Army investigating Dallas murderer’s discharge
In a clear case of closing the barn door after the horse is out, the Associated Press reports that the Army is investigating why the Dallas murderer got out of the service with an honorable discharge;
XXX deployed to Afghanistan in 2013, but was sent back to Texas with the recommendation that he be removed from the Army with an other-than-honorable discharge, said Glendening, who prepared the other-than-honorable discharge papers in September 2014.
However, XXX did not actually leave the service until the following April, according to service records released by the Army that do not classify his discharge.
His attorney later learned that the discharge was honorable.
“I was shocked to see that,” he told The Associated Press by phone last week, less than 24 hours after the Dallas shooting. He said he never received final documentation on how XXX’s case was resolved.
“Somebody really screwed up but to my client’s benefit,” he said.
The lawyer has since been ordered by the Army to shut his mouth.
The murderer was sent back early from a deployment to Afghanistan because a female soldier complained that he was harassing her. There are stories about him stealing her panties and ordering panties for her on the internet from Victoria’s Secret. He was clearly a problem and they did the right thing for the female soldier by getting him a half a world away from her.
While many leaders in the Army are always doing the right thing, Big Army is gun shy about punishing people and doing the paperwork necessary to remove them from the service for minor offenses. I’m sure that to that female soldier, it wasn’t a minor offense, but in the Scheme of Big Things, it was minor to the Army. I’d guess that they excused him from weekend drills and continued to pay him so he and his lawyer wouldn’t bitch.
Also in the Scheme of Big Things, an other than honorable (OTH) discharge wouldn’t have prevented him from killing those police officers in Dallas, otherwise, the Army would have done something about the murderer’s discharge before now. Who goes from stealing panties to murder and then blames a discharge record? Stealing panties isn’t something that the Army teaches or condones. Whatever that was, he came in the military with that. Same with the murder thing. I’ve never stolen panties or murdered anyone, and that had nothing to do with my service, either.
Category: Politics
IMHO it sounds like laziness on the coward’s CoC. My guess is that they were either too lackadaisical and apathetic about doing it right and took the easy way or their higher-up echelon did it to make their numbers look better by hiding their dirty laundry.
This…with the help of lazy, POS JAG officers.
Yep. It seems to me a possibility exists a pattern of misconduct existed. 6 years and out as a PFC? No matter at this point. He still murdered 5 officers and wounded 7 others, right?
Are we even really sure that he got an honorable?
He could have been admin discharged with a General Discharge.
When I was a XO, we booted some Sailors who were low grade performers and they were given Generals.
Typical Army! Sounds like a severe case of reverse cranial rectomotomy
“Also in the Scheme of Big Things, a dishonorable discharge wouldn’t have prevented him from killing those police officers in Dallas.” If he dad been DD’ed the story line would be that the Army’s harsh treatment of his personal pantie raid and other youthful indiscretions pushed him over the edge. No matter how one cuts it, the purpose is to smokescreen what the POS intended to do: kill white police officers. Can’t have that truth, Gotta find some other, better truth somewhere. Gotta find it now.
Agreed. Had he received an OTH, DD, or a re-enlistment code other than RE-1, it would be just another instance of institutional racism against a black man, never mind the supporting documentation
They need to look at phoebe (FBI)…and their usual SCREWUP!! They need to change their initials to F.U.B.A.R.!!
It was his military training. It was his mommy, his daddy, the ubiquitous racism that oBaMa described. It was anything, anything at all but an evil bastard whose racial animus prompted him to set out to kill white police officers and do exactly that. This fictional bullshit that white police officers are executing innocent black men has got to stop. And if someone wants to argue that black males are treated differently than white males, I’ll listen, but only after the murders and riots that, thus far, have been based on pure speculation, rumor, and the inflammatory commentary of everyone from that idiot oBaMa to some former Miss Alabama cease.
It’s simple. The rear D decided to just let him ETS instead of dealing with the headache of processing an OTH. We’ve all seen it. And like Hillary said, “What difference at this point does it make?”. Only thing that would be different is that he’d be a dead racist murdering shitstain with an OTH discharge. 5 good men would still be dead.
