Military Misconduct

BloodStripe said:
Don’t motorboat your subordinates. Somehow we continue to allow officers to sexually assault people and allow them to quietly retire.

Officer ‘motorboated’ subordinate at promotion ceremony, retires after guilty plea
Click to expand...
The things that officer did...

I guarantee this wasn't the first time he acted like an asshole. If someone would have made meaningful correction in that young officer's life earlier on instead of ignoring it, which I suspect was the case, he may have turned into an honorable captain and his career may have been saved.

More importantly, the victims (there's only one mentioned in the article but I guarantee there were more) would have been saved from his malfeasance.

Stop ignoring problems, Army leaders at all levels.
 
Marauder06 said:
The things that officer did...

I guarantee this wasn't the first time he acted like an asshole. If someone would have made meaningful correction in that young officer's life earlier on instead of ignoring it, which I suspect was the case, he may have turned into an honorable captain and his career may have been saved.

More importantly, the victims (there's only one mentioned in the article but I guarantee there were more) would have been saved from his malfeasance.

Stop ignoring problems, Army leaders at all levels.
Click to expand...

My first thought after I read that was, "what THE fuck were you thinking? How can you possibly think you could get away with that?"

I agree with you in that his final act was just the last symptom in a much bigger and longer disease process.
 
Devildoc said:
My first thought after I read that was, "what THE fuck were you thinking? How can you possibly think you could get away with that?"

I agree with you in that his final act was just the last symptom in a much bigger and longer disease process.
Click to expand...
He advertised it. He told her, and others, that he was going to do it. And he did it. No one stopped him? Not one pulled him aside and said something as simple as, "Hey sir, the kinds of things you're saying... they're making X uncomfortable and I think you're going to get in trouble. Maybe we don't do that at her promotion."

It's possible that the people he told about planning to motorboat the female soldier didn't think he was serious. It reminds me of the guy who used a big wooden mallet to "pound in" the rank of the soldier in the 82nd, which resulted in a debilitating injury. Yes, there's a video, I'm pretty sure it's posted somewhere here on the site.

Everyone saw him wind up with it. No one thought he was really going to do it. They thought it was a joke. They thought it was funny. Ah yes, the ever-funny "hazing" joke. No one was laughing when the soldier got hit so hard he went into a seizure.

How about we keep promotions about the soldier, and don't try to make it about us with shenanigans and hazing? That would be great...
 
Marauder06 said:
He advertised it. He told her, and others, that he was going to do it. And he did it. No one stopped him? Not one pulled him aside and said something as simple as, "Hey sir, the kinds of things you're saying... they're making X uncomfortable and I think you're going to get in trouble. Maybe we don't do that at her promotion."

It's possible that the people he told about planning to motorboat the female soldier didn't think he was serious. It reminds me of the guy who used a big wooden mallet to "pound in" the rank of the soldier in the 82nd, which resulted in a debilitating injury. Yes, there's a video, I'm pretty sure it's posted somewhere here on the site.

Everyone saw him wind up with it. No one thought he was really going to do it. They thought it was a joke. They thought it was funny. Ah yes, the ever-funny "hazing" joke. No one was laughing when the soldier got hit so hard he went into a seizure.

How about we keep promotions about the soldier, and don't try to make it about us with shenanigans and hazing? That would be great...
Click to expand...

Sounds a lot like the culture was suffering from a combination of drift and rank malaise ("well, he IS the XXXX after all..."). We've plenty of examples on how well that has worked out.

To the italicized/bolded: I have been party/victim of blood stripes, blood 'wings', tacking on the crow. When I was an ensign I was the Bull ensign (a position besieged with hazing from senior officers) and when I was promoted to JG you know what my OIC did? A goddam pie to my face.
 
Devildoc said:
Sounds a lot like the culture was suffering from a combination of drift and rank malaise ("well, he IS the XXXX after all..."). We've plenty of examples on how well that has worked out.

To the italicized/bolded: I have been party/victim of blood stripes, blood 'wings', tacking on the crow. When I was an ensign I was the Bull ensign (a position besieged with hazing from senior officers) and when I was promoted to JG you know what my OIC did? A goddam pie to my face.
Click to expand...
When I was young, I was very much part of that culture. I **WANTED** it. At Georgia Military College, I wanted the upperclassmen to pound in my unit crests when I was recognized after our plebe period. Blood wings at Airborne School. At Air Assault school, the instructors pulled us into a room when we got our wings and took turns pounding in and pulling out the Bullwinkle badge until my chest was bloody. and I liked it.

All of that was when I was a young cadet. As I got towards the end of my college career, and after I joined a major college fraternity, I realized that I didn't like hazing very much. I tried to stay away from it personally and tried to steer others away.

I think I mentioned before that when I was an infantry PL in the 101st, my platoon sergeant, SFC Edwards, would be the first through the promotion line at every Soldier's promotion. Someone else could do the pinning, but he would have first dibs on the pounding. He would approach the soldier and bring down both of his hands with a thundering boom on the promotee's collar (back then we wore rank pinned to the collar instead of velcro'd to the chest), then make a big deal out of popping the collar back out and putting the clasps on the back of the pins. All of the other people watching knew that the promotee had gotten his blood rank, and everyone respected/feared SFC Edwards too much to take the clasps back off and drive the pins back in. Anyone else who came up and gave the rank a slap wouldn't do any damage because the clasps were on the pins.

