Uh Oh . . .
Hope I’m wrong, but it looks like there might be something seriously bad going on regarding the Arizona Air National Guard:
A formal announcement by the Arizona Attorney General is due at 10PM MST/PDT. I don’t know how long it will be afterwards before details might be available.
I’ll try to post an update later today if/as more info is released.
Category: Air Force, Legal, Military issues, Politics, Reserve Issues
Well, back in May there was a 107 page report issued that documented some serious problems with the AZ Guard, this was in the report issued by the National Guard Bureau
The reforms were drafted in response to recommendations made by the National Guard Bureau, a national umbrella agency for state military organizations. Earlier this month, bureau investigators released a 107-page report that said Arizona’s Guard suffers from unethical leadership, lax discipline, rogue conduct and a failure to protect abuse victims.
And about this same time last year a rather unflattering report about the AZ Army National Guard had this to say:
The wrongdoing, most of which has not been previously disclosed, was concentrated among military recruiters who often visit high schools in search of teenage recruits. National Guard investigators found that non-commissioned officers, known as NCOs, engaged in sexual misconduct, collected recruiting fees to which they were not entitled, forged Guard documents, and committed other offenses such as hunting the homeless with paintball guns.
VOV: hopefully that’s it, and the state decided to play hardball and “clean house”. Dunno at this point.
Looks like we’ll find out later today.
well, because it’s the State AG pressing charges, I guess it’s not going to be Nasty Girls bringing weapons back from Iraq/A’stan, or smuggling coke from South America.
Ya, this has been coming for a while, I’m betting the AG is finally going to get off its butt and prosecute.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/20121013national-guard-republic-special-report.html?nclick_check=1
VOV,
That’s the Army National Guard. This story is Air Force and Air National Guard…
@6 This was last year at this time:
Five top commanders fired from Arizona’s Air National Guard lost their jobs amid fallout from two scandals that were never made public by military officials: fraudulent expense filings totaling more than $1 million, and harassment of the state’s only female fighter pilot, according to records obtained by The Arizona Republic and interviews of those involved.
In 2009, an Air Force audit alleged that more than two dozen Tucson officers submitted false claims to collect payments covering housing and other temporary-duty expenses. A year later, an F-16 pilot quit her full-time job after being subjected to abuse by fellow officers after becoming pregnant. Both events resulted in the dismissal of commanders by Brig. Gen. Michael Colangelo, who subsequently was accused of abusing his authority.
Colangelo, the head of the Arizona Air National Guard, was terminated last month in the wake of an Air Force inspector general’s report that accused him of misconduct in relieving the four subordinates. Thursday was Colangelo’s last day in the National Guard under a removal order issued by Maj. Gen. Hugo Salazar, the state’s top military officer.
The National Guard is a state force that reports to the governor. Its roughly 8,000 employees provide border security, disaster response and other Arizona services. The Guard also works with the federal military, deploying soldiers and airmen for active duty as needed by the Pentagon.
http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/story/23744447/military-personnel-face-arizona-criminal-charges
Looks like it’s the fraudulent expense filings.
This has been a while in coming. I think the commander of the AZANG was relieved for misconduct last year sometime; I remember reading about it in the AZ Republic. There’s bad things going in over there. We didn’t work with them much but the guys in the AZNG are pretty squared away. Hope the State AG actually gets those responsible because there’s a crappy tendency for lower level people who are involved to get sacrificed to save the big boys butts. Quite honestly, the entire command staff of the AZANG probably needs replaced at this point; They’ve clearly lost their ability to lead.