Shoot out at Walter Reed
Remember a few months ago when I wrote that the problems at Walter Reed were more about the civilian contract labor than about the Army leadership, and that was due to Walter Reed’s location in a bad neigborhood in DC? Well, the Washington Post reports just how right I was;
A security officer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center pulled a handgun and fired 10 rounds at a fellow guard during the morning rush hour yesterday at the hospital’s main gate, striking no one but sending stray bullets into two cars and a utility pole, D.C. police said.
Police said the incident started on hospital grounds just inside the front gate along Georgia Avenue NW after one officer jokingly referred to an armed colleague as “retarded.”
Of course, The Washington Post doesn’t see it as employee problem;
The shooting is the latest high-profile embarrassment for Walter Reed, which has faced scrutiny and criticism over its aging facilities and the treatment provided to wounded veterans. The gated hospital complex is set back from one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares.
The guards involved were contract employees under the supervision of civilians, not military guards. So how can the Washington Post figure this is an embarrassment for the facility? Well, because it sounds better, I guess.
The only problem I see is that Army decided to use civilians to guard Walter Reed instead of using MPs like they did just after 9-11. But security guards with guns is a problem across DC with the expansion of the need for security personnel at Federal facilities and a decreasingly eligible labor pool.
My sources at Walter Reed say the argument was over a lady, but my sources are notoriously gossipy, so I’ll stick with the Washington Post’s account – but like I said on Monday, these problems can be fixed by moving the medical facility to Bethesda as determined by the BRAC – if we can get past the Democrat crybabies in Congress who are more worried about traffic jams on Wisconsin Avenue (between trendy Bethesda and trendier Georgetown).Â
Category: Media, Society, Walter Reed
I’m sorry, but the guard “going postal” at Walter Reed yesterday really doesn’t say a thing about “problems at Walter Reed [being] more about the civilian contract labor than about the Army leadership …” And, the incident very much is an embarrassment for the facility and the Army – and the fact that civilians supervise the guards has nothing to do with the embarrassment. If the fact that “civilians supervised by civilians” are guarding the facility is the reason for WRAMC’s problems, then, why hasn’t that ever been so at the Pentagon? Indeed, we’re now well into the third decade since the last time any “military supervised by military” guarded that facility …
Jonn Lilyea wrote: Three decades with no military gate guards at Walter Reed? Now if you’re counting one year as a decade, you may be right. But I go to Walter Reed almost every week and there were indeed MPs on the gate at both the hospital facility and the Forest Glenn facility three years ago. I don’t know where you get your information, but you’d better get your money back.
And the incident shouldn’t be an embarrassment to the military – it was contract civilian employees – the same goofuses I see walking down the street with their shirttails hanging out over their baggy uniform pants and their guard caps on sideways. I know ya’all Leftists enjoy pointing fingers at the military, but you’re so wrong on this one.
And why don’t they have problems with Pentagon guards? You tell me. Maybe the local workforce? Like I said?Â
Jonn, my “three decades” reference is to the 30+ years of civilian guards at the PENTAGON, not Walter Reed.