If he was sent home from Afghanistan, wouldn’t the rear D/mob station have to process the de-mobilization from active duty (unless there were some formal charges)? This would generated a DD-214 with an honorable discharge.
Yep. if he got an article 15 down range, or Even a lower level court martial wouldn’t be on his dd214. Quicker and easier to just send him home early.
To which he heads to the va with that dd214 and says, see? I deployed and got this for doing so!
“Big Army is gun shy about punishing people and doing the paperwork necessary to remove them from the service for minor offenses.”
John, you are absolutely correct. I have 2 soldiers in the Reserves that have been to sporadic drills in the last 2 years (less than 20%).. and they have never provided any excuses or asked for any help.. but somehow just decided that leadership let them down because leadership didn’t let them get away with not fulfilling their obligation.
I have been pushing for demotion and separation for over a year… and nothing. I believe that these fools will ride their contract out this way. Separate honorably (at least on paper) with the rank they currently have – all because that is the easy way out for big Army.
If this guy (Dallas murderer) would have acted the way he acted in my unit… we would see the same results. NCO’s pushing for repercussions, and Big Army just smoothing things over.
Unsecessful participation only requires missing 9 training assemblies in a calendar year. Memo for record each missed assembly, and attempts to contact, when you have 9 total administrative transfer to IRR, that will clear them off the books. You will need to send certified registered letters each month. The involuntary IRR transfer is easy, and removes Deadwood from the system. I’ve set several slackers on the road, and only required me to track the sin to clear JAG review.
He was a skivvy sniffing racist. Nothing but a smegma stain on the world. As for his honorable, it was easier than take time/spend resources to give him the DD he so richly deserved. Lazy CoC didn’t want to bother themselves crushing the nuts of this pig. Fuck him. Fuck his CoC.
A DD or BCD would likely have been a bar to weapons ownership.
OTH, maybe not so much.
Arizona bars anything below honorable. Texas, I just don’t know.
Even a General discharge? That’s kind of surprising. I’ve had a couple soldiers get the “general” as a deal in response to pissing hot so it’s not dragged out and they don’t have to worry about an oth.
Allow me to correct myself. Arizona requires an honorable or general under honorable conditions for issue of CCW. Dishonorable precludes gun ownership under federal law.
Thanks, not trying to sharp shoot you, but its tough keeping up with each state’s version of gun laws and requirements.
No worries! I got my laws confused, CRS kicked in
I’ll try to accurately repeat from memory what one of our mil lawyers (Alberich?) has previously posted concerning a BCD. Short answer: yes – and no. BCDs are a legal “grey area”; you need more info to make the call.
Like a DD or dismissal, a BCD can only be handed out by a court-martial. If it’s handed out by a GCM and the max possible sentence is more than a year, yes – the individual would appear to be a felon under the definition in Federal law. Buying a firearm then becomes legally problematic.
However, if a BCD is adjudged by a SpCM, a BCD likely isn’t disqualifying. A SpCM cannot adjudge a sentence of confinement greater than 1 year – so in that case, a BCD would NOT be associated with a max possible sentence of greater than one year. The crime would thus appear to qualify as a misdemeanor.
Again: I’m working from memory, and don’t have the time to search for the original discussion. If any of our mil lawyers out there see this, please confirm or correct. I think I’ve got this right, but I’m not a lawyer and memory isn’t always flawless.
Here’s a link to an earlier comment/response you had on this topic:
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=54669#comment-1710623
That might jog the memory! No Alberich involved – I couldn’t find any records of him discussing the misdemeanor/felony difference. You may have been thinking of his discussion of other aspects of BCD/DD? I found a number of examples like this:
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=57890#comment-2450729
No, that was the discussion I was remembering. Thought that it was Alberich who’d commented on the matter vice MrBill. I know Alberich is a former (and perhaps still a current) mil JAG; not positive either way about MrBill.
The link MrBill provides in that discussion, however, does seem to be fairly definitive in answering the question.
