- nonviolent offenders coming through the criminal justice system. a judge by the name of stanley goldstein created a drug court. today there's before 2,500 drug courts in all 150 states. 75 3rs of those who do graduate a drug court never see a pair of handcuffs again. by sending someone to jail,

which costs oklahoma 23,000 a year it costs about 5,000 to $6,000 to send them through a drug court. so they're working. because of that infrastructure, we're able to have veterans treatment courts. the history -- a good friend of mine in buffalo new york had this amazing idea, he saw so many veterans coming through on his mental health dockets, and wanted to do something about it. i started the first veterans treatment court in january 2008 in buffalo, new york. they're a hybrid of drug and mental health courts. traditionally you keep those separated. the frequent court appearances, random drug tests and provides veterans with intensive treatment while holding them accountable to the court, their families and themselves. you have the vet wraths

administration, american legion, veterans of foreign wars, blue star mothers. you have state department of veterans affairs that participate in these. department of labor, you also have the state county bar association that participates. when i was in oklahoma, i was a member of the advisory council, we had the department of defense congressional office would come to our court once a month to help us out with the dd-214s, medical records. each city that you live in, that you govern has a va hospital. you're within reach of a va regional office. you're not necessarily creating another bureaucracy with the veteran's treatment core. i want to tell you how these work. perfect example. when i coordinated the tulsa tour -- posttraumatic stress

disorder, tbi. never enrolled in the veteran's health administration, never enrolled in the veteran's administration, he was unemployed, divorced and lost custody of his son. however, about six months later, tony -- we got him envoeled in va health care, he leads a substance abuse group. he got him connected with the veterans administration. to qualify for vocational rehabilitation employment as a disabled veteran, he's getting his undergrad. the first person in his family to receive a college education. here's someone that was suicidal, had given up, is going to be a college graduate. he goes to the vet center regularly, and he also got custody of his son because the local bar association helped him

out. what he was most excited about was that the oklahoma department of veterans affairs qualified him for free hunting and free fishing. which is ironic, i'm like, no, tony, you get free education. we were third in disof 2008, now, there's 8800 more being planned p.m. keeping up with it is pretty tough. veterans treatment courts today all over the news when we launched in tulsa, mtv came down, fox news. we're in tulsa oklahoma, what's going on here. stars and stripes, the national law journal. military times, the marine core,

navy, air force. who we are, justice for vets, we're a part of the national association. the national association of drug corps professionals was there from the get go. judge robert russell the gentleman who started the first treatment court was a former board chair of ours. that's how we've been able to implement all these veteran treatment courses so far. we started the veterans treatment corps training initiative. so far we've trained about 32 veterans treatment courses with a total of 300 individuals. we have another training going on in san jose, we're going to train ten more teams, for a total of 40 veterans treatment courts. we have four veterans court treatment mentor courts. we actually pay for folks to go

visit a veterans treatment court to learn how to do one in all day training. also as justice for vets, a part of the national association for drug court professionals at our training conference, we hosted the largest gathering of veterans treatment court professionals in the world, across the nation. we had all of the veterans justice outreach from the va hospitals there. we have panel sessions targeting men touring our national guard, you name it, we hosted it, we trained it. we had a really good friend of mine now who spoke at our conference to over 3,700 veterans treatment court professionals. nick did two tours in afghanistan, one tour in iraq, and simply stated for me, the battle began when i came home. he was picked up for prescription drug use.

post dramatic stress disorder and he likes people to graduate this fall -- this spring, excuse me, with his undergrad in substance abuse counselling to help other veterans from the university of new york we've been on capitol hill several times. we hosted the first senate judiciary committee hearing on veterans treatment course, we've been before the house committee, i would like to take this time to thank captain koorper for his support. our training was mentioned in strengthening our families, meeting america's commitment by the white house as one of many best practices to help veterans and their families. i know mrs. thompson talked about employment, keeping families together. suicides, veterans treatment courts do solve all these problems. and they're working. some of our outreach are really the person behind this is general mccaffrey who doesn't hesitate to recognize he

