Military Police

[The Monkey God]

Hi Guys,

Can anyone enlighten me as to why units, who deploy on OIF, turn to deploy as MPs, even if there unit is something else,like infantry or engineers. Are there any units in the US military that are MPs, or do they just form these type of unit ad hoc?

Can anyone shine any light on this for me?

[Mike Dwyer]

Hi Guys,

Can anyone enlighten me as to why units, who deploy on OIF, turn to deploy as MPs, even if there unit is something else,like infantry or engineers. Are there any units in the US military that are MPs, or do they just form these type of unit ad hoc?

Can anyone shine any light on this for me?

As to why units are turned into MP units, I can't answer that. The US Army has numerous MP units, but perhaps there aren't enough to go around, so they press others into service.

Many years ago that was standard practice. My father served as an MP in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii in the early 1930's. He was actually an infantryman, but the MP unit was made up entirely of infantryman who were assigned to temporary duty as MPs.

According to one web site I found the army currently has 7 MP brigades, 4 CID groups, 7 Reserve MP brigades, 1 Reserve MP-POW group and other units. I served as an MP and that's what I was trained to do and my career field was MP. I served in the 988th MP Company for a while and then the 139th MP Company. Later I served as a CID Agent in a CID Field Office which later became a Resident Agency. With all the war footing of today, the CID has changed nearly all of their "offices" back to the older system of numbered MP detachments. For example the old Fort Rucker CID Office, is now the 24th MP Detachment (CID).

[Guest Rick Research]

Reserve MP units-- as units-- have deployed constantly. I know someone who has had five tours in Iraq as a reserve MP. He has been called away so often and for so long he was demoted from civil police Captain to Sergeant because his home command position has been left empty so much. Nice.

This all goes back to decisions made in the Vietnam war to gut "support" units from the regular establishment and rely on reserves and National Guard for those branches.

The result has been, in many cases, overage "part timers" are called up constantly while young regulars in branchs like armor sit home and do whatever "unneeded" branches are doing.

[Sivart]

Often times "real" MP units are deployed to places where their experience is needed, and they are replaced by reservists who have been given a crash course in how to be an MP. So you end up with a FA reserve battery policing the posts while the real MP's are off in the desert somewhere. At least that has been the trend here at my post over the last 6 or so years.

Sivart

[The Monkey God]

Thanks for all your replies guys!! :cheers: