 Hey, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Think Tech Hawaii Studio. We've got a great episode of security matters for you today and a topic that's I think dear to my heart, but dear to everyone's heart, you know, securing our communities is important and we've got a lot of members in our community that are suffering. Mental health has come into I think the forefront of discussion, not, you know, in technology industry, just kind of everywhere, I think because of COVID, but it's always been there and we've always had a lot of issues and specifically issues with our veterans is what we're going to be talking about today. You're going to hear about a program that Dave built up and I'm not going to steal a stone. I'm going to let him get right into that, but there's some amazing programs out there for veterans. I love the guys. If you don't know these guys online, Flags of Valor veteran on community, they're building flags, you know, for challenge coins and nice wooden displays, all veteran guys. There's obviously the veterans for child rescue team. I love those guys. I donate to their efforts. There's basic dude stuff, Pat McNam, if you love his stuff is amazing. And a little closer to home, John McAskill and other special forces guys out there, he's got men talking mindfulness. So check that out if you're looking for some help, if you need some help. There's plenty out there. There's plenty of us willing to listen. And I'm done almost done. Yeah, I'm going to get Dave Wiener on here from Secure Measures. But today he's not as much talking about that as he is talking about this program that they've developed in Southern California and to specifically to help this veteran community, but it's reached some really good results. And I think it kind of it's the kind of model that a community like ours in Hawaii in any model that's got a veteran community or any community that's got mental health issues that are out there in the public that needs support could learn something from. So Dave, I really appreciate you being here today. I know a lot of our audience may not know you or be familiar with your work and that's unfortunate that they will be after today. So let's give them an introduction. You know, I know we don't give it all the way on social media today, but kind of take them through your history and, you know, as much as you want to share and now then we'll get into your program. Hey, thank you for having me, Andrew. Really grateful to be here today. So my name is Dave Wiener. I spent 27 years in law enforcement. I retired in 2019 and started my own veteran own small business consulting firm focusing on security risk management and business resiliency. Prior to my retirement, though, I was the regional chief of police for the VA in Southern California and where I got the opportunity to work with our nation's warriors. It was a complete honor and a privilege to serve in that capacity. But while I was employed at the VA, we started a program. And when I say we, there's a long list of people who are much smarter than me in the city, the county, and the federal government. And it took a lot of people to get a program that we call Veteran Mental Evaluation Team. And that Veteran Mental Evaluation Team was the product of what they call the Mayor's Challenge. The Mayor's Challenge was a partnership between the VA, Samson, and the city of Los Angeles to reduce or eliminate veteran military service member and family member suicide. And that is obviously, that's the secretary of the VA that's his number one priority. And I also want to be clear today, I'm not speaking for the VA or any government agency or any county agency. I'm merely just sharing about a program that I helped start and that continues today to help save lives, especially here in Southern California, more specifically in the Los Angeles County area. VMET or Veteran Mental Evaluation Team basically pairs a VA police officer with a VA mental health clinician and they co-respond to instances where a veteran may be in crisis in the community and they co-respond with local law enforcement. In this case, local law enforcement for us means the LA County Sheriff's Department, the LAPD, Long Beach PD or any other agencies in the area that are encountering a veteran who may be in crisis and the best place for care for veterans. And I know we probably have some veterans on here that are going to shake their heads now, but I go to the VA and I get great care, but I think we would all agree that the VA is probably the best place for our veterans to go for care because it's a health care system built around veterans. So we encourage our local law enforcement as well through training, which I'll talk about in a minute, to basically work with the VMET team and work in collaboration to make sure that we get veterans the proper care, especially for those in mental health crisis. Those that know me and those that have heard me say this before, having a mental illness isn't a crime and we shouldn't be treating it that way. So the reality is we wanted to find that alternative to incarceration, which is basically helping our veterans who may be in crisis and that's what the team is. I love that sentiment. Let's paint a picture for our audience for what was going on and in the lead up to this program getting established. How difficult, what type of community did you have? I think you shared with me it was the largest veteran community, either in California or in North America, I wasn't sure, but give us, paint the picture for us for what was going on. So the need in our area is very specific and it's mainly because we have here in Los Angeles County, the largest population of veterans anywhere in the country. Unfortunately, with that distinction also comes the largest number of homeless veterans and the largest number of veteran suicides. So our need to have a team like this and to work collaboratively with community partners was imperative to intervening and stopping, we're not stopping, but intervening in this crisis and it is a crisis. So because of that, that really established the need for this team and again to work with our community partners who also, they were encountering a lot of veterans out there