Last time I filled out a 4473 (which was maybe 6 weeks ago?) I seem to recall that it only asked if I had ever gotten a dishonorable discharge, not if I had ever gotten an OTH.
EDIT: Just pulled up the current 4473 from the ATF web page. It only asks if the applicant was dishonorably discharged.
Dumb question, is a BCD the same thing as a Dishonorable? I thought that Dishonorable was the lowest of the low and that a BCD was one (small) notch above that. And if that’s the case even a BCD would not have prevented him from buying a firearm.
From what I understand having a DD is the same as having a felony conviction in the civilian world, you lose your right to vote or own a firearm and with a BCD it varies from State to State.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_discharge#Types_of_discharge
Virtually all veterans’ benefits are forfeited by a Bad Conduct Discharge; BCD recipients are not eligible for VA disability compensation in accordance with 38 CFR 3.12.
In many states a dishonorable discharge is deemed the equivalent of a felony conviction, with attendant loss of civil rights.[14] Additionally, US federal law prohibits possession of firearms by those who have been dishonorably discharged[15] per the Gun Control Act of 1968.
True about VA benefits, with a caveat: the VA can make a case-by-case call on whether or not the underlying misbehavior constitutes “dishonorable conduct”. If they decide it doesn’t, at least some benefits can be restored – in spite of the BCD. And benefits earned by previous qualifying service (e.g., during a previous enlistment that ended honorably) are typically not affected.
A DD by Federal law is a bar to receipt of ALL veterans benefits. IMO it shouldn’t be – both an OTH and a BCD should also carry statutory bans to receipt of all VA bennies IMO. But today, that’s not the way Federal law reads.
You are correct – BCD and DD are two different discharges, with a DD being much worse.
If I understand correctly, whether a BCD is associated with a felony conviction is situation-dependent (and I could be wrong). See my comment above.
OTH = Shitbag.
General Discharge = Shitbag.
As far as his CoC goes, in about 11 1/2 years in the RC (most of it NG but probably 1 1/2 years in USAR) I never saw anybody get any kind of discipline unless we were mobilized.
Soldiers who didn’t show up were administratively transferred to the IRR and I presume that at the end of their enlistments they were mailed the appropriate paperwork (The NGB-12 is the NG equivalent of a DD-214, I don’t know what the USAR uses, DD-214 I guess?)
In most of the NG/USAR units I was in, the “commander” was an IDT soldier (that is, he/she only drilled one weekend a month with the rest of us) and the people who “ran” the unit were typically the Unit Administrator. Sometimes the UA was the 1sg/Det Sgt but more often the UA was an AGR (Active Guard Reserve, a full timer on Active Duty status) in the rank of E-6 or (very rarely) E-7.
The UA’s had minimal staff during non-drill periods and just keeping up with training schedules and potential deployments was a full time job for them. They had neither the knowledge nor the incentive to look into punitive discharges and it was pretty much the same for the actual Chain-of-Command (Commander, 1sg, etc) who typically were already working for several unpaid days a month just to get ready for drills.
It would be easy to say the CoC failed by not disciplining this soldier harder but I doubt the outcome would have been any different. I honestly can’t find much fault in a part-time chain of command that would rather focus on taking care of the soldiers who are actually showing up, and preparing soldiers for upcoming deployments, rather than wasting energy kicking out dirtbags who are no-shows, and who will eventually be booted from the service anyway.
Time is a zero sum game and every hour they spend working with JAG to try and figure out how to kick out Pvt Dirtbag is an hour they can’t spend on getting the unit ready for deployment.
It really is a pain in the ass. Sometimes you spend 90% of your time on 10% of the Soldiers.
One Soldier of mine had a medical issue preventing her from going back to finishing ait, but no one was doing anything about it. New cdr and i get on board and spent about 80 hours in one month just trying to get everything together, taking to higher, medical, the RSC and so on just to get her a medical board so asked have some resolution. It shouldn’t have taken that much, but it was a positive to get her taken care of that should’ve been done a year prior.
Way too often its a staffer 3 levels up telling you how to rehab your Soldier and get them back to satisfactory participation. Which causes you to spend even more time doing bullshit paperwork.
