How do Military Police Arrest Soldiers Who Outrank Them?

When it comes to arresting another soldier who outranks you, you always start with being respectful and tactful until it is no longer an option.

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[RyanMcBethProgramming]

When it comes to arresting another soldier who outranks you, you always start with being respectful and tactful until it is no longer an option.

For uncensored video, check out my substack at:

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Watch all of my long form videos:

Twitter:
@ryanmcbeth

Join the conversation:

Want to send me something?
Ryan McBeth Productions LLC
8705 Colesville Rd.
Suite 249
Silver Spring, MD 20910
USA

[InjuredRobot.]

My dad was a USAF crew chief during the Korean War. He once told Gen. Vandenberg (himself!) to put his cigar out while in the hangar. Not an arrest but under those circumstances it was his duty to do it. Vandenberg immediately did and commended my dad for doing his job. RIP dad, just one of your stories being uploaded into the ether.

[plucas]

So In summary:

1. Ask nicely
2. Ask not so nicely.
3. No longer asking.

[antoneremich]

As a young 1LT Officer of the Day, I was called in to deal with an officer who was drunk and disorderly in a make-shift movie theater full of soldiers of all ranks in RVN. I can assure you that I was ill at ease when I discovered he was a much older belligerent CPT. I tried to invite him to quietly step outside with me, hoping to simply remove the problem from the scene. When that failed, I had the lights turned on thinking that would help and he would step outside to avoid further public embarrassment. Failing that, I order him that he was now under arrest and that he would accompany me to the Orderly Room or risk Court Marshall. Finally, his drinking buddies realized the seriousness of the situation and convinced him to avoid violence and go quietly with me. He did. I wrote up the Daily Log Report and reported to the Gp CO when he returned to base. 24 hrs later, the CPT was on a plane to Saigon for reassignment.

[CausticPuffin]

Marine MPs call it ATM. Ask, Tell, Make. You show all due respect according to rank, but you enforce the regs, period. Doesn’t matter if it’s a PFC or the CMC.
It’s a tough job.

[jeffdittrich]

I was an MP and later a CID agent. I learned quickly to tell officers, especially colonels that they should come with me and sort things out with someone in charge rather than deal with someone like me. That left them “in charge.”

[TheMotlias]

My mate is a officer in the Met Police (London), once they arrested a squaddie on leave for drunk and disorderly, no big deal, they called the MPs to come pick him up, he arrives and asks for a min to talk to the soilder, they then see him beating the snot out of the soilder on cctv, then they arriested the MP and had to again call the MPs to come collect the squaddie and their officer who was now being charged for assult

[samuelmellars]

Not a military rank, but my dad told me about the time he had to yell at a Saudi Prince.
He worked in Saudi Arabia, in aeroplane maintenance and calibration. His overseer/supervisor/site director was Saudi, and giving a tour of the facilities to a Saudi prince. Dad is working in his lab, boss and the prince come in. He sees the prince is smoking (or maybe he was lighting up a cigarette?). Naturally, Dad yells at them to get out and put out the cigarrete.
The prince is obviously unused to being told what to do, certainly never been yelled at by an inferior. Boss takes the prince back out, smooths over the whole situation. Prince comes back in and thanks my dad, because the whole lab is full of solvents, fuel samples and so on.
Smoking could have made a VERY bad situation...

[AhbaYah]

She forgot the most important part..."Don't confuse your rank with my authority!" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[BRyL]

My GF's dad was a counter-intelligence officer in the Polish military way back when. He told me this story: One day he got a tip that one of the colonels was regularly having parties at his office with hookers, alcohol, drugs, the whole shabang. He got the order from his superior to quietly raid one of those parties and bring him in for questioning without making a scene. He was an LT at the time so he was really apprehensive about the idea of arresting someone who significantly outranked him, but his superior reassured him that ranks didn't matter in that situation. So he took a few MPs with him in the middle of the night, and sure enough the COL was having a couple of civilian friends and a bunch of hookers over. They knock on the door and say that they brought more alcohol. Sure enough someone opens the door and they storm in. They ask him politely three times to come quietly, but he refuses, trying to pull rank. Then they try to gently nudge him out the door but he becomes combative, so the LT loses temper and clocks him in the face breaking his nose, tackles him to the floor and says: "If any one of those hookers turn out to be a spy you'll be charged with treason and executed, so you can either come quietly or I'll shoot you right now." It was a bluff of course, the capital punishment for treason was repealed long before that, but it worked. The COL appologised and calmed down, and they quietly brought him and the rest of the party-goers in. Next morning he submitted the report to his superior fully expecting to be court-martialled, but his superior just said "There's a mistake in your report. It says here that you punched him in the face to force compliance, but all the MPs that were with you said he fell over and broke his nose on the door frame. Correct it and resubmit it. Otherwise good job."