outranked me every time we talked. we just recently met with general mckinley at the chief of the national guard bureau. like miss thompson said, we have a lot of our reserve in national guard members deployed in the war on terror who aren't attached to an active military base but are in your cities, in your communities. in tulsa, for example, we open our doors to take active guard members, active reserve members as well. we're serving those folks who are your neighbors. we've helped california, colorado, illinois, oregon texas and virginia develop legislation. we're helping maine, the great state of oklahoma where i'm from. and several other states as well, to develop better legislation. one of the first things i did when i came on to justice for vets was to gain support for the

most prestigious veterans organizations. the american legion, disabled american veterans and national association of state director veterans affairs have all come on board with their public support. like i said before, these organizations are in your communities and they do vote. other support, criminal justice system, the national district attorney's association, american bar association, american judge's association. our veteran's treatment court committee is chaired by barry mccalf friday and under his leadership we've been able to get a lot of policy implemented so far, we're really just hitting the tip of the sphere with this, there definitely is a need. we're getting 150 veterans arrested each month alone in

tulsa county. because we had a high veteran population, we were getting that many arrested. to end up with, thank you very much for your time. if i can ever answer any questions, i hope i didn't go too fast. please never hesitate to send me an e-mail. and i'd really appreciate your time. thank you. >> thank you very much. thank you you to all the presenters, i would like to open it up for questions now if anyone has any questions for our presenters. i guess i'll start out. captain cooper, you talked about some centers and where they're at. how two we link in -- for example, my city, we have the human services department, how do we link into that and tell us a little more where the centers are, how they're de rivd and located. >> we're talking about the department of labor.

one stops thousands throughout the country. i'm no expert, but with that many, we have many opportunities in south florida and around big cities throughout the country. i have recently gone online and used google. they're easy to find, easy to access, manned by great folks and enablers. people who understand what the local market looks like, and can take and recognize skill sets and help individuals in particular. massage their resume to help it more closely align with that pool, the reservoir of opportunity. easy to find. kind of on a larger scale also for anyone who's near a va medical center, there's folks can go there and help on the educational side as well as the employment side of it, or now you can simply go back to google.

i'm a little too reliant on them. you can literal type, in i'm sergeant cooper and i -- or petty officer cooper from the navy, and i'm an electrician. i can type in my military occupation code. it will translate that in -- i can type in, where i'm interested in working it will show me jobs that align with my pay grade, my background and what those jobs are in montgomery alabama. pretty sophisticated tool for folks to use. they're all new. these are only two months old. so some good opportunities there. >> i was approached several months ago by a young laid dlad

was a veteran, but she wanted to set up a transitional home for returning single parent mothers have an educational component plus transition back into the workforce. and she ran into a roadblock somewhere. is there any place that you can recommend that she can pick up on this for contact. would that be the list you were referring to before? >> i can give you you an idea. this is what i would say. this fits into the category of, we can use -- everyone can do something, do what you do best. if the young lady thinks this is what she can do best. we'll probably go to a local va, va, housing and hud have really teamed the head of the va to

attack veterans, homelessness. and they've made tremendous progress and try to end it by 2015. we're on a good trajectory. first go to local va or a hud office to help this. and they can arm this particular individual with all the tools they would want from an educational standpoint employment. it's really a holistic -- you need to attack this holistically, simply working on education without addressing the homeless component or employment leaves three legs of that stool empty. it won't be able to sustaining itself. that would be my recommendation for starters. >> i would also go to the small business administration. they have grants for veterans and military spouses for entrepreneur opportunities. and so they could probably help with a loan to get started on setting up the home and what she would need to furnish it and things like that.