and they didn't necessarily know where to take them or where to go with them. So it actually worked out very well because now there's this conduit that allows them to get those veterans into VA care instead of transferring them into a county bed as an example. If they needed to put them in the hospital, they would send them to the VA versus putting them in a county hospital. And I'm guessing that your role there as the, because you were like the in charge of the VA police at that point, was that a outbound role? I mean, was it external to into LA, for example, because or do you have like cross jurisdiction? How did that work? Or were you just for like the properties of the VA type properties? So the VA police, I was stationed at our Long Beach VA. We have four major medical centers in Southern California. I was actually what they called the vision or the regional chief over those particular hospitals in that area. So we are basically a region. But my real focus was LA County in specific. So working with county mental health, working with again the LA County Sheriff's Department, LA PD, Long Beach PD, some of the social service organizations working with nonprofits. The Mayor's Challenge had a really great group of cross functional organizations from county, state, military, all different types of organizations that came together to really address this problem. That way, there was communication across agencies, you know, historically, you know, government agencies just as a whole, don't necessarily share information. But I would argue that our our model, especially collaboration is one that could be replicated anywhere, because it's just about communication and collaboration. That's awesome. So prior to getting the team set up where when you would encounter new, were they like already incarcerated? Were they under, you know, barricaded in their homes going through a crisis? How would you get contact with these individuals that needed help prior to going out as a team to respond? So there were different circumstances. We had incidents where a veteran at one point was threatening to jump off the Vincent Thomas Bridge, which is pretty famous bridge here in San Pedro. We've had instances where veterans would have barricaded themselves in the house and keep in mind this is in the community. This isn't on the property, but because of the relationships we had established with local law enforcement, our team or our office would be notified of those incidences and then we would respond out and we would work with the local agency. And there were a number of occasions where once the veteran found out that somebody from the VA was there, and it was another veteran because the VMAT team, they're a wonderful team, both of them former Marines. I love them to death. They did an amazing job, but they were able to really connect with those veterans who were in crisis and they were able to get them into care, which is the most important part of that process. So it really didn't necessarily matter what type of incident they were involved in. The idea was obviously they're in crisis, they need help, and that's what we were going to provide them. Wow. And how were you able to staff? I mean, LA is obviously in the police, a 24-hour operation, right? Like it's going around the clock. Did you just, where did this team magically, did you get funding? Did you steal some bodies? How'd you go about finding some support for, because every human resources are really what are lacking in a lot of these types of programs and funding for them? Well, that is a great question and I would argue that as much as there are a lot of bureaucracies that are typically involved in these type of endeavors, I received amazing support from the top down. From my leadership team, through any of the stakeholders, I got a lot of really great support. I got this program up and running in a relatively short amount of time. However, I did take it out of hide instead of hiring additional bodies. It was started out as a pilot program, so we didn't want to go too far overboard, which I think is important despite my wanting to go overboard and I felt there was a need. I remember distinctly having a conversation with my boss saying I wanted four teams and he said, well, you get one for now. Then once we prove the model, there will be additional put forward. I think there was great support all the way around. With anything like this, there's always going to be speed bumps. There's always going to be challenges when you're trying to stand up a program like this, but I think they were all navigated appropriately and I say that because there were a lot of stakeholders who really wanted the program to succeed and it has in leaps and bounds. So it was just a great opportunity and it was an opportunity really to reduce the number or prevent the number of veteran suicides. That's awesome. Do you think that had it not arisen like under the mayor's challenge, for example, I mean that brought in another level of support or leadership that maybe wasn't there prior to the challenge. Was this germinating already and that was a bit of a catalyst because you got that, I guess, what is that executive government support at that level? How do you feel that being a mayor's challenge effort helped? Well, I think the fact that this was all in the vein of preventing 20 veterans a day dying by suicide. That was the whole goal of this program. If we can just save one life, then it's all worth it, at least in my opinion. And I believe firmly that this was already germinating, I think, prior to the mayor's challenge, but I really think the collaboration and the cross, you know, basically the germination and cross pollination of across agencies, everybody was able to lend a hand. And I really think that made all the difference because, again, this wasn't something I did by myself, far from. There was no way I could have done this by myself. So many amazing and, like I said, much smarter people than me were involved in this and they were able to really help move things along. And a lot of those people played a very important role and I'm eternally grateful from the bottom of my heart. Good. So we're going to get Dave's very humble and we're going