The party-boy COL never faced any charges, but was instead quietly forced into early retirement.

[TimeSurfer]

When I was a young PFC, I went to work one morning a tad bit hung over, wearing my best "I REALLY need to do laundry" uniform.
My bosses didn't really care, we were an out of the way office hardly anyone even knew about.
Until the radios quit and the base lost most all of its Long Distance Phone Service.
But, today was the day a Full Bird Colonel showed up, and demanded the dog and pony show. My bosses gave him the front end portion, then brought him back to see the pretty electronics with all the blinking lights.
I was in the middle of an outage on one of the voice telephone lines we carried. It was "Our circuit, " so I had operational control of coordinating the troubleshooting and repair. It was also a rather High Priority Circuit. As in, if it's out for 10 minutes, the Pentagon is calling US.
As I am doing so, the Colonel is quizzing me about this and that and the other things. I am doing my best to answer him as I also spoke with my Distant End, the first radio in line that I actually connect to, to test signal levels there and that kind of stuff.
He snaps at me and says, "Damn it, PRIVATE, stand at attention facing me, when I speak to you!"
So, I spun around, snapped to attention, and said, "Sir, with all due respect to your rank, position, and station, you are interfering with the duties of a Defense Communications System Operator during during a high priority outage. Please leave my facility NOW, I have work to do."
He tried to get huffy, and my bosses, an SFC and an SP5, grabbed him by the elbows and guided him to the door.
And in Worms, the Headquarters for the 5th SIgnal Command, had heard the entire thing over the orderwire system, or the Duty Officer had. Same thing.
The story was told to me by a "Rather High Ranking NCO" that he went to the 5th Signal CO ( A Star) to complain. And as he started, the CO interrupted and said words to the effect of, "Colonel, let me ask you a question before you go any further. And I want you to ponder the question carefully before you answer.
"The question is, are you telling me this on the record, or off?"
The Commander of 5th Signal had already heard the story from the Op Center's Duty Officer. Our Orderwire System, a phone line we used as a Walkie Talkie between all stations, had open microphones.
Anyway, the moral of the story, for those who made it this far is:
"It isn't always who you ARE. It's quite often WHAT YOU'RE DOING!"
There's also a Punch Line. When everything had calmed down and we waited for the next alligator to hatch, The SP5 said he didn't believe I had the balls to talk to a Colonel like that.
And I countered with, "I can't believe I had to. By the way, you DID check that little runt on the access list, didn't you?"
Both bosses turned and looked at each other with the "Ook" face... And then looked.
He was, but still...

[uncletiggermclaren]

Talking about US MPs. During WW2, my Dad was 12 years old, and in Auckland City come on evening. Auckland had 32 000 US Marines stationed about it while the bulk of the Kiwi army was 8000 miles away fighting in the Desert. The US Marine "Snowdrops" ( as they were called here, for their white lids, gloves and armbands ) had authority over anyone in Uniform, including Kiwi service people, by act of Parliament.
Dad saw two slightly drunk US Marines approached by a Kiwi Policeman for cursing in public, he said they were being respectful, but four Kiwi sailors, quite drunk got involved, and some punches were thrown, the Policeman, realising it was too much for him, reached for his whistle.
Before he could blow it, a jeep with two MPs flashed around the street corner, shot across in front of a tram, slammed to a halt and as it did Dad said "Two MPs flew through the air and took the whole group of soldiers off their feet like skittles. They all popped to their feet, all six turned against the MP's, who laid them all down flat in seconds, without losing their helmets, saying a word, or even being struck, it seemed.
Dad was standing close enough to see the look of shock on the Constables face, and his "My word !".

He told me the most astonishing thing was the faces on the MP's never changed their expression, which wasn't aggressive, just determined. And when they had stacked the handcuffed men in the jeep, without caring which was where, the driver nodded to the Constable, the other one sat on the side of the jeep and held the top of the stack firm, and they drove carefully down to the Military Police Station at the Quay, without reacting to anything the crowd said by so much as a glance.

The first time he told me that story, was after we watched a Clint Eastwood film where he fights in a bar fight, out numbered, and wins without losing his cowboy hat. "Well, I have seen that actually done once !".

[marcvancleven]

Serving in the USAF Security Police (now called Security Forces) whenever we were performing our duties out in the public space, we were always carrying the rank of the highest ranking officer on base despite what our actual ranks were. So when we gave an order or investigated some incident, whomever the officer was involved, he or she must behave as if they were dealing with a superior.