Sometimes? That was the case 30+ years ago, and I doubt that’s changed much since. It’s pretty much a military truism.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. – Snake Plisken
I served on one of the three investigations of the Navy Yard shooting and that POS had a bunch of problems and was in the process of being less than honorably discharged (can’t remember how) when his reserve unit let him walk… and with his clearance. He got hired by a contractor and, well, you know the rest of the tragic story.
Interesting. We had an s6 officer in Iraq who was banging an E6 there and it got found out. He was told to stop but didn’t comply, so instead he put a Program on the bn cdrs nipr comp to forward all his email to this guy’s secret Personal email. The commander wanted to bust him legally, remove his clearance, etc. Our glorious brigade didn’t want to deal with that so they just sent him home from theater.
He was still in the reserves with a clearance and hot a contractor job in Afghanistan and was their IT manager for about 4 months. Until, someone in our unit provided them details about what he’d some to the bn cdrs computer, among other things. They took away his clearance sent him home and he was finally kicked out of the reserves.
Someone else lost out on that job he got in Afghanistan, he cost us money and time, and all it would’ve taken was for our brigade to revoke his clearance and send him home with malice. Lazy Dirtbags.
I would say he’s dishonored himself enough. He got a one way ticket to hell courtesy of a small robot owned by Dallas swat.
Back in about 2005/6, the USAR realized they made a huge mistake putting dirtbags in the IRR. When they had to call up IRR folks for oif/oef, maybe 40% would report for duty. If that 40% about 5% were unfit for deployment. They had to dig into the retired reserves to pull people back, even after 10 years of being out. So, they started getting harsh and even put out guidance that people who didn’t show, pissed hot, failed apft or ht/wt would get kicked out completely. We began separating druggies and no-shows with OTHs. It was going good for about 4 or 5 years. As the paperwork attack began to grow, the bureaucracy began to complain. Though more importantly, the personnel numbers in the RC began to dwindle. (Id rather have 1 troop in my book who wanted to be there than 10 dirtbags but that’s just me) because of that, they went right back to what they were doing before. “Just put them in the IRR.” You can try doing a packet for a troop etsing or fling to the IRR within a year, but it’ll take a month or two to get to brigade, by the time it gets to the 1star level for processing, they’ll kick it back for fixes, ask stupid questions like “did you do counseling every weekend he didn’t show?” And “has hid chain of command gone to his house even though he lives 100 miles away?” Which means it goes back down and had to go back up. By the time the packet is perfect, it’ll be 5 or 6 months till they ets or go irr. At that point they’ll sit on it a month or two and then just reply back with “here’s his orders to go irr/discharge in 4 months per his contract. It’s too late to process him out with an oth because of all the legal stuff we would still need to do. Besides, he’ll be in the irr in 4 months anyway. Who cares?” And got that extra few months they can claim him as a… Read more »
Although I retired at the end of ’05 what you are saying makes sense. It all comes down to the path of least resistance which is boot to the IRR and let them ETS per their contract.
I’m wondering if another delayer might be the due process requirements. If a DD is the equivalent of a felony conviction, then I would think there would be some requirements to at least try to locate the soldier so he could be served with papers and given an opportunity to contest the action.
In my experience, “no show” guardsmen or reservists were frequently casually employed slackers who drifted from place to place, crashing on a friend’s couch, staying with mom or dad or uncle in a different state, and generally not staying long enough in one place to be consistently found.
It all goes back to the zero sum game: You have a very limited amount of time, a limited number of personnel and in most units, a virtually UNlimited number of tasks that all need to be completed “ASAP!”
So the command team has to make some hard choices about where to expend their time/effort/money and it’s hard to fault them for just letting a loser “time out” of the system. I understand that’s not the way it “should” be but that’s often the way it is.
It doesn’t hurt that in many units there is major pressure to inflate numbers on the rolls so recruitment looks good.
Not sure about the USAR but in the Guard this was a significant issue – command always wanted high numbers and before you dropped somebody off the rolls you had better show that there had been extraordinary measures taken to try and guide them back into the fold. When all is said and done, it’s easier just to code them as “absent” but keep them on the rolls so the unit still looks “fully manned” even though you have a squad and a half where you should have a platoon.
Funny thing. The USAR has been short of their goal number for a few years.
I came up with recommendations to get recruiting of those active types who were being separated to join the unit, or at least the community. At first it was “hey great idea!” When i started trying to get them implemented it was, “that’s going to take too long. I’m only here another year anyway.” Or “you want to do what? That’s going to cost too much money, we can’t do that.”
I wanted to do simple things like send someone to the installation an hour away to get a spot to talk about civil affairs and what they would get and what they could bring to us. During acap/sfl-tap was the perfect opportunity, but if we did it we’d be going their on our own dime. Every excuse in the world why it wasn’t a good idea.
Otherwise, we only get large surges of troops in when we are deploying.
They only want solutions when it doesn’t cost money or effort or won’t be too long term. Commanders are getting as bad as politicians with their “quick” wins.
Back in the late 80s they used to have in-service recruiters that were part of the clearing process when you would ETS. Are they long gone now?
I think you’re referring to Retention NCOs? Those are the guys who work to get you into the Reserves from Active duty, along with getting you to re-enlist whether on the Active or Reserve side. They’re both CMF 79, but one’s a Romeo and one’s a Victor or Sierra.
As I recall, In-Service recruiters generally were assigned to Garrison HQ as a post asset. Retention NCO’s were additional duty appointments at the company level, authorized slots at battalion and up.
These days there are retention NCOs pretty much everywhere. It is a separate MOS as part of the 79 series and they have their own command as well.
We also have what are called “Duty Appointed Retention NCOs” or DARNs in every company as a requirement. That is 2 days of training.
There are Retention NCOs assigned to support reserve units and its pretty much 1-2 Retention NCOs for a battalion, depending on the size and location.
Actually, not showing up for weekend drill is the least of it. Back in 1997 my USAR unit was notified of an upcoming mobilization to the Former Yugoslavia for a rotation there. The chicken-shit “Detachment sergeant” (an E-6 who was senior to me by a few months) weaseled out of the deployment because he didn’t want to go, and not only suffered no career repercussions, but was actually still the acting Det Sgt when we got back 9 months later. I couldn’t put in my transfer request fast enough.
Then in 2000, my Colorado NG unit was told to be on alert for a possibile state mobilization due to multiple wildfires burning across the state. The call up came as I was getting ready for work so I notified my employer, got into uniform and drove to the armory. Although everyone got the call on the alert roster, fewer than half the unit even showed up.
Wanna guess what happened to the “no shows”, the ones who blew off the mobilization call and just ignored it?
Nothing. Not a damn thing. Not even a slap on the wrist as far as I knew.
The forest service kept us for about 5 days and then determined that they didn’t really need us so they sent us home but that little incident was a real wake up call for me.
In late 2005 in Iraq the army times did a story about the irr folks not reporting. The front labbe headline was something like “irr who don’t report not getting punished”.
The 50 or so irr we had in our unit got demoralized big time because of that. “Wtf? I show up because I’m supposed to but those hundreds who didn’t don’t even get a slap on the wrist?” It was a tooth time for about a month until they calmed down.
Our task force was speed to be receiving about 700 irr folks to plus us up. About 400 showed up and about 250 actually deployed because they were “deployable”. Though it took a lot for them to be nondeployable. We had one guy who had 3 “mild” hat attacks in a 4 month period who got on the plane. He wanted to go to Baghdad but fuck that, we sent him to qatar as a staff guy. I told him he was lucky to be going at all and shut up about it.
