The Army is deactivating police units in deep cuts to number of military cops
The shuttering of a military police battalion at Fort Drum, New York, this week marks the latest in a string of two dozen Army MP units closed in the last 18 months.
The Army has already inactivated nine military police companies and 15 detachments. By fiscal year 2027, the service is slated to inactivate one MP brigade, four MP battalions, 15 MP companies and four detachments.
The deep cuts in the number of soldiers serving as police continue a two-decade trend of reductions that have cut the Army's corps of military police nearly in half, from roughly 14,000 to 8,000. That drop has accelerated in the last two years, with at least nine police companies and 15 detachments closed. The 91st Military Police Battalion on Fort Drum, New York, became the latest and largest unit to be inactivated on June 13, saying goodbye the same day it celebrated its 80-year anniversary.
'While we inactivated from over 700 strong to just under 200 left on Fort Drum, we have done incredible feats,' Lt. Col. Richard Sposito, the battalion commander, said at the ceremony.
The battalion was activated and then inactivated several times over its lifetime. It was first established in France for three months during World War II, twice more during the Korean and Vietnam wars, and then most recently at the upstate New York base in 2005. It's MP units deployed to support wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and in 2022 to Poland.
Most recently, the 91st sent soldiers twice to the southern border.
The Army's current reduction in police units and manpower began in February 2024 when the Army announced it would stand down military police units as part of force structure changes. An Army official told Task & Purpose that the reduction will eventually shutter one military police brigade, four battalions, 15 companies and four law enforcement detachments.
The closed units include three companies under the 97th Military Police Battalion at Fort Riley, Kansas, the 759th Military Police Battalion at Fort Carson, Colorado and the 42nd Military Police Brigade at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, along with smaller detachments in Hawaii and Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
The Army-wide reductions will also mean a drop in total military police jobs across the Army, which has been an ongoing trend for close to two decades. There are currently around 8,000 military police soldiers across the Army with 8,500 positions authorized for the upcoming fiscal year, according to Army officials, down from close to 10,000 in 2020. In fiscal year 2007, the Army had 14,000 authorized military police soldier billets.
The cuts in police jobs also come after rollbacks in other career fields. In March 2024, the service asked 3,000 cavalry scouts and military police to reclassify into air defense and artillery jobs but allowed some MPs with specific skill identifiers for close security of high-risk individuals, investigations, and traffic management to reenlist or extend their service.
'Military Police structure has been reallocated to align critical capability to the priority theaters and support [large-scale combat operations] while preserving and in some cases adding to installation commander law enforcement missions and capabilities,' a spokesperson for the Army told Task & Purpose.
MPs have long staddled two distinct roles — traditional law enforcement on base and combat support. With fewer police, those still in those roles will now focus more closely on their role as professional police, according to officials.
Col. Jeremy Kerfoot, commander of the 89th Military Police Brigade, which is based out of Fort Hood, Texas, and oversees battalions at five bases, described the changes to his brigade in a September 2024 ceremony as 'creating a more professional soldier that's not torn between jumping from law enforcement to combat support and back.'
Kerfoot said MPs would stay at an installation for two to three years at a time with more law enforcement-specific training on investigations, traffic management, and crime prevention.
'All of these protection and policing skills will be added to the repertoire by having more permanence in the law enforcement mission for each soldier that joins our law enforcement companies at installations,' he said in 2024.
The changes also come as the Army hires more civilians to fill the roles of on-base law enforcement.
'In recent years, U.S. Army Military Police personnel have been deployed to high-threat areas in significant numbers. As a result, the Department of the Army has increased the number of civilian police and guards to protect Army garrisons and to guard critical secured facilities,' according to a website by the Federal Law Enforcement Training Accreditation, which maintains training standards for departments across the U.S., including the Army Civilian Police Academy at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
Another major milestone came when the command tasked with investigating on-base crimes involving soldiers became the Army Criminal Investigation Division with its first civilian in charge — Gregory Ford, a former criminal investigator for the Navy, IRS, and an FBI terrorism task force.
'Historically, the organization was viewed as an Army command tasked with law enforcement duties. We must now clearly establish CID as an elite federal law enforcement agency that operates within and in support of the Department of the Army,' Ford said at his September 2021 swearing-in ceremony.
The role of the modern military police has ranged from performing traditional law enforcement roles on base to doing combat support operations like detaining prisoners of war. In recent months, MP soldiers have been tasked with conducting patrols on foot and tracking migrant crossings with surveillance technology at the U.S. southern border. Earlier this month, the 49th Military Police Brigade of the California National Guard was ordered to lead Guard mobilizations in Los Angeles in the wake of immigration protests.
In large-scale operations, the Army envisions MPs doing security for logistics, a major focus for the service if a conflict breaks out in the Pacific, where dispersed island chains and vast stretches of ocean make moving supplies more difficult.
'Protected logistics ensures the prompt arrival of priority supplies to frontlines, which increases endurance and prevents culmination. Small, dispersed units on a future battlefield will have no emergency supply reserves with which to continue operations in case of a missed resupply window,' Brig. Gen. Sarah Albrycht, the Army's provost marshal general, wrote in a summer 2024 letter to the force featured in The Dragoon, the official MP magazine.
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