I didn't realize he was doing that until he pinned me for 1LT. And everyone else who had been promoted by him previously was smart enough to keep his mouth shut about it.

SFC Edwards had a similar mindset to me about hazing--we didn't need that shit in our platoon. But he also understood Joe culture. If he didn't make a big production out of (fake) blood-pinning the soldier, his buddies would get him in the barracks later when none of us were around.

He really understood soldiers.

When I was in charge of an organization, I usually went out of my way to forbid hazing. It's funny, it can help build morale... I get it, I've heard all the arguments in favor. But in my experience, it always--ALWAYS--goes too far. Why can't we just be happy for the guy? I mean, he's making E4. He's not Caesar riding through Rome in a triumph after defeating the Gauls or whatever. He doesn't need someone whispering in his ear telling him "remember you are mortal" or putting a pie in his face to remind him he's not an E3 anymore. WTF.
 
Marauder06 said:
When I was young, I was very much part of that culture. I **WANTED** it. At Georgia Military College, I wanted the upperclassmen to pound in my unit crests when I was recognized after our plebe period. Blood wings at Airborne School. At Air Assault school, the instructors pulled us into a room when we got our wings and took turns pounding in and pulling out the Bullwinkle badge until my chest was bloody. and I liked it.

All of that was when I was a young cadet. As I got towards the end of my college career, and after I joined a major college fraternity, I realized that I didn't like hazing very much. I tried to stay away from it personally and tried to steer others away.

I think I mentioned before that when I was an infantry PL in the 101st, my platoon sergeant, SFC Edwards, would be the first through the promotion line at every Soldier's promotion. Someone else could do the pinning, but he would have first dibs on the pounding. He would approach the soldier and bring down both of his hands with a thundering boom on the promotee's collar (back then we wore rank pinned to the collar instead of velcro'd to the chest), then make a big deal out of popping the collar back out and putting the clasps on the back of the pins. All of the other people watching knew that the promotee had gotten his blood rank, and everyone respected/feared SFC Edwards too much to take the clasps back off and drive the pins back in. Anyone else who came up and gave the rank a slap wouldn't do any damage because the clasps were on the pins.

I didn't realize he was doing that until he pinned me for 1LT. And everyone else who had been promoted by him previously was smart enough to keep his mouth shut about it.

SFC Edwards had a similar mindset to me about hazing--we didn't need that shit in our platoon. But he also understood Joe culture. If he didn't make a big production out of (fake) blood-pinning the soldier, his buddies would get him in the barracks later when none of us were around.

He really understood soldiers.

When I was in charge of an organization, I usually went out of my way to forbid hazing. It's funny, it can help build morale... I get it, I've heard all the arguments in favor. But in my experience, it always--ALWAYS--goes too far. Why can't we just be happy for the guy? I mean, he's making E4. He's not Caesar riding through Rome in a triumph after defeating the Gauls or whatever. He doesn't need someone whispering in his ear telling him "remember you are mortal" or putting a pie in his face to remind him he's not an E3 anymore. WTF.
Click to expand...

I think there is a fine line between tradition and hazing, and like Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward said about porn, "I know it when I see it."

I don't know that I was ever maliciously hazed, but there were times I felt humiliated (i.e., pie to the face). But I DO know the difference between sexual assault and tradition. I know there is a lot of gray in the military's traditions/hazing, but that should rightfully be zero tolerance.
 
DA SWO said:
2022 event.
Click to expand...
Thank you, I was reading through this thinking the story sounded familiar.

Marauder06

Post in thread 'Military Misconduct'

This captain "motorboated" a female subordinate.

Officer ‘motorboated’ subordinate at promotion ceremony, retires after guilty plea

"...during work the following day, according to a prosecution motion, Crosby “approached [the junior soldier], told her to stand up, placed the rank in front of her chest, leaned in the grab the rank with his teeth...then placed his face between [the junior soldier]’s breasts...[and] vigorously moved his head from side to side between [her] breasts while still holding the rank with his teeth.”
Click to expand...

This wasn't "drunk and stupid at a unit party," this...
  • Like
 

Similar threads

RackMaster
British departure means uncertain future for Alberta's massive Suffield military base
Replies
2
Views
281
Marauder06
Marauder06
R.Caerbannog
Economic shifts in Central America and China
2
Replies
29
Views
3K
R.Caerbannog
R.Caerbannog
Marauder06
Don't Automatically Assume the Worst About People
Replies
14
Views
490
Diamondback 2/2
Diamondback 2/2
AWP
Review Multiple Book Reviews
Replies
1
Views
483
Kaldak
Kaldak
AWP
Review Death Waits in the Dark by Greg Coker/ George Hand IV
Replies
3
Views
776
Kaldak
Kaldak
Back
Top