Sorry for the spelling, doing this on my phone while i wait for the doc. Lol
Takes all kinds. I went to Mosul in 2005 (NG) with a Vietnam vet prior Marine that was 59 and had heart surgery – guy was a lumberjack in real life. He sprained his ankle about 4 months in and when the surgeon saw his history he was on the next plane to Drum, where he spent 8 months on med hold. Would work circles around the youngsters. Flip side of the coin was a big talking E5 (won’t call him Sergeant) that volunteered to go with us and then went to the BN XO and cried about his wife leaving him if he went. They kept him back and sent a SPC whose wife was pregnant instead. Shitbird made his 6 at home station and before I left Baghdad a few years later on another tour he had made 1SG without deploying – and then was promptly invited to retire a few months later because of bad behavior (retired as a 7). His wife left him anyway because he was banging some 19 year old on the side.
No kidding. We had an S-6 NCO in Iraq who kept begging to get on our Convoy Team as part of the PSD / Missions we were doing regularly.
When we were at the deployment platform, he was on the firing line with an M9 and three NCOs watched him pull the trigger and nothing happened, so he twisted the gun backwards to look down the barrel (Yes, really) and then hit the safety on the way back forward and the pistol went off when he had it pointed about straight up. That was just one of many things that were enough to keep him from going outside the wire. We’d take medical corps types with us before we’d take him.
Worst part was, he was moved to one of our companies who ended up putting him in for an AAM, but then they fired him and sent him back to battalion, so he was put in for an ARCOM by the battalion. So he got two awards for being fired, being a dumbass, not being safe with firearms, and being a pure blood Fobbit.
Yep we saw that way back in the ’70s in the CTARNG when we got called up in the spring to sandbag the local rivers that had a tendency to overflow regularly when the snow melted.
Those of us who showed got nothing extra and those who didn’t got nothing taken away…oddly enough fewer men would show on the next call-up…I always did because I said I would…but I’ve always wondered if I was a dumbass for doing it when those who didn’t suffered no repercussions whatsoever for not doing their jobs and stayed safe and warm and paid better for staying at their civilian jobs.
In recent years “we’ve” made it very clear to personnel that if you get an Annual Training Order, that is mandatory to report for. No bullshit. Unfortunately, anything other than AT or mobilization orders are technically (and legally) “voluntary” orders. But, even if they don’t show for it you can still do some things to hurt them for not attending.
AT orders are being used to get no-shows to “report” so they can be outprocessed. If they don’t show up, it is used as evidence they are a lost cause and need to be removed. But again, the issue becomes them being transferred to the IRR, unless they do something really egregious like get a felony or piss on the CG’s desk.
Other problems with the administrative process is that the USAR uses “Regional Support Commands” or RSCs, (Though I prefer calling them Regional non-Support Commands) to perform administrative functions like separating Soldiers, promotions, etc. You not only have your own command’s requirements, but then you have to deal with theirs.
So, another level in the bureaucracy where, your 2-star level command might endorse a certain action, but then that goes to a 1-star RSC who kicks it back, or does what they want to process a Soldier. So you end up getting orders to put someone in the IRR when you spent 10 months doing an “OTH” packet for a Soldier.
I think there is a strong element of PC in this case. Duh. Back in Nam the quick solution was a one way ticket to LBJ. Of course that had its own problems with racial strife but at least the element of PC was not a big factor.
Did the Iraq/Ganistan theater have an equivalent to LBJ?
There was a confinement facility in Kuwait in 2004 when I was there. I was at the chow hall at either Doha or Arifjan and ran into my old platoon leader from when I was in the former Yugoslavia in 97-98. He was a captain by that time and was commanding something in the confinement facility.
I thought it wasn’t so much a prison as it was a holding type facility for those who had already been CM’d and were on their way back to the states to serve out their sentences at Leavenworth.
UPDATE: Here’s an old article about it. Looks like it actually was a “correctional confinement” facility for troublemakers, not a way station for convicted felons, so I stand corrected on that.
http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/showthread.php?22291-Unruly-troops-do-time-in-Kuwait-prison
TNX the link. Guests at LBJ were not wanted back by the sending units and therefore got sent to anyplace that needed a body. I recall a guy that we ended up with after he got bounced around the country. He was just waiting to DEROS and one day disappeared overnight.
We had a dirtbag in our Unit during my A-stan tour that we sent to Mannheim after his CM conviction, he was a lying dirtbag we were glad to get rid of and I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns up on the SV scene.