to get him to brag a little bit on some of the success stories when we come back. I'm going to pay some bills. We'll be back in about one minute. Just stick around. Aloha. I'm Dan Leif. I go by Fig because I was an Air Force fighter pilot for 33 years and you have to have a nickname. I get to host on Think Tech Hawaii two shows, Figments, The Power of Imagination and Figments on Reality. The Power of Imagination introduces you to some of my incredible friends and their life experiences, astronauts, war heroes, Hollywood writers. You name it, they're on it and you'll be inspired and entertained. And on reality, I'll give you something hard to find, non-political commentary on today's events. That's right, non-political because the vitriol doesn't help folks. So Figments, The Power of Imagination, Figments on Reality, both on Think Tech Hawaii. Hey, gang. Thanks for sticking around. We are talking about suicide prevention. We're talking about mental health. We're talking about an amazing program that got stood up in Southern California that is saving lives as we speak. Dave pioneered this program. He's with us today. I want to get him to talk about some of the success stories. He gave you some of the build-up before we took the break. So Dave, you talk about a lot of the collaboration. I know you had a lot of help from folks, maybe some of their successes or some of the ongoing outcomes that you can see from those early efforts. And how is the program, by the way? So the program is still functioning. It's in great shape. Obviously, due to my retirement from law enforcement, I'm not active in the program anymore or anything like that, but I am aware of their successes. But early on, again, launching as a pilot program, you never know what kind of response or what type of numbers you're going to show. And I want to say in the first year, the team, and one team, mind you, responded to roughly 800 calls for service in about a 10-month period. Roughly. And again, these are all estimates, but you can imagine. And then the following year, which is, I believe, 2019, it was well over 1,000 calls for service involving our local law enforcement, et cetera. But the team had what we call active intervention. And they had roughly 66 of those, which means that you had a veteran who was in crisis, they had a plan, they expressed suicidal ideations, but the team was able to intervene and save that veteran's life. And the reality is the team would do that every day. They would do that literally every day. So as you can see, there are great outcomes. The other thing is they were able to house three chronically homeless veterans back then, which is also, obviously, a huge homeless is a huge issue in a lot of cities, specifically Los Angeles. We've gotten a lot of attention for that. So when there's opportunities to do good in the community, I think the BMAT team has done a wonderful job. And I'm not saying that because I had some involvement with it. I think the more important part of the team is the folks actually doing the work, which was the team. And I can't rave about them enough. And the one other thing I will add is because they've done such an amazing job, they were able to, the VA, I want to say in 2019, had what they call a shark tank competition. I'm sure everybody's familiar with the show shark tank. It was a shark tank competition and the BMAT team, they took top honors or one of the top honors in that competition. And that's an amazing fee out of tons and tons of submissions throughout the VA for innovative ideas for a variety of topics. They were able to come out on top as one of the what they call a gold standard practice. So I thought that was amazing. So did they get more funding as a shark tank recipient? Was it a funding event or was it more just a comparative best practices type thing? It was a comparative best practices. However, I do believe that sparked a number of pilot programs to be started throughout the VA. Again, because I'm not entirely still involved. However, that was at the very end of 2019 and we all know it happened in 2020. So unfortunately, I believe the pandemic put the brakes on some of those programs. So the pandemic obviously stopped a lot of things, unfortunately. Yeah. Well, I can imagine that our needs are actually because of the pandemic going to increase. I can imagine that the end of the war, I saw a lot of people expressing pulling out of Afghanistan caused a lot of consternation among our veterans. And so that could definitely be to an increased need for services. Do you currently interact with any of the folks? I'm sure you get some feedback and you've got some most LE guys tend to stick around with each other after they retire. Do you get feedback from what's going on today? Actually, yes. So I'm actually still part of the Mayor's Challenge. We're still meeting. They were gracious enough to keep me on board. But one of the other things that came out of the Mayor's Challenge and working with my, at the time, my law enforcement partners became a natural transition into working with local law enforcement and creating training for local law enforcement on veteran cultural competencies for first responders. So please fire EMS, mental health. We have a couple of classes that we teach to folks in order for local law enforcement, basically to be a force multiplier, because they're the ones that are routinely coming in contact with our veterans, especially those that may end up in crisis. And now they have a better understanding of how we can interact with them. We engage in what they call crisis stabilization and scene management or de-escalation in order to help our veterans. And we really educate those folks on how to interact. And then we provide them resources. We run them through scenarios. We do a whole host of those things. And it's been, it's been very, very beneficial. Yeah. So is this, is this in classroom? Is it available online? Are you going to be able to expand this out to other, you know, organizations that don't have that type of training available to them? It sounds like a great idea. Yes. It's currently, it's in classroom. It needs to be just because of the scenario based training that we do. Okay. It's very, very