Military Police - United States

United States

Marine Corps Military Police Badge Navy Master-at-Arms Badge Air Force Secuirity Forces Badge Naval Criminal Investigative Service Special Agent Badge Marine Corps Criminal Investigation Division Special Agent Badge Air Force Office of Special Investigation Special Agent Badge Coast Guard Investigative Service Special Agent Badge

Each branch of the military of the United States maintains its own military police force, except for the US Coast Guard which is its own law enforcement agency; the coast guard uses its shore patrol, Reserve Investigators, and members of the Coast Guard Investigative Service to regulate its own population. Here is a list of military police forces:

  • Military Police Corps/Office of the Provost Marshal General—United States Army
  • Provost Marshal's Office—United States Marine Corps
  • Masters-at-Arms branch (occasionally aided by temporary members of the Shore Patrol)—United States Navy
  • Air Force Security Forces (formerly known as Military Police, Air Police and Security Police)—United States Air Force
  • U.S. Naval Security Forces (NSF)

Each service also maintains uniformed civilian police departments. They are referred to as Department of Defense Police (DoD Police). These police fall under each directorate they work for within the United States Department of Defense, for example: DoD Army or DoD Navy Police. The Department of the Air Force Police operate under the Air Provost Marshal. The police officers' duties are similar to those of local civilian police officers. They enforce the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), federal and state laws, and the regulations of their particular installation.

Criminal investigations in the United States Armed Forces are carried out by separate agencies:

  • United States Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID)—Army
  • Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS)—Navy and Marine Corps
  • United States Marine Corps Criminal Investigation Division (minor crimes)
  • Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI)—Air Force
  • Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS)—Coast Guard

The Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) is a civilian agency that answers directly to the DOD as well as the Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA).

The United States Constabulary was a gendarmerie force used to secure and patrol the American Zone of West Germany immediately after World War II.

Military police are trained to provide area security, usually by vehicle patrol, which is the mission of most military police stationed in Iraq. They are also trained in dealing with prisoners of war and other detainees, with special training in restraining, searching, and transporting prisoners to detainee camps. MPs can also be used as prison guards in detainee camps, although that responsibility usually falls on Internment/Resettlement Specialists, MOS 31E (Formerly Corrections Specialists).

Read more about this topic:  Military Police

Famous quotes related to united states:

    “The popular colleges of the United States are turning out more educated people with less originality and fewer geniuses than any other country.”
    —Caroline Nichols Churchill (1833–?)

    “You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a voter. I can read the Constitution, I am possessed of two hundred and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age.”
    —Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1816–1902)

    “And hereby hangs a moral highly applicable to our own trustee-ridden universities, if to nothing else. If we really wanted liberty of speech and thought, we could probably get it—Spain fifty years ago certainly had a longer tradition of despotism than has the United States—but do we want it? In these years we will see.”
    —John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    “In the United States all business not transacted over the telephone is accomplished in conjunction with alcohol or food, often under conditions of advanced intoxication. This is a fact of the utmost importance for the visitor of limited funds ... for it means that the most expensive restaurants are, with rare exceptions, the worst.”
    —John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)

    “We are told to maintain constitutions because they are constitutions, and what is laid down in those constitutions?... Certain great fundamental ideas of right are common to the world, and ... all laws of man’s making which trample on these ideas, are null and void—wrong to obey, right to disobey. The Constitution of the United States recognizes human slavery; and makes the souls of men articles of purchase and of sale.”
    —Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842–1932)