Just Fire Them All
When I was in law enforcement the state of New York made two great strides in the Penal Law.
The first one dealt with domestic abuse, when the state finally figured out that beating someone up was a criminal matter, and being related by blood or marriage didn’t change that situation. Prior to that change, the domestic abuse cases were sent to the civil Family Court, rather than the regular criminal court.
The second one was the change in attitude about so-called ‘sex crimes’. Police academies changed and taught that ‘sexual assault’ was a crime of violence, with the ‘sexual’ being a reference to method not the crime. IOW, rape isn’t about sex, its about violence, about hurting the victim.
That was almost 40 years ago, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff don’t understand it yet. They go before a Senate hearing and have a hissy fit that unit commanders are going to be excluded from sexual assault cases. They should be excluded because they have failed to do their job, and the Joint Chiefs have failed to provide the leadership.
I just don’t get it. In the military there is no question that a ‘barracks thief’ is the lowest of the low. Anyone who would steal from other members of his/her unit is dealt with swiftly and harshly. If they are lucky, they are turned to the military justice system, rather than being dealt with by the members of the unit. This is a tradition in the military everywhere, going back at least two centuries. Why is it so hard for the military command structure to deal with the ‘barracks predator’ the same way as the ‘barracks thief’?
Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, was a prosecutor and she explained it to the generals, but they are thinking more like Senator Saxby Chambliss, R-Greorgia, who thinks it has something to do with hormones. If these generals think the problem is the presence of women in the ranks, and I think they do, it is time to fire them all and find some people whose attitudes have evolved beyond 1970. The fact that all of the service academies are having problems with sexual assault, shows that the current officer corps is tainted, and some leaders need to be found who will clean up this mess.
When the troops don’t have enough confidence in the system to report being assaulted, you already have a problem of unit cohesion and morale. Giving people the confidence that crimes against them will be investigated and prosecuted in a fair manner will certainly improve the situation.
3 comments
Couldn’t agree more.
What an insane World.
I will add that I had a situation in Cambodia when I heard about a suspected child rapist in one of the UN attached military units who was preying on villages (which Nation I won’t say). My unit decided to investigate this claim since the UN and military echelon’s in general couldn’t be bothered (We had reported it to mu commander who simply said that he would see what he could do, but didn’t expect much. At least he was angry about it anyway, and I asked if I could take my unit out on a patrol exercise as we had no mission for awhile. I am sure he suspected why, but simply said “That’s a good idea” and in a couple hours we received our order. We spent just over a week talking and listening to people and had a couple suspects. We spent some more time putting them under surveillance. I had a strong suspicion who it was, but we wanted solid proof. A few days later, one of my unit (who was the best ghost/recon man I’d ever known) reported that the suspect had entered a village and kidnapped a young girl. The rest of the unit was not far away, and we rendezvoused with our scout and decided what to do. We freed the terrified girl before she could be harmed and made sure that the guy could never harm another child (or anyone else for that matter) ever again. I’ll just say that we had decided he should share the pain he had meted out. Unfortunately, we only had less than a day as we had to get back to base for our next mission. Justice was done.
I’d do it again. Law be damned.
There is no requirement that you have to like everyone in your unit, but you damn sure have to trust them to do their job. If you have a thief or a predator in the unit things are going to go bad when there’s an emergency. If the officers don’t deal with the problem, the unit will, and it won’t be pretty. The NCOs can’t keep things going if they aren’t getting any support when they try to clean up messes, and NCOs who are trying to cover up problems deserve what will probably happen to them on patrol.
The current generals in the US military don’t have enough combined front line combat experience to make a single company commander. The whole system was broken by Rumsfeld, and I’m glad I don’t have to depend on it.