MP, MP, don't arrest me!

Just got back from a meeting with the PMS.  I got my first branch choice which was MP and will most likely be spending the next 7 years in Germany!

Great, PM me need a source for German N guage model railroad supplies.

Why MP?

^^^You can's spell "STOMPED" without "MP" either.

If you are not infantry it is like joining the football team to be the waterboy. NO matter what MOS you have you support the Infantry, for until there is an infantryman standing on that piece of ground with his rifle stating this area is now mine, the other MOS's have not properly done their job.

oldsoldier wrote: Great, PM me need a source for German N guage model railroad supplies. Why MP?

He wants to go into law enforcement after he's out.

Ceesman762 wrote: mbro wrote: oldsoldier wrote: Great, PM me need a source for German N guage model railroad supplies. Why MP? He wants to go into law enforcement after he's out. That is no guarantee he will make any PD.  It won't even get him a preference.  He will take the LE test just like everyone else.

I believe he told me he's looking at federal level jobs.

But either way, having the word police in your resume has to help, plus most departments also give deferment points for military experience.

What Mbro said.  Federal LE agencies recruit heavily from the military, specifically the MP corps.  Either way it can't possibly hurt to be able to say I ran my own police department on a resume.  Plus, MP platoons get cool toys:

My enterance into the US Marshal's was a simple question on the interview, did you lead men? No reference to MOS. I got the slot due to being a E-8, simple as that Was told at Glynco that Federal Law Enforcement prefer non MP's for the MP is harder to retrain to civilian law practices, the UCMJ and the military techniques are not really civilian compliant.

Field MP can be fun but a garrison 'cop' will get tiring fast and it is not NCIS.

Edited by oldsoldier - 22 October 2010 at 5:23pm

oldsoldier wrote: . . .  the UCMJ and the military techniques are not really civilian compliant.

This.

The USAF Security Forces career field is combined to include MP duties, law enforcement duties (due to the presence of civilians on base) and physical security duties in support of what the DoD considers to be priority resources.*  The difficulty of being familiar with all rolls and keeping them straight under stress could be quite interesting.  Many troops spend the majority of their careers doing a single aspect of the job because of this.  As an example a potential perpetrator could be considered a suspect, person of interest, or target, for essentially the same behavior depending both upon where they happen to be and if they are military or not.  There are also situations where the military or civilian status of a potential perpetrator affects the level of response and others where it is not a factor at all.

My point is, as OS kind of said, don't expect an automatic "in" with a police force just because of the MOS.  I know folks who have made the transition successfully and others who haven't with success seeming to mainly be dependent upon individual skills and experiences.  (So trying to get varied experiences from different aspects of the job might not be a bad idea.)

*Combat arms training/maintenance was rolled into the career field a while back as well but it is still practiced mainly by the people who started out in that field.