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:

    “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)

    “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)

    “Prior to the meeting, there was a prayer. In general, in the United States there was always praying.”
    —Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)

    “I thought it altogether proper that I should take a brief furlough from official duties at Washington to mingle with you here to-day as a comrade, because every President of the United States must realize that the strength of the Government, its defence in war, the army that is to muster under its banner when our Nation is assailed, is to be found here in the masses of our people.”
    —Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)

    “It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)