[M.Wiberg]

Where I’m from we have a saying. Guard outranks everyone, as in the person who stands guard at a gate or similar entrance to a military area can stop and arrest whoever they want to. A friend of mine exercised that saying when he put down and arrested a general trying to enter the area he was guarding. It all happened on an exercise. General wanted to inspect the different posts and other places but had not announced this before he got to the gate my friend guarded. My friend sees his car and asks him to stop which the general does. My friend who doesn’t recognise the general and hasn’t been told that a general would be coming through tells him that he will have to wait a little, however this should not be a problem as a bench is available so that he can sit while he waits. Problem is though that general does not want to sit and wait and would rather get through immediately. He thus announces that he is a general and commands friend to let him through. Friend kindly tells him that he indeed is not blind and that even if he had twice the amount of stars he still wouldn’t be let through without clearing it through the proper channels but that he is welcome to wait on before mentioned bench until this is sorted out. General does in no way agree with this and proceeds to walk through the gate area however as soon as he crosses the boom friend quickly kicks his legs together and general faceplants the quite muddy ground making a noice later described as being a legendary mix of confusion, anger and wet muddy misery. He is then handcuffed, arrested and put in a locked room. After some time stuff is sorted out and exercise leader and a driver comes to pick up our poor general. Both are dying from laughter when they see him covered in mud from top to toe and sporting the most embarrassed sad expression a man could have. Friend is never reprimanded and actually receives a letter from said general a week or two later praising him for a good laugh and the great work he did.

[tisFrancesfault]

During an arrest of a drunk major-generals the pharses "do you know who i am!?" And "I'll end your fucking career for this!!" Are to be expected..

But all MPs should be reassured by the distance laughter of the provost marshal.

[denniswilliams]

While practicing my career in the USAF has a Law Enforcement Specialist ( E-6 Master Rating ). While on duty has a Flt Sgt I and my fellow patrol partner observed a Captain exit the officers Club that was obviously under the influence. I Took action to prevent him from driving. Which turned into a cluster " F". This officer reminded me that I was a NCO and he was Gentleman ! An Officer! A fighter pilot. I did my best to get him to give up his keys. I offered to go into the Officers Club to get another officer drive him home. This officer wouldn't have any thing to do with any assistance and demand that I let him go or he would have my five stripes. I relinquished his keys and let him depart for base housing. I notified CSC/ LE desk to contact the local law enforcement departments that our base had a possible DUI that made it off base and was heading to housing. State Police caught up and stopped this officer and gentleman two miles from the base. BAT was twice the legal limit. I did what needed to be done. This pilot lost his flight status and flew a desk for six months and I continued on.

[johndeer]

MP: don’t confuse my rank with my authority. MP’s literally have the authority of the Provost Marshal General delegated to them to carry out their mission. That’s the first and foremost thing to remember when coming in contact with an MP of ANY rank. It behooves you to remember from where their authority is derived. Chances are you probably don’t outrank the current Major General who reports directly to the Chief of Staff of the United States Army. It’s not just a trite Military saying but is literally a legitimate warning when an MP gives you the fair warning to not confuse his/her rank with his/her authority, it’s a legitimate warning that would be prudent to consider and check yourself. Of course that doesn’t mean an MP can abuse this delegated authority, when I was an MP I was very careful to never abuse any authority because it will definitely come back to bite you guaranteed and that just wasn’t my way. I was mostly “combat/anti-terrorist, etc MP” and only did some garrison MP assignments and treated people the way that I would have wanted to be treated, no regrets and no enemies (once they sobered up). I have a clear conscience. The only stuff I don’t have a clear conscience about is some missions while in Afghanistan and Iraq and other countries, we were operating too much in the gray and our ROE was pretty much do whatever especially in the beginning of Afghanistan and Iraq, also treatment of detainees, they should have never had us guarding the same detainees that we were just in a firefight with the month or so before (we did mission rotations, guarding the PUC’s/Detainees was considered a “down” rotation because we were in from the elements and firefights and just worked in the prison and had access to our tents to sleep in at night, access to a phone and a computer (notice I said a as in one, only one back then) and warm meals prepared by Army cooks then later by contractors as the post was built up and improved. Having us Guard the detainees that we captured or assisted in capturing and had fought with was a huge blunder by the brass, but, back then there weren’t enough soldiers to go around, we would travel all over those countries via airplane and helicopter because of the lack of personnel, and they had us doing missions that were really never meant for our MOS. Also, the CIA, MIA, and other OGA’s basically commanded us and made the chain-of-command a meaningless joke and nightmare which caused lots of problems in Bagram and in Abu Ghraib and other places, most of which the public will never know about.

[sharpshooter]

As i heard from the lord donut operator, the three steps in policing: ask, tell, make

[johnknapp]

I think officer wives were more of a hassle than the officers themselves. And the higher the officer the worst the wife.

[Norbrookc]

My favorite MP story was the female MP who became a legend with the enlisted on our post. She pulled over a Marine general for speeding on post, and the general tried the "Do you know who I am?" deal. Her response? "Well, Oorah sir, but you're still getting a ticket." Yes, she got reprimanded by her CO for being disrespectful, but all the enlisted on our (Army) post thought it was hysterical.