integrated. And it's eight hours of class. So that'd be a long time to sit online, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend that. And I'm sure everybody would be shaking their head no, but these are both in classroom classes. We're going to be launching into some different markets at the beginning of the year. And, you know, however, we're happy to bring this training to Hawaii if you guys are so inclined. Yeah, it'd be awesome. I am not aware of, of, you know, of that level of training that happens, you know, with our, they do a lot of stuff. Obviously, I'm not aware of, but we have a large veteran community here that perhaps our teams could benefit from. I mean, I think the understaffing of mental health facilities and all those types of things are, I think communities that have these types of issues, especially where the climate's warm and it's easy to sort of live outside and be home or easier to be homeless. And maybe that feeds some of the crisis. So we have teams that intervene, but I don't believe they're like veteran focused, or even, you know, we have teenagers, I don't think they're necessarily team focused. I really don't know the level of interaction that's happening out here in Hawaii, but I'll definitely take a look and give you some feedback on that. Is it, is it a training that you are looking to export? I mean, are you getting around the West Coast with it? Is it going to make it to New York City? What's the plan? So, yeah, I mean, this is something obviously that I think, you know, all agencies can use. And of course, you know, I'm saying that because I'm one of the primary instructors for the class. And I think we've gotten a lot of amazing feedback about the training itself. And I think taking it as far and as broad as possible is ideal. But, you know, I would be happy to have people to reach out to me if they have questions, those kind of things. Because I think, I think it's a very valuable, a very valuable training course. Just because it gives real a lot of real good insight, we have guest speakers that come, folks, combat veterans that talk about their experiences, and kind of relate that kind of, they put the face on that veteran who potentially could be in crisis. And that really impacts the police officers, deputies, firefighters and folks that attend the class, because now they're putting a face to it. And they're putting a person behind it. Yeah, it's interesting. It's easy, it's easy when you're rolling for it to just be another call, right? So when you can get something a little bit deeper and have a little bit of connectivity to the person, I'm sure, because it's I know our crisis intervention teams are fairly exhausted in most communities. What stands out for you about the veteran community that you can maybe share that for first responders who may be listening now, maybe the top one or two things that come to mind about, you know, when you interact with a veteran in crisis, that if you haven't had this training, what's the one thing you might say to them to remember? There's a whole host of things. But I think it's really about being human and showing compassion and empathy, because, you know, as law enforcement, we end up dealing with folks that are worst. And the reality is, when somebody's in mental health crisis, they're not always thinking clearly, they're not always thinking right. Or they may have something as an example, they may be suffering from traumatic brain injury, which may prevent them from complying for a variety of reasons. But it's taking that time and taking a little bit of extra time to understand what you're really dealing with, and how to address it, I think is going to be most most beneficial. You know, it's really showing compassion and empathy, and understanding that when somebody's in crisis, they need help. Having again, having a mental illness isn't a crime, so we shouldn't be treating it that way. Yeah, 100%. Is the community in crisis, would you say primarily men, primarily women? Is it a mixed community? Are there more men in crisis than women, for example? I'd say it's a mix, but I'd say it's probably leaning more towards the male, male half. Our teams have dealt with female veterans in crisis, but I think most of them tend to be male. And also keep in mind, you know, we have other wonderful programs in LA that actually work very collaboratively with EMET. One of them I want to mention is the Veteran Peer Access Network. That is a peer-based program started by the LA County Department of Mental Health that works very collaboratively with the VA, as well as the VMAT team. And they're there to provide a bunch of post-prevention and postvention services for veterans that really help give them the type of support. So once we get them out of crisis, which is really the VMAT team goal is to get them out of crisis and get them into a better place, then we can transition them to a peer-based program to where they're getting the proper support, whether it's housing or substance abuse counseling or stuff like that. All these programs, or a lot of these programs, were born out of the collaboration through the mayor's challenge. And like I said, I'm eternally grateful to everybody involved. And you know who you are out there. You know the love I have for you. So it's just a lot of amazing programs. And I think that they can be replicated on probably a number of different scales. Not everybody's going to be able to do what we're doing specifically just because we have a demonstrated need. But there are varying forms and fashions of these programs that could be implemented in a variety of places to address the multitude of issues that veterans face. Love this, Dave. I really want to thank you for sharing your story with us today. I want to thank everybody who helped Dave. He shouted you out many, many times. Help other community leaders that want to try to get involved. Make sure you guys are as outbound with your information as possible. And you know, maybe we can save more lives along the way. Dave, thanks again for joining us today. I really appreciate your time. Thank you, Andrew, for having me again. Very grateful. All right. Aloha. Take care, everybody out there. We'll see you next week.