William Thomas, a veteran of the New Jersey Air National Guard, was tortured by post-traumatic stress disorder when he returned from Iraq to his job as a police sergeant. Even as departments around the country have attempted a cultural transformation from “warriors” to “guardians,” one in five police officers is literally a warrior, returned from Afghanistan, Iraq or other assignments. What has gone largely unstudied, however, is the impact of military veterans migrating into law enforcement. The debate over the militarization of America’s police has focused on the accumulation of war-grade vehicles and artillery and the spread of paramilitary SWAT teams. This was the second time since returning from war and rejoining the police force that he had tried to take his own life. He collapsed onto his stepson’s bed, calmly waiting to die. Six hours earlier, Thomas, a decorated narcotics investigator and a veteran of the New Jersey Air National Guard, tortured by post-traumatic stress disorder acquired in Iraq, had downed a fistfull of prescription sleeping pills with an entire bottle of Bermuda rum. ![]() A team of cops and medical technicians had strapped his limbs together, stuffing his body into a mesh sack to restrain him after he tried to fight them off. To his dismay, he was still very much alive. ![]() William Thomas, a retired Newark police sergeant, left his home in a body bag.
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