Bexar County Veterans Treatment Courts

Bexar County runs two veterans treatment courts under Government Code chapter 124; see the Texas entry. Misdemeanor court. The Bexar County Veterans Treatment Court sits in County Court at Law No. 6 and works with VA, volunteer veteran mentors, the Center for Health Care Services and the county's veterans service office. It takes veterans of the armed forces, the National Guard and the reserves, and active-duty personnel, with a pending Bexar County misdemeanor, and accepts every discharge characterization: honorable, general, other than honorable, uncharacterized, bad conduct, dishonorable and dismissed. The person must live in Bexar County. It turns away anyone with a record of a sexual offense, drug delivery or aggravated assault, a pending felony, or, case by case, a felony conviction, and anyone in mental health crisis or whose mental illness prevents consent; the District Attorney can also find a case ineligible. Track I is pretrial: completing it, generally in about a year, means the case is dismissed with no conviction. The court was the county's first problem-solving court with a pretrial diversion track. Felony court. The Felony Veterans Treatment Court sits in the 186th District Court and is supported by a grant from the Texas Veterans Commission's Fund for Veterans' Assistance. It takes a veteran or current member with a pending eligible felony who lives in Bexar or a surrounding county, is a legal resident or citizen, and is willing to have a VA mental health assessment, with every discharge reviewed case by case and the District Attorney approving the outcome. Its list of requirements asks for a DD-214 showing discharge and says "veteran of the United States Military or National Guard", which on its face leaves out the current member chapter 124 and the court's own overview include; a serving member should ask.