USAF Relieves 737th Training Group Commander

[bg]

Right up the chain.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...d06_story.html

AUSTIN, Texas — The fallout from a sex scandal at Lackland Air Force Base widened Friday, when the military ousted the top commander over the basic training unit where investigators say dozens of female recruits were sexually assaulted or harassed by their male instructors.

Col. Glenn Palmer had arrived at Lackland last year and was in charge when allegations involving more than a dozen instructors began to mount within his 737th training group. Collen McGee, spokeswoman for the Lackland training wing, said it was decided the unit needed new leadership.

“But Col. Palmer did not create the environment that created the misconduct,” McGee said.

Military prosecutors have investigated more than a dozen instructors at Lackland and charged six with crimes ranging from rape to adultery. Officials said Palmer was not facing any criminal charges and that his new assignment had not yet been determined...

[david1833]

Sounds like the AF needed a fall guy.

[Ferret_LE426]

Oh look lol we are doing something " shoot him". "Who?". Oh I don't care just some one .
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[Jeff82]

Where's the old commander??

[bg]

Where's the old commander??

I believe he's producing porn flicks now.

[Old All American]

Sounds like the AF needed a fall guy.

Exactly - straight out of "Catch-22"

[SOWT]

The relieved Commander was a Career Combat Controller, Enlisted CCT, then Commissioned.

He probably was the Fall Guy, but he may have been too hands off and that was his downfall.

[JoBa]

Although our Commander in Chief has set the example of blaming the wrongs he has inherited on the previous commander, then doing nothing about it as being the correct way of being a leader, it would seem that he does not approve of such things in the ranks below him.

Myself, I honestly believe that if you accept a command, you also accept it's problems, with the understanding that as the new commander, you will fix them. Like our President, this commander failed in that mission. It was right that he was replaced.

Blaming the wrongs of a previous commander for the failures of your command is plain bullshit. If you accept a command, your now responsible for all of it.

Fuck the guy, he failed, he should be replaced. He was not a commander.

-John

[Jeff82]

I'm not saying he should not be canned for it was his command and he held responsibility. What I am saying is the other commander should also go down as this (if proven) started on his command.

[JoBa]

I think this needs to be put in the perspective of an infantry squad. You get promoted to buck Sgt. E-5. You are told you are now the squad leader of the fourth squad. You go and meet your new troops, they are all ten percenters, every one of them.

Do you wine and cry because they gave you a shity squad? Do you wine and cry about the previous squad leader who just didn't give a shit?

Or..... do you go to work and turn it into a combat ready squad?

This analogy holds true be it a squad, a platoon, an aircraft carrier, even a country. If you accept a position, it is your job to make things right, no matter what your predecessors might have done. They are gone, what they did is ancient history and has nothing to do with anything.

Even if the squad you accepted is the greatest squad in the world, and needs no leader, you still are expected to lead it, maintain it, keep it the best. Two years after you take comand and it is voted the best squad in the world once again, are you going to say "no, no, I had nothing to do with it, it was my predecessor that did all this work, not me."

What happens after you accept the command is all that counts......period.

-John

[SOWT]

I think this needs to be put in the perspective of an infantry squad. You get promoted to buck Sgt. E-5. You are told you are now the squad leader of the fourth squad. You go and meet your new troops, they are all ten percenters, every one of them.

Do you wine and cry because they gave you a shity squad? Do you wine and cry about the previous squad leader who just didn't give a shit?

Or..... do you go to work and turn it into a combat ready squad?

This analogy holds true be it a squad, a platoon, an aircraft carrier, even a country. If you accept a position, it is your job to make things right, no matter what your predecessors might have done. They are gone, what they did is ancient history and has nothing to do with anything.

Even if the squad you accepted is the greatest squad in the world, and needs no leader, you still are expected to lead it, maintain it, keep it the best. Two years after you take comand and it is voted the best squad in the world once again, are you going to say "no, no, I had nothing to do with it, it was my predecessor that did all this work, not me."

What happens after you accept the command is all that counts......period.

-John

No, there is a small grace period (usually about 90 days) where you show progress.

Imagine the EDRE hits 5 days after taking over and Dud Squad fails to perform, holding a new leader responsible is acceptable; firing him for failure would be premature at this point.

My guess is the Col got used to working with Type A Personalities, and didn't realize he was surrounded by Types D's.
If you want to say failure on his part, then we agree. The previous Commander can still be held accountable if the actions started, or ran through his Command Time. He can get a GOMR that is a career killer, and they can suggest or arrange a retirement option.

