Soldier Crime Wave in U.S. Seen Fueled by Army Ignoring Distress

Is this a real problem in the military? Yes it is. It is also important to point out something that never seems to get enough attention. The vast majority of our forces return without getting into any trouble with or without PTSD. We see more and more reports of them taking their own lives than we do about crimes.

Unlike Vietnam, when they came home and all you read in your newspapers were reports of veterans getting into trouble, we now have citizen journalists making sure people learn a lot more than the "terrible" about them.

Soldier Crime Wave in U.S. Seen Fueled by Army Ignoring Distress
Elliot Blair Smith
©2012 Bloomberg News
September 14, 2012


Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Sergeant Deirdre Aguigui had been dead less than three months when a police officer alerted the Army and FBI: Her widower was stockpiling high-powered firearms.

The officer reported that Isaac Aguigui, a private on leave, bought 15 weapons at a store in East Wenatchee, Washington. His wife’s battered body had been found in their home at Fort Stewart in Georgia, and the autopsy, noting the couple had “marital problems,” said how she died was undetermined. He received $500,000 in life insurance benefits.

A relative alarmed by the purchases and unnerved by the unexplained death tipped off police, the officer, John Kruse, said. Still, Aguigui didn’t break any laws in buying the guns, and was free to return to Georgia -- where prosecutors say he amassed more firearms and committed murder.

The 21-year-old Aguigui and two other soldiers were charged Aug. 10 with killing two teenagers to conceal a plot to use $87,000 worth of munitions to blow up a fountain in Savannah, bomb a dam in Washington, overthrow the government and kill the president. Indictments four days ago widened the alleged conspiracy to a total of 10 people, eight of them current or former soldiers.

“The Army painted over something,” said Brett Roark, whose son was one of the victims, shot in the head as he knelt in a south Georgia swamp. “If they knew, it’s very wrong. If they didn’t know, they’re very stupid. Either way, a lot of people are dead and many lives are ruined.”

More sketchy recruits helped explain why violent crimes committed by active-duty soldiers at home and abroad rose 31 percent between 2006 and 2011 to 399 per 100,000 troops, according to an Army report issued in January. It found a crime is committed in the Army every six minutes, and a homicide every 63 hours, and cited growing “high-risk behavior with increasingly more severe outcomes.”

“We saw this in Vietnam -- you get these substandard troops and pretty soon you’re screwed,” said Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general who is a military consultant and analyst. “This put the military at risk.”

Assistant District Attorney Isabel Pauley said Aguigui was FEAR’s ringleader, an Army intelligence analyst who “actively recruited new members at Fort Stewart and targeted soldiers who were troubled or disillusioned.”
read more here