I
am a retired Air Force officer and former squadron commander with a lot of
practical experience in applying the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I strongly encourage you to draft and
champion legislation that will transfer responsibility for investigating and
prosecuting major crimes from the services to the Justice Department.
We absolutely need to relieve the military chain
of command from this responsibility. For
one thing, they are not properly trained or equipped to deal with major
criminal infractions. Secondly, doing so
is a time-consuming distraction from the other important responsibilities of
preparing for and winning our nation’s armed conflicts. Finally, America has lost confidence in the
ability of the military to effectively and justly police and protect its own
members from criminal activity.
I
believe the FBI and the Justice Department are best positioned to take on this
responsibility (as opposed to letting local jurisdictions handle such cases);
treating these as federal crimes (perpetrated by and/or against service
members) will lend consistency and eliminate problems associated with local
jurisdiction, especially when incidents occur beyond our borders.
Such a move—setting up a special military
crimes unit within DoJ—could be paid for by reducing the size of the individual
military agencies now charged with handling these crimes (their resource
requirement diminishes with the reduction in tasking). As an interim measure, perhaps current
military resources could be detailed to DoJ.
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