APPENDIX B

The Military Police Corps

As the Commandant of the Military Police Corps, my responsibilities span doctrine development, training, leader development, organizations, materiel development, and soldier concerns relative to military police soldiers. Today, the Military Police Corps focuses on the demands of the 21^st century. We are posturing our capabilities to meet the requirements of full dimensional operations. “Full dimensional operations” speak to the application of our capabilities to accomplish missions decisively and at least cost. This application spans the full range of operations—from providing law enforcement training support to providing a combat capable response force.

We are a capabilities-oriented force. Our organizations are modular and can be tailored to meet the functional security requirements in the area of operations. We can operate as a squad or as a brigade. Our brigades operate in joint, multinational, or interagency environments, either embedded in larger organizations, as with IFOR in Bosnia or, when augmented, as a command and control headquarters. An example of the latter was Operation Sea Signal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the 89^th MP Brigade conducted Haitian migrant and Cuban refugee operations.

Military police (MPs) are especially useful in contingency operations involving the stabilization or support to the local populace and infrastructure. Our usefulness is predicated upon our capabilities that reflect how we have been trained, think, and operate. MPs represent an acceptable force to the international community, U.S. citizens, and the indigenous population in these operations. They project an image of “assist, protect, and defend,” and present a low force signature. This was illustrated when an MP brigade was sent into Panama prior to the ousting of Noriega. The brigade was accepted as a force protecting U.S. citizens, not an invasion force. When the situation deteriorated to open warfare, MPs added their combat capability to the general effort.

Organizations conducting stability and support operations today face a changed threat. Belligerents are often criminal elements who may enjoy support from corrupt government officials. These criminal elements may have “rights” that constrain how we deal with them. MPs routinely operate in this environment in cooperation with other forces and agencies.

MP functional capabilities are focused in five general areas:

The following tables depict MP capabilities to fill the deployment gap in stability operations. We are a force protection resource and provide mobile area security. MPs and CID provide security for information facilities, resources, and technologies. We provide physical security and law enforcement guidance and expertise. We combat terrorism and we provide personal security to VIP.

MPs and CID usually conduct these activities in cooperation with other security forces and in close proximity to the local populace. MPs and CID are therefore a reliable HUMINT source.

Because of our law enforcement training, we can apply force without threatening. We understand the consequences of inappropriate, individual, and small-unit actions upon mission success. Our law enforcement training also reinforces the selective and judicious use of force. We execute our functions under restrictive rules of engagement, aided in this role by our training in interpersonal communications skills. These skills lend a human dimension to our activities. We also appreciate the supportive role that rules of interaction play in lessening the friction generated by differing ideologies, customs, and beliefs.

We routinely employ lesser means, such as nonlethal technologies (pepper spray, batons, and military working dogs) before resorting to deadly force, but when overwhelming force is required to prevent escalation of conflict, we act decisively.

MP and CID can execute all the above functions in a stability operation to offset the deployment security gap while CIVPOL and ICITAP are deploying. To offset the enforcement gap, MPs and CID continue executing their functions while local security forces are being trained by outside agencies. MPs and CID can support this training effort by mentoring local security forces. Additionally, MPs can provide reaction forces (for incidents such as civil disturbances) and modular capabilities such as military working dogs, investigations, and force protection teams to bolster emerging local law enforcement capabilities. During the institutional gap, MPs and CID have a lesser role as this stage marks the transition to civilian control and responsibility.

Colonel David Patton: I would argue against ever putting CIVPOL in the military mission for one basic reason. I think, when we talk about changing the culture of a country, and a lot of the countries that we go into have a history of having a police force that was part of the military, if we’re going to start changing that culture and introducing them to Western methods of policing, they need to see the role model of a civilian controlled force, as opposed to a military controlled force.

Question from Audience: However, we are in a situation where you see military forces for internal order within a country already, so the fact that they’d be operating with police support should not be entirely surprising to the population. They want their army to be for external defense, but the troops that the international community has sent there are for internal order in their own country as well.

Brigadier General Foley: I think it’s a consideration. I would just guard against saying, “This is what we should do,” because I can think of more cases where we wouldn’t do it than where we might think it would be a legitimate way to perform things for the reasons that Col. Patton listed.

Question from Audience: In the immediate aftermath of the intervention in Haiti, the U.S. military was tasked to perform certain policing duties. Was the division of labor established between the military police and conventional army units, or did the army units perform these duties on an ad hoc basis?

Brigadier General Foley: I’ll let Colonel O’Brien answer that.

Colonel Howard O’Brien: Haiti was not a good example, because we went in with the attitude that we were not going to do civil law enforcement. You recall the sight of an infantryman standing with a 9mm pistol, with a 1,000-mile stare, as there was Haitian-on-Haitian violence. The President said the next day, “I want 1,000 MPs.” Well, he said it and the next morning I was trying to find them and put them on the planes to get them down there. They were so far down the airlift list we couldn’t get them in there in sufficient time. Mike Sullivan, who was the brigade commander on the ground, just took control of the situation, went into the police stations and took them over. Thank goodness we had an experienced guy; he did the same thing in Panama some years before. We didn’t have the planning mechanism, but as was explained this morning with PDD-56, I think we’ve got the interagency process at least together. But we didn’t have it at that time and it was done very ad hoc and planned very poorly, at least the police part was from the military police perspective.

Brigadier General Foley: We went into that far enough that we had planned on a contingency basis for what we would have to do in the training of those forces, through Mike Sullivan, how we were going to form some cadre battalions, in Haiti. We didn’t know whether ICITAP was going to get the mission or whether we were going to have to assign the mission to the military police. Sullivan’s the guy who you saw put General Cedras on the airplane. He’s just a terrific guy and, as Howie said, when they hit the ground with a whole brigade, then that provided a police presence in the cities, and the special operations forces provided that kind of capability out in the countryside.