Lima Municipal Magistrate John Payne addresses the Lima Noon Sertoma Club.
LIMA —Lima Municipal Court Magistrate John Payne addressed the Lima Noon Sertoma on Thursday with a talk about his work overseeing the Veterans’ Court of Allen County.
“I think people were highly engaged and captured the essence of what we want to do and help veterans and restore them in our community,” said Payne after the meeting. “That’s our heart at Lima Municipal Court is to help people that come in front of us.”
Payne is also running for the Republican nomination for Lima Municipal Court Judge in the seat that is being vacated by the retiring Judge David Rodabaugh. Payne announced his candidacy in August of 2022. The primary will be decided later this year in May. Lima City Prosecutor Rick Eddy is also on the ballot.
In his speech, Payne described the four stages of Veterans’ Court and Drug Treatment Court program, which was started in April 2020, as well as what it does.
“We’ve dealt with a lot of trauma that people went through and then they bring it home with them and there are certain triggers that cause them to have outbursts and abuse substances,” he said.
Payne added that he hoped the audience took away useful information from his speech.
“I’m hoping that they know that we are here to help our veterans in particular, but not them,” he said. “We’re helping people who are dealing with drugs and coming into our court system. We want them to change direction in their life. We’re not always successful, but we can help people who want to be helped. And that’s what we’re about.
But Payne said that he thinks the program has helped people and that he is looking forward to its future.
“We’ve had four successful graduates already,” he said. “We’re on track to have another one in a couple of months. We’ve had a total of six mentors now. Some have come and gone, but I’m just excited about the future of bringing in more veterans and helping them. Our drug court programs are important too. They are larger and typically run about 20 to 25 people in each courtroom. The veteran population is smaller, but we’re here to serve them because many of the things they are dealing with are because they served us first. So, if there’s any population that we want to help, it’s our veterans.”
Reach Jacob Espinosa at 567-242-0399.
