Commissioners accept $110,000 grant for Veterans Treatment Court
- Charity Fitch
- Aug 29, 2023
- 2 min read
During its June 27 meeting, the Ellis County Commissioners Court unanimously accepted a grant from the Texas Veterans Commission in the amount of $110,000 for a veterans court administrator.
The Veterans Treatment Court was established in the 378th District Court in November 2022, with Judge William Wallace, 378th Judicial District Court, overseeing the court. The court offers military veteran offenders a judicially supervised treatment option. Cases that meet the specific qualifications will be taken out of the traditional justice process and sent to the Veterans Treatment Court, where they will be given rehabilitative alternatives.
The grant process began in June 2022, and on May 19, 2023, the Ellis County and District Attorney’s Office announced that the grant request for funding toward a Veterans Treatment Court program was approved by the Texas Veterans Commission for the 2023-24 grant year.
“My staff worked really hard to get this through, had many, many phone calls with the Veterans Commission and their grant person,” District Attorney Ann Montgomery said.
The annual grant will cover the salary of a veterans court administrator, and Montgomery said they will reapply for the grant each year.
“This person will report to me but will work more directly with the veterans that get put into this program,” Wallace said. “The interesting part that we want y’all to know is yesterday we graduated our first veteran. He was on loan to Tarrant County, completed the program there. It was supervised and managed here on this end by Jeff Bullock. …
“He (the veteran), now, as of yesterday when I signed his expunction, has a clean slate,” Wallace said. “It’s a program that works.”
“I was able to meet that veteran yesterday and what he said was this – when you get discharged, you’re sent to the VA (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs), and that’s it,” Montgomery said. “Through this program and through Tarrant County’s help, he learned the tools that are necessary, that are available for him to succeed … that there’s many other resources that are out there that are available that you’re just not told on discharge. It was a little bit of a success story to see him yesterday and to see that he’s just ready to move forward and get all this behind him. That’s the whole purpose of this program is to help us potentially in the future reduce that recidivism rate down to zero for our veterans.”
With the commissioners’ approval, the county will receive the grant funds July 1, Montgomery said.
In a media release, the Ellis County and District Attorney’s Office noted that requirements for the applicant include being a current or discharged member of the U.S. Armed Forces and suffering from a brain injury, mental illness, PTSD, or “was the victim of military sexual trauma that occurred during the veteran’s military service and affected the veteran’s criminal conduct at issue in the case.”
Comments