I haven't seen anything that dictates how long the abuse went on, and that actually concerns me.

[Ferret_LE426]

This is nothing new. The Airforce Academy had this issue in the early 2000's. I think some of this revolves around the Airforce attitude with mid level NCO's
We joke about Big Blue but there is some truth. I hope this is a wake up call for others. The problem is, that there are great guys and gals doing a great job but will not receive attention because of crap like this.
Willy was an Army Officer at the Airforce Academy. He had to weed out the attitude that after classes it was ok for NCO and Cadets to "Mingle" He stated that he had to stomp hard and long to weed it out of his Wing. He also noted that once things were established it did not become an issue.

[JoBa]

No, there is a small grace period (usually about 90 days) where you show progress.

Imagine the EDRE hits 5 days after taking over and Dud Squad fails to perform, holding a new leader responsible is acceptable; firing him for failure would be premature at this point.

My guess is the Col got used to working with Type A Personalities, and didn't realize he was surrounded by Types D's.
If you want to say failure on his part, then we agree. The previous Commander can still be held accountable if the actions started, or ran through his Command Time. He can get a GOMR that is a career killer, and they can suggest or arrange a retirement option.

I haven't seen anything that dictates how long the abuse went on, and that actually concerns me.

That is why I said this; "Or..... do you go to work and turn it into a combat ready squad?"

However when I took over my squad, there was no mention of any sort of a grace period. I did have a sense of urgency to find out just how good or bad they were. My first few weeks was what could be described as somewhat busy and probably a little hard on the squad, but it was a combat ready squad, or at least to my own satisfaction in that short period.

I was fairly lucky, there were no duds among them. What I did to make it up to them was, once a month, I would have them get ready for payday inspection two days before payday, then on the eve of payday inspection when the rest of the platoon was busting their asses getting ready, I took my squad out to a field near Yamoto DZ. I provided the beer, I wore a stripe-less blouse. This was when we could hash shit out, if anyone had any complaints about my leadership, this was when they could try and sort it out with me without any fear of retribution.

The results were amazing, so much so that the other squad leaders started doing the same thing.

We had a very high moral platoon in just a few months. During the summer of that year we had a one day, forced full gear march, up to Kentucky Lake, fifty some odd miles. The platoon who made it intact would have all their beer paid for by the other platoons for the five days of R&R we were to receive upon arriving. My platoon was the weapons platoon, we had the heaviest equipment, we were the only platoon to make it intact.

I don't know if allowing the troops to have a once a month opportunity to even the score with their squad leaders had anything to do with it, but I think it did. One thing for sure, we thought real hard about how we did our leading.

As a side note, none of my squad ever took advantage of that opportunity. We really did sit around our campfire, drink beer, and bullshit about ways to make our squad better...or chicks....we'd bullshit more about chicks if I remember right. I think what was important was they knowing they could if they wanted.

-John

[Old All American]

I just re-read the article and perhaps there are folks here who know more about the situation than I but it looks to me as if the CO inherited a bad situation and was taking (or trying to take) steps to square away his command with actions like his talks with new recruits and trying to get them to adopt a "neighborhood watch" mentality of recruits looking out for each other. The fact it appears from the article that most of the busts began occurring after his arrival seems to show he was taking positive measures to turn the situation around. Perhaps his aggressive prosecution and the embarassment the publicity from the prosecutions may have had as much to do with his relief as the initial incidents. Did he bust the culprits too publicly so that the AF felt it had to do something publicly to get the blame off the service?

I totally agree with above comments about a new commander not being responsible for the condition his/her unit is in when command is assumed but has a limited time frame to correct it. That often depends on the patience of the chain of command. I learned a lesson in that which stood me in good stead when I came back on active duty in 1980 and was assigned to a firing battery in XVIII Corps Arty that had flunked BOTH an AGI and MET within two weeks of the new battery commander taking over. When I arrived at the unit about three weeks after we were preparing for re-inspection. The NCOs and married troops had just gotten their overnight pass privileges back but we were still having 1800 work call formations so we could be marched back to the motor pool to get the vehicles covered (at least on paper) for the re-inspection. As the BC (Battery Commander) later told me, he knew they wouldn't blame him for the initial failures, but he'd better NOT fail the re-inspection. We didn't. When I took over a problem section I remembered his example and motto: "If you assholes think I'm bullshitting, I'll have your WIVES in here on Saturday!"

It appears as if our AF CO's time had run out for whatever reason. For the good of the corps, of course...