On the Job 

Cincinnati Police Sgt. Dave Corlett was frustrated by his inability to help vets he met on the beat. A former Army helicopter aeroscout during the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s, he took the challenge personally, each encounter an in-your-face reminder of the military imperative to leave no man behind. 

The tipping point came in 2014, during a traffic stop in an area beset by drug dealing.

Told to get out of the car, the driver stood at parade rest — feet 12 inches apart, hands clasped behind his back, head facing forward and motionless. He addressed Corlett using the military title “first sergeant.”

When the young man eventually revealed that he had just returned from Afghanistan and was searching for heroin, Corlett jumped down his throat.

“You’re an embarrassment to the veteran community,” Corlett yelled. “You’re an embarrassment to me as a combat veteran. You need to get your act together, son!”

The bawling-out brought the man to tears.

“I knew at that moment that if I had had something to give this kid, he would have taken anything I had to offer,” Corlett recalled thinking. “If I could have taken him to treatment, he would have gone with me right away. But I didn’t know what to do for him. He didn’t need to be in jail. He wasn’t a violent felon. But here I was a senior patrol sergeant and a combat veteran, and I had no idea how to help him.”

Corlett went back to the station and vented to two buddies, both also veterans. “I gotta do better.”
He began volunteering with a national peer support group called Battle in Distress, where he served as a crisis intervention officer.

“Whenever the organization got a call from a suicidal vet anywhere in the country, they called me. I did this for about 10 months and it suddenly occurred to me that I had never told the command staff what I was doing.”

So Corlett met with Chief Jeffrey Blackwell. “He loved the program and ordered me to start one in our own department. At that point, the Military Liaison Group was born.”

As word got out, area departments requested training. “And then things just continued to expand,” Corlett said. “The next thing you know, we’re getting calls from places like San Diego and Dallas about issues they’re having.”

In 2021, the Justice Department honored the Military Liaison Group for innovative law enforcement and community partnerships.

Corlett, who is retired now and working as a consultant, is often asked what became of the young vet he stopped in 2014. He doesn’t know but hopes that the man did, in fact, get his act together and might someday appreciate how the encounter has since helped fellow veterans.