>> thank you. >> i'll take one final question. barbara and matt touched on this, you had talked about sensitivity training for our police forces, and, of course, our mayors, that's our core service community. and link between your program and the diversion program and what models that we can take home to share with our police departments to either intercede or earmark these programs to say, you you know, where can we send them and maybe you both can partner with that question. >> the one resource that i would recommend as a reference point is the defense center of excellence for psychological health and traumatic brain injury has a website that is amazing as far as the resources

about what are the issues facing military members and their families. they also have -- there's the national center for telehealth and technology, it's called 22. they actually have free mobile apps for military members and their families that talk about ptsd, mood, how to learn how to deep breathe to offsetted stress. there are a lot of resources out there that address the awareness of what are the red flags about mental health i would go there and i think if -- this is under a different department, but it's my understanding they have a course for clinicians in the communities to learning about the issues facing military families and combat operational stress. that would be another good resource for the law enforcement people to take. not that they're a clinician, but they can be aware of the

impact of deployment on families and service members. >> thank you. to take you back to what barbara's talking about. a lot of law enforcement are veterans. many persons have served in the military, they kind of do understand that culture, a lot of them. in tulsa, for example, we did a lot of education with the va and the tulsa police department. something we ended up doing with our law enforcement. they would ask at the jail or even sometimes during arrest, have you served or are you currently serving in the united states armed forces? we never asked if they're a veteran or not. to me, i thought veterans we da grandfather. i didn't associate myself as a veter veteran. those are two major points. and certainly what barbara said about the permanent fence, they've done a lot of great work as have any more questions. i want to recognize our staff,

larry for your hard work putting together this panel and i want to thank you all for joining us today at the u.s. conference of mayors, thank you very much. defense secretary leon panetta proposed the budget for the fiscal year 2013. the center for strategic and international studies looks at the proposed spending cuts friday morning. can you see the discussion live here on c-span3 at

>> i sid, well, sir, it's between you you and lady gaga. i was making a joke. general mcchrystal replayed, just put me and lady gaga if a heart shaped tub. and i thought, this is a different kind of general this is going to be a different kind of story. >> just several months later, general mcchrystal had been fired. michael hastings continues the story and talks about his new book "the operators" sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q & a.

at the u.s. conference of mayor's meeting last week, the cities around the nation discuss youth violence and gangs. we'll hear from the mayors of new orleans and philadelphia and washington, d.c.,'s police chief. >> our fourth pan sell serving at risk youth. and on that panel will be stephanie rollings-blake, hartford mayor, and capitol workforce partners workforce investment board chair charles smith to speak to us. so we are running about 10 minutes behind, but we will try to keep this crisp. i want to get as many thoughts out here as possible. our first speaker is my namesake. mayor rollings-blake was sworn

in february 4th, 2010. she was first elected to baltimore city council in 1995 at the old age of 25. the youngest person who was ever elected to city council. in 2000 -- if we can just be -- guys, thank you. thank you, appreciate it. let's give our folks up here respect. in 2007 she created the city council's education committee dedicated exclusively to addressing the challenges facing the baltimore city's public school system and exploring innovative solutions to address those needs. she's dedicated to serving at-risk youth and continuing her youth program to provide young people with extra uable work skills that the secretary of labor spoke about today at lunch. we look forward to her remarks, thank you for being here. >> thank you.

[ applause ] >> good afternoon, everyone. it is certainly -- i appreciate the invitation to speak to you this afternoon. thank you u.s. conference of mayors for putting this panel together. i'm especially pleased to have an opportunity to share a strategy we've been using in baltimore city that's been helping us capture the valuable talent in human resources we believe all young people can bring to our can economy. as president obama stated in his call to action announcement a couple weeks ago, we cannot turn our backs on young people who are disconnected from school and work, because they are not contributing to our economy. rather, we should see them as an opportunity because of their

untapped workforce potential. in baltimore, we've been doing exactly that for over ten years by engaging thousands of young people in our youth opportunity. since we launched the program in 25000, through a significant department of labor grant we learned a lot about disconnected youth, at risk youth population particularly what they think about their futures. we know that for most of these young people they do not believe that they can get a good job, earn a good salary or contribute in positive ways to their community. that is a significant hurdle to overcome. if you are dealing with a population who doesn't even see a path to the future, we know that we have a lot of work to do, work that should not be overlooked. the mission of the youth oppoit