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Military News
Officials at Pasco-Hernando State College in New Port Richey are investigating allegations that a student who is a homeless Army veteran was kicked off campus by security officers because of his appearance.
José Antonio Hernandez, 41, told officials he is a homeless veteran living at a residential center in New Port Richey paid for by the Department of Veterans Affairs while attending classes at the college through VA benefits. Describing himself as “scruffy,” he said he is being discriminated against because of his appearance.
Hernandez was attending classes on the West Campus when he was approached by three campus security officers Monday afternoon and told they had received a call about a homeless person on the campus, he said in a grievance he filed with the college this week.
The three officers detained him for several minutes while they asked for his student and state identification card, which he provided, according to the grievance.
Officers also confiscated a 4-inch pocketknife he was carrying, he said, and told him to leave the campus “immediately.” He complied and headed to a bus stop, where a school administrator caught up with him and reiterated the directive, he said.
“I will remind you at this point that I am a registered student attending classes and have only had to endure this treatment because of the ‘way I look,’ ” Hernandez says in the grievance.
College officials say they launched an internal investigation as soon as they received the complaint.
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According to an incident report, campus security received a call about 4 p.m. Monday from a staff member saying someone came by her office to report “a man with a back-pack and sleeping bag that was loitering at the gazebo next to Building ‘B’ looking in the trash can and for cigarettes.”
Officers Ken Burrell and Mike Thatcher went to the scene, where they met Officer David Housel, the shift supervisor.
In the report, Housel says that when Hernandez was asked whether he needed help, “he became agitated” and initially refused to show his student identification. Housel wrote that he also was concerned about Hernandez’s “partially concealed” knife.
Hernandez, according to the report, “reluctantly complied” with the request to provide his student identification, “became agitated,” began swearing and complained about discrimination.
Hernandez asked about college policies, requested the officers’ names and asked with whom he could file a complaint.
“In order to prevent disturbing staff in the area, I requested he leave the campus (for today) since his classes were complete,” Housel states in the report.
About 4:30 that day, Christopher J. Bibbo, the college director of admissions and student records, met with Hernandez, according to the report.
Bibbo said he told Hernandez he had to confiscate the knife under college safety rules. He told him that “how he handled the situation from that moment on could determine immediate and/or future actions” if he did not cooperate.
“José immediately cooperated by reaching into his pocket and handing me the closed knife and he was very reasonable and understanding,” Bibbo wrote in the incident report. “At no point did I feel threatened by José or in fear of any bodily injury.”
Bibbo said that if Hernandez did not hear back from a school representative, he could come pick up the knife Wednesday as long as he had someone who could give him a ride to the campus and leave immediately once the knife was returned.
❖Hernandez insisted there was nothing unusual about his behavior on Monday.
“I was standing in a designated smoking area alone, smoking a cigarette,” he said in an email to the Tribune.
He said he “was most definitely not digging through the trash can, or looking for cigarettes. I was however picking up trash that was littered around the area the smoking area, while I was smoking.”
Hernandez said he provided his identification as soon as he was asked.
“This incident report is just packed full of lies,” Hernandez said.
Officer Housel, he said, “never asked me to calm down. When he was about to depart he stated that ‘You can’t blame us, look at the way you look.’ This is when I first became agitated.”
Lucy Miller, a college spokeswoman, said in a statement to the Tribune that Hernandez “is not being disciplined. We are following appropriate protocol for handling student grievances and he has been invited to meet with us regarding his concerns.”
Hernandez was given contact information for college administrators and advised about community resources for the homeless, the college said. He was told that a meeting would be scheduled soon as part of the grievance process to review his concerns, that no disciplinary action had been taken and that he may attend classes as usual.
“The action to retrieve the knife was out of concern for the student’s safety and the safety of others given the student’s agitated state,” Miller said.
She said violent incidents on college campuses nationwide guide the way campus police deal with potential problems.
“Since Virginia Tech and onward, we are trained to observe the most subtle behavior in students,” Miller said, citing an attack at the Virginia school that killed 32 people in 2007.
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Jack Plant, a retired Army Green Beret colonel, teaches the course Hernandez is taking at PHSC and described him as a good student. Plant, who read Hernandez’s grievance but had no direct knowledge of the incident, said, “He was always respectful to me.”
Hernandez said his troubles in life began after a deployment to Iraq in 2004. He was a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve, serving as a platoon leader. Army records confirm Hernandez’s account. He served from 2000 to 2008, receiving his commission after graduating from the University of Houston, where he was in the ROTC.
In Iraq, Hernandez and his men provided security and oversight for an Iraqi cement plant and other plants. They also did convoy work.
“Every day, we came under fire; there were always rocket attacks on us,” he said in an interview. “We had a couple of drive-by shootings at the plant; a couple of car bombs went off.”
Two men in his unit were killed, he said.
By the time he got home to his wife in North Carolina, “it was kind of a disaster.”
“When I got home, I only had about two weeks of leave time saved up. My wife, who had never worked before, had to go back to a civilian job.”
Reached by telephone, his wife declined comment.
Meantime, Hernandez said, he went back to work as a restaurant manager but was having problems coping.
“I found myself just standing in the restaurant all day, thinking about killing everyone in the restaurant. I would go home and have thoughts of killing my wife and kids. It became a nightmare.”
Hernandez said he sought treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs, “but that didn’t go very well.”
He said he has been diagnosed with anxiety and depression and has been trying to persuade the VA to treat him for post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Little by little, the anxiety and depression started to get worse and worse and worse,” he said.
Adding to his woes was a diagnosis of colon cancer, Hernandez said. He had a tumor removed in 2013 and is in remission.
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To cope, Hernandez said, he turned to alcohol and drugs, mainly opiates and marijuana.
He said he became abusive to his wife and kids, especially his stepson, who was 5.
Eventually he divorced, left his family and found his way to Tampa, where he enrolled in the University of South Florida in 2013. His anxiety and depression continued. He said he panicked in class and that the university’s large population of Arab students “wore on me day after day.”
By January 2014, he said, he left school. A short while later, his car was repossessed and he ended up homeless.
By June 2015, Hernandez was deep into a downward spiral. Still homeless, he got a rope, tied it to a tree and put it around his neck.
“I sat there for a moment and stopped and called my ex-wife, and I told her, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ ”
She came took him to the James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital, Hernandez said, where he was admitted to the psychiatric services unit for a two-week stay. Then he was placed in a hospital unit that prepares patients to return to work.
After moving in and out of Haley programs, Hernandez was released on Sept. 11, 2015, to the nonprofit Steps to Recovery Program in New Port Richey, which provides transitional housing.
He said he enrolled at PHSC because of its small classes and large number of veterans. He said he had no problems on campus until Monday.
The incident with the college police, he said in his grievance, exacerbated his psychiatric problems.
In 2011, more than 1.2 million veterans received special mental health treatment from the VA, according to statistics available.
In any given year, up to 20 percent of veterans experience post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the VA.
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