alcohol incident effects

[skiddriver]

First, this may have changed since I was CO, and the court martial authority for my command, but you can't hold NJP without a valid UCMJ charge, even the ubiquitous "conduct unbecoming".

I never held NJP based on a civilian arrest. I did hold it for a related military offense, or uauthorized absence due to being held in civlian custody, AFTER the civilian charge was validated through a civilian court proceeding.

Whether or not to inform your command concerning the arrest is a judgment call. Unless your command/service has a standing order requiring this (and it would be hard to see how that could be the case) you are under no obligation to pass the information on. As a former squadron level CO, I would have just as soon not heard about an incident like this.

If you think you have a drinking problem and you need some help, go see the Doc. If you are being held in custody and know you are going to miss muster in the morning, you need to call the duty officer. If you get picked up on Bourbon St. for public intox and go through the NOPD "catch and release" process on Friday night, and are in the barracks Saturday afternoon nursing a hangover, take an aspirin and drink plenty of water.

 

[coexint]

rjl2001,

I got a drunk in public 3 weeks before my assignment night (USAF pilot training, T-38 Track), and got a verbal slap on the rist from my commander. Then 3 weeks later I got my first choice, A-10's to Davis-Monthan! So it wasn't that big of a deal. On another note, when I applied for a USAF pilot slot through OTS, about 2 years ago, I told them I experimented with weed in high school and I still got a slot. Keep your head up, it's probably not as bad as you think!

David

 

[ultrarunner]

Last weekend I was arrested for 'drunk in public' after my neighbor called the police and they found me passed out on my doorstep as I did not have my keys and was locked out of my apartment. Yes I was drunk, and yes I was in public I suppose by all of 1 foot.

One can't be drunk on their own property? $hit, I'll never be able to step outside again!

 

[rjl2001]

Well after looking up alcohol incident on google at work the other day, I found out a little more. It is NJP and the CG's way of dealing with all alcohol related incidents. Defined as:

Any behavior, in which alcohol is determined by the Commanding Officer to be a significant or causative factor, that results in the member's loss of ability to perform assigned duties, brings discredit upon the Uniformed Services, or is a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Federal, State, or local laws. The member need not be found guilty at court-martial, in a civilian court, or be awarded non-judicial punishment for the behavior to be considered an alcohol incident.​

Results are:​

CDAR Interview
Counseled on Policy
Next Incident; Processed for Separation
Treatment or Education as determined by screening
Appropriate Documentation
CG-3307 for Enlisted, Letter for officers

Also, it says lower marks and loss of good conduct medal I would've recieved in a few weeks. On the brighter side I passed both the CO and XO yesterday and talked for a minute with them, and this subject never came up and they didn't seem angry with me at all.

 

[skiddriver]

It sounds to me like you have decided that you are fairly caught and are going to accept the characterization of this event as an alcohol related incident. I would advise you to go speak to a CG lawyer and explain that you have retained civilian legal counsel and are going to try and have the charges thrown out, which will render the apprehension invalid.

If the charge sticks and the arrest is valid, you're stuck.

If you succeed in getting the charges dropped, then there will be no basis for the alcohol related incident characterization. You did have something to drink, but since you were locked out of your house, you fell asleep on the steps. Nowhere in that is there anything that meets the standards of "loss of ability to perform assigned duties, brings discredit upon the Uniformed Services, or is a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Federal, State, or local laws". Even if you were UA due to being held in civilian custody, if the arrest was invalid, then you have not violated any part of the UCMJ. The civilian LEO screwed up, that's all there is to it.

Your CO is not going to want to "undo" the characterization, so get the military lawyer to help you with that. If you need to bump it up the chain, do it.

Good luck.

And OBTW, it's not NJP, it's an administrative procedure. The CO has to hold mast for it to be NJP, and for that, you have to be charged with a UCMJ offense. Were you?

 

[Falconjet]

First off let me say that I am not trying to judge you or anybody else on this board. This is a case, though, where you have to be careful about assuming that the way things worked in your service is the way they work in another service, particularly the CG.

An alcohol incident in the CG, as described above from the google search, is just that, an INCIDENT. There don't have to be any charges of any kind ever filed. You could mouth off at a senior officer during a unit softball game and if somebody thinks you did it because you had a few too many beers, that can be determined to be an alcohol related incident. It doesn't normally happen like that, but it can.

It is an administrative determination that goes into your service record via fitness report or enlisted evaluation, and that is about the end of it. All they are saying is that you demonstrated some behavior that you wouldn't have if you hadn't been under the influence of alcohol. Thats it. No arrest, no charges, no conviction, nothing. They became aware of the behavior and they documented it and now they are going to try to "help" you with the alcohol screening and whatnot. Believe it or not, they are trying to help you because you have demonstrated a behavior which indicates you might be heading down the road to alcoholism, and they want to nip it in the bud. Is that warranted? Probably not, but that is the way it goes now in the hyper politically correct CG. The good news is that after its all said and done none of this should follow you outside of the CG.

As for the drunk in public charge, that is a different matter altogether. Getting a civilian lawyer to help you with that is certainly excellent advice. The CG doesn't have many lawyers, and they aren't detailed to help CG personnel with personal legal issues, they are there to serve the CG's legal needs. You might be able to find a local reserve/DOD lawyer who can help you if there is a unit nearby that has some, but knowing how small and remote many CG units are I realize that would be unlikely.

Hopefully you can get a lawyer to get the town to drop or reduce the charges, you can get past the alcohol incident in your record, get out of the CG and go on to do great things. This should only be a small learning experience in the big scheme of things.

I've seen officers and enlisted do much worse things while under the influence that never got an incident, but times have changed and as others said, you just happened to get caught. Hopefully it was a one time, isolated occurance and you will be fine.

Good luck.

FJ

 

[skiddriver]

I actually pulled up the USCG publication and read the applicable parts before I posted. It is essentially the same as the USMC program (no surprise there) except a change has specified that you have to have actually ingested alcohol to have an incident characterized as alcohol related. I'm sure that there was a reason for that change, probably an incredibly stupid CO.

I referred folks to evaluation and characterized several incidents as alcohol related as a squadron level CO (mini-MAG O-5 command). It is not as benign as this young man is being lead to believe, and he has options that have not been presented to him. He needs to work with his civilian lawyer, and go see a military one.

Any administrative procedure that has the potential to reduce proficiency and conduct marks and to deny receipt of a good conduct medal is not something to shrug off, or to blithely accept being stuck in your permanent record.

My .02 cents.

 

[Pistlpetet]

Heck, sounds like you would fit right in! Wish you were in my squadron. If this had happened to an Officer we would be joking about it for the rest of his time in the squadron. The only difference is you got caught. Maybe he'd even get a really cool callsign out of it. Something like "convict" or maybe "doormat". The only real killer now is the dreaded DUI...

I vote for Call Sign "Doormat"...LOL