Save some time, API. Send Glorious Leader his info now, just in case he does turn up.
I haven’t seen him on SV or in the Darwin Awards so I assume the lying little maggot is still alive, likely the property of Bubba & Thor in some prison.
Active duty, I had a shitbag that deserted after being demoted to E-1. Local cops picked him up and he got shipped back to us. My CO and 1SG, with the squadron commander’s blessing, put him out with a general under honorable conditions for two reasons: they didn’t want him around and they didn’t want to wait for the extra layers of bureaucracy to get around to approving his paperwork. My platoon was pissed because after having to escort his stupid ass everywhere for three months, they wanted blood. Huge blow to platoon morale.
What? No “blanket parties”?
I’m sure we would have given him a proper sendoff if his walking papers hadn’t come through while we were at NTC.
We had a guy in basic that our platoon wanted to blanket party. The Drill Sergeant found out we were talking about that (because the little pussy ran to him about it) and he said anyone touches him and the whole platoon gets recycled. We’d already been there 4 weeks, we weren’t about to start all over again.
I deployed with a guy we tried to boot out because he was batshit crazy–he even scared the shrink we sent him to at Camp Arifjan, who told us not to give him a weapon. (And, yeah, of course, the shitbag had to be in my section.)
We went through all the agony of trying to get him chaptered out–formal board, testimony, JAGs, judges, all that shit–no joy. They basically said, “You brought him, you’re taking him home.”
We put a bar to re-enlist on him for PT or something and eventually got him out that way, but that wouldn’t stop him from getting back in later.
I still expect to see guy’s picture on the evening news after he’s done something horrible. I would hate it, but the unit leadership did all we could and I feel like my conscience is clear.
For about a year my 1-star command had a JAG that was all about kicking people to the curb with OTHs or Generals, doing article 15s, etc.
He was more than happy to help with the paperwork, documentation, make sure legal issues were resolved. But, he ended up leaving and a new JAG came in. That JAG was comparatively a pussy. He wanted everyone to get a second, third, fourth chance. He wanted commanders held to blame for why a private who graduated AIT and never showed to the unit didn’t show up at all, you had to have 10-15 counseling statements on the Soldiers showing you went above and beyond to repair the Soldier.
It really didn’t help with the 2-star started phoning troops who were being counted as no-shows. Of course they’d answer the phone when that guy calls, but not when their own unit does. Naturally its “well I didn’t feel welcome.” “They treated me badly, I didn’t know what was going on, they didn’t communicate with me.” and so on. So of course, the 2-star believes a private over the chain of command that has dozens of documents showing they tried to rehab the troop and get yelled at for it.
These days the USAR is critically short of company grade officers, especially Captains (O-3 type for you squidsters out there). They do command boards and you get 1LT(P)s getting selected because captains don’t want to deal with being the commander. In CA, you have majors that don’t want to be a commander because of all the bullshit you have to put up with (And they’ll still most likely make O-5 or O-6 anyway, so it doesn’t matter).
Even for AGRs in CA, there are a very few coveted command billets and you’ll get 4 or 5 officers putting their packet in for 10 vacancies because the hundred others don’t want to deal with the extra command bullshit. Even for 1SG positions, we only have 2 actual 1SG positions, but out of 60 E-8s, you’ll have 5 or 6 submit for the position.
I am not surprised at all. When I was deployed for OIF in 2006/2007 as a 1SG I had a Soldier that claimed to be a vampire so being the good understanding guy that I am I only sent him out on night patrols which began to really freak him out. I eventually gave him a couple Article 15s for various things and processed him and we sent him back to the states for discharge. This guy was truly batshit crazy.
So, when we get back this PVT we sent back came up to me to welcome me back…as a SPC who had just reenlisted. It seems that the Guard has no way or interest to implement a Bar to Reenlistment.
I also used to do the Battalion USR as the Ops NCO and at least in our State, they would hold on to ghost Soldiers forever. The Adjutant General Corps in the Guard should hang its collective heads in shame from my experience.
“Vampire…. batshit crazy” – nicely done.