Posted on Jul 6, 2016
I'm thinking about switching MOS's to 31B. Advice?
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I want to know the day to day life of an active duty MP, and the benefits of getting out with the experience of an MP in the civilian world.
Posted 8 y ago
Responses: 11
Depending on where you want to live after the service MP training can get you directly hired in several Civilian Police Departments. If you want to move to a certain area that doesn't accept the training it may not help but if you are open to living anywhere then it will.
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Being an MP is a lot like other MOSs in that you will always have good and bad units, and good and bad leadership. What type of leadership you have is what will decide how well your time in the MP corps goes. If you are working law enforcement, youll find it varies from place to place in how much fun it is. For example, when I was in Korea, there was very little crime to deal with so working the road could be pretty boring, but here at Fort Hood, there is always something going on. Our day to day activities when we are not doing law enforcement include a lot of busy work. After weekly maintenance is done there isn't always a whole lot to do so sometimes you'll end up with your leadership finding random useless tasks to pass the time. If you're not in a detachment like MPI, CID, or K9 (the latter two are their own MOS) you'll also go to the field a lot. MPs have a vastly different combat role from our garrison role. We train on a lot of convoy escorts, route recon, cordon and search, and detainee ops. Being an MP has a lot of cool aspects. I'm still in so I don't know first hand how much MP experience helps with getting a civilian police job, but I've heard that it varies from place to place. Apparently some departments look well upon prior military police experience, whereas some don't because they don't want you coming in with bad habits.
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WO1 (Join to see)
I was a civilian police officer prior to joining the Army and I can tell you there is a night and day difference in the jobs from paperwork to actual patrols. Being a mp at most garrison installations you are a bonifed security guard with a gun. God forbid you write a O6 spouse a ticket and it gets tossed. Too much PC when it comes to being a MP.
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I agree with some of the other post in that the knowledge and experience that you gain as a Military Police will definitely benefit you in civilian law enforcement if you are in an MP unit that does law enforcement. There are so many areas of specialty that you can go into. I have worked both civilian and military law enforcement as well as corrections in various states and I can say that the qualifications and paperwork vary. I've found that we had way more documents in the military. Your experience will definitely equate to college courses whereas some states require criminal justice courses as part of their academy requirements. If you decide to switch once you've gotten acclimated I recommend getting as many schools as you can such as Military Police Investigations, K-9 and or traffic school. I found my nitch in investigations and I was heavily recruited when I left active duty the first time. I even had civilian departments wiling to sponsor me for academy. So if law enforcement is your goal I encourage you to join the MP Corp and make the most of it. Get all the benefits and experience you can and make yourself marketable. Set high goals for yourself and good luck!
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