558 soldiers removed from their positions
The USAToday reports that someone in the Army trolled through the records of 20,000 soldiers and found 558 who were fir to serve in the positions that held; recruiters, drill sergeants, and sexual assault counselors by reason of illegal activities in their past, such as child abuse, sexual assault and drunken driving. Of those 558, seventy-nine were earmarked for separation. It’s not clear if any of those illegal activities happened before their military service.
[Secretary of Defense Chuck] Hagel called for the review in May after a Pentagon study found troops reported that incidents of unwanted sexual contact had risen 35% from 2010 to 2012. Hagel has “been exceedingly clear about the need to continue stamping out sexual assault from our ranks,” said his spokesman, Rear Adm. John Kirby.
“He was happy to learn that the Army widened the scope of their review and he is grateful for the work they have done to get a better grip on a very difficult issue and hold people accountable,” Kirby said.
I don’t think it should have taken a review ordered by the Secretary of Defense to find these guys, they should have been weeded out long before this. Drunk driving has been the ultimate sin for over 30 years, so I don’t know how they got by with that one, although it’s not fair to lump that in with child abuse and sexual assault. I’d be more interested to see how the numbers were broken down between the various offenses rather than express my outrage at the big number. I mean, was it 580 cases of drunk driving and 8 cases involving abuse or assault?
The Navy dropped three of 5,125 recruiters it had reviewed, and two of 4,739 counselors. None of its 869 recruit instructors was disqualified. The Air Force and Marine Corps reported that none of their servicemembers had been disqualified.
I’m guessing that the services were all looking at different measures for their review, given the disparity in the numbers.
Category: Big Army
I wonder how many good NCOs we will lose to false charges of sexual Assult ? Joe
This clown Hagel is a disgrace as secretary of defense.. If you have a DUI on your record from 10 years ago you can’t be a drill sergeant?? In my day you needed at least 2 DUIs are you had no shot at making E-8..
Sexual assault could be something as simple as public nudity or pissing in public, I hope they actually looked into the specifics of each individual case before they ruined these soldiers careers.. Something tells me that 99.9% of these 558 soldiers dismissed were white males.. As Obama continues his purge of the military and crusade against the real combat Soldiers in the military.
Well they do need to thin the herd so f#cking the troops is the best place to start…apparently the biggest mistake that prospective service members can make is trusting the government to honor anything it puts in writing…
I do believe it’s much harder to sell enlistments when you have a slogan that reads: ARMY OF ONE BECAUSE WE INTEND TO FUCK YOU OUT OF EVERYTHING WE PROMISED YOU….
@2 When was your “day”? I recall a soldier of mine being forced out in 1987 for one drunk driving conviction. He was a great soldier too, other than his inability to not drink and drive. Got a field grade Article 15 and a Bar to reenlistment.
@ Jonn, the Army widened its review to other areas according to the above excerpt, probably why it had such large numbers.
How many of these troops being jettisoned are women? We need to know if the proper percentage was applied, or if they are discriminating based on gender. If they want to be equal, then they can share in the pain, equally.
“The Air Force and Marine Corps reported that none of their servicemembers had been disqualified.” You see, that’s the way this is supposed to be done. “We looked, sir. We looked very hard, but all of our people are good to go.”
I can’t say I’m too broken up about it. If you’re using the Army as a haven for your behavior, you’re about to find how off you are.
On the other hand, I do hope this doesn’t devolve into a witch hunt against good enlisted, NCOs, and officers.
It also could be that the other services had already purged their ranks. I wouldn’t be surprised, for example, if the Air Force didn’t scrub all the records of their drill instructors following the mess they had in San Antonio. If that’s the case, one wouldn’t expect that they would still have any bad apples–or at least not any with bad paper–in the target groups.
I don’t understand the DUI screen, though. Especially if it wasn’t at their current grade. One would think that, if they got a promotion after a DUI, the promotion board felt that the quality of their record outweighed an alcohol related incident, and that it would outweigh other aspects. But then again, I’m not sitting around looking for low hanging RIF bait, either.
This smells like bullshit. I would love to know exactly what ranks were affected most, what the average length of service was, as well as the average length of time bewteen violation/crime and Das Boot.
I can think of a few that need to be added to this list.
Just saying.
Another hidden or round about way of cutting back troops. Seen it many times before. I used to say when it really got bad…”Make sure you don’t sneeze wrong…you can get axed for that as well.”
Don’t look for women in those lists, they are exempt from bad behavior while intoxicated, it’s all the man’s fault.
When my son was in tech school, one of his female classmates was discovered drunk and naked outside one of the male dorms. Realizing that she was in deep doo-doo, she lied and said she had been sexually assaulted. Fortunately, the guy supposedly involved was able to prove he was nowhere near her that night.
You would think that someone who got drunk and naked and then lied about it would have had a ticket home, you would be wrong. She showed up in class a couple of weeks later.
I’ve warned my sons time and again to be very careful about even just being alone with a woman they don’t know well. She can lie and claim anything she wants and will most likely be believed and your life will be over.
Regrets the next day isn’t rape and a hug isn’t sexual assault.
As for women, if you don’t want to be a victim, don’t drink so much that you lose control of your behavior. Don’t go to parties without a wingman. Don’t walk across campus alone and drunk at 2am. Just because you have the right to do all those things doesn’t mean you don’t also have the right to be stupid.
Nothing torques me more than fellow women getting excused from bad behavior or the consequences of their actions when men aren’t afforded the same.
@13.
Great advice.
This should be in every Soldier’s, NCO’s and Officer’s manual.
Okay, the SECDEF is a high position. But really, it requires a flag officer slot for a spokesman?
‘his spokesman, Rear Adm. John Kirby’
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/bios/navybio.asp?bioID=691