Military Police

SPRING 2015

Military Police contains information about military police functions in maneuver and mobility support, area security, law and order, internment/resettlement, and police intelligence operations.

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MILITARY POLICE . 19-15-1 12 DFBA is a military police-heavy organization. The cur- rent director—a career member of the Senior Executive Ser- vice—is a retired military police colonel. The deputy director is an active duty military police colonel. Several of the staff members are feld grade military police offcers, and several others are retired or former military police or veterans of other Army branches or other Services. The Military Police Corps is well suited to the forensic and biometric missions, with ready applications across the many roles flled by military police. "Biometrics and foren- sics are connective tissue between all of it," said Lieutenant General Quantock. 8 CID; the Defense Forensic Science Cen- ter; and unit level, sensitive-site exploitation experts know how to examine scenes and preserve evidence. Corrections specialists (Military Occupational Specialty 31E personnel) are familiar with biometrically enrolling detainees. Military police across the Army perform access control and other du- ties centered around verifying the identities of individuals. With this experience, the Military Police Corps already has the knowledge needed to apply the felds of forensics and biometrics across the DOD. DFBA is also working closely with U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command centers of excellence and schools— including the U.S. Army Military Police School—to inte- grate forensic and biometric training into curricula, Army and joint doctrinal publications, and U.S. Army Forces Com- mand counter improvised explosive device integration cells. For example, Army Techniques Publication (ATP) 2-22.85, Multi-Service Tactics, Techniques, and Proce- dures for in Support of Operations, provides a standardized, multi-Service frame- work for planning, integrating, and employing biometric data collection efforts by tactical units conducting military operations. 9 It also explains the value of accurate data collec- tion to data collectors and small-unit leaders and describes the operational impact of biometrics. DFBA constitutes an additional asset in ongoing Mili- tary Police Corps relationships with other U.S. law enforce- ment agencies. Interagency agreements allow partners to share data and query databases that belong to each other. As mentioned in the Fall 2013 issue of Military Police, the U.S. Border Patrol serves as a host to military police fellows through the Interagency Fellowship Program and it biomet- rically enrolls fellowship participants. 10 The Border Patrol, in turn, has access to DOD databases, which facilitates the identifcation of individuals with nefarious histories who are attempting to enter the United States. The Border Patrol is just one example of the many DFBA partners across the U.S. Departments of Justice, State, and Homeland Security who cooperate to protect our country's borders. Interagency relationships are in statistics re- garding biometric queries and submissions to the ABIS. During the past 5 years, the number of ABIS submissions from interagency partners has increased from just a few to more than a third of all annual submissions. Consequently, ABIS is expected to grow proportionately more valuable to U.S. government departments outside of DOD. Due to the ability of partners to access DOD records, biometric data continues to have an impact. Lieutenant General Quantock stated, "While I was [in Iraq], we took in 88,000 detainees. . . . Most are free today." But biometric re- cords (fngerprints and, in many cases, voice and iris scans) for those detainees are still on fle. 11 This has enabled U.S. immigration authorities to identify individuals connected to past criminal or terrorist activities before they cross the bor- der into our country. One such case involved an Iraqi man who was biometrically enrolled by coalition forces in 2008 after his involvement in insurgent activity, theft, kidnap- ping, and murder. He subsequently applied for admission to the United States under the Department of State Refugee Admission Program, but was identifed through biometric records. Another Iraqi who was previously a host nation em- ployee of coalition forces was placed on a criminal biometric watch list in 2013 and identifed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security, which is an alternate pipeline for admission to the United States. Stories like these are not limited to people from high- profle countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, but extend to individuals from Kosovo, El Salvador, and other countries around the world where U.S. military and law enforcement agencies cooperate with host nation governments. Real Technology With a Real Impact Long restricted to science fction, biometrics is now a real tool that is making a real impact on DOD missions. In con- junction with the forensic exploitation of sensitive sites and captured materiel, U.S. forces have used biometric capabili- ties to identify terrorists, recapture escapees, and prevent innumerable hostile acts. Other applications of this reliable technology can be found throughout DOD, and the Army Military Police Branch is leading the way. For more information about DFBA, please visit its Web site at . Throughout the years, forensics and biometrics have been used to match numerous individuals to terrorist activities, but none of the matches has been more dramatic than that of the "super hit." On 21 July 2011, U.S. Special Operations Command forces encountered an individual whose fngerprints were familiar to examiners the instant the images arrived in the continental United States. The prints matched 121 different latent prints that had been collected during the previ- ous 14 months from a record 35 separate improvised explosive device cases. With professional biometric examiners, quick computer algorithms, and global data links providing the biometric confrmation they needed, Special Operations Command forces on the scene detained the individual and removed him from the fght.

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