I am a prior enlisted Marine medium and heavy machinegun infantryman and I was in the Security Forces for 2 yrs while in the Marine Corps.
In the Security Forces, my duties were the same as your security duties as described on this forum.
I was seriously thinking about joining the AF Security Forces until I started reading this forum. Most people are saying that I will be looking at more security duty than LE duty.
I will be completing my AA in Criminal Justice soon and could easily finish my BA and join a Federal Agency if all I am going to do is stand guard. My GPA is a 3.59 currently and I have an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps. I also served in Iraq in Feb.-Jun 2003.
I do like the structured life of the military and was going to choose the AF to re-enlist in, since I believe the AF has a better quality of life. Plus the recruiter said you deploy no more than 4 months.
Obviously from hearing many of you speak, the recruiter was lying and I could find myself deploying 6 months or so out of every year. Not only that, but I will be standing guard, instead of being a LE officer like I want. Maybe this would be different for me since I am already an E-4, will have a degree, but I imagine other E-4's will get preference over me, since they served their time on post already.
Anyways, getting off topic. In the Army, I believe MP's perform mostly LE duties. That is what the recruiter said, but I don't trust recruiters completely. However, I have read the article written by an Army MP on about.com on how life is as an MP. So that is both the recruiter and 1 other person who says MP's are actual police officers in the Army.
My only concern is their quality of life. So I am asking you all which would you recommend. The AF Security Forces or the Army MP's. I will post this in the Army forums to get both point of views.
Either way, I plan to finish my BA in Criminal Justice in the military. The main reason I would join the military instead of going civilian PD right now, which I could, is because if I don't like LE duties in the military, I can always get a BA degree in another discipline while I am still employed. If I decided I didn't like LE work as a civilian PO after spending 4 yrs getting a BA, I would be pretty screwed.
What's this about only deploying for 4 months? I'm not even a Hua and I'm going on a 6 month deployment. As far as quality of life is concerned, we have a much better one. I've stopped by Army Forts and they're nothing compared to the AF Bases I've been on.
Your chances of getting LE duties are roughly the same in the Army MPs as in the Air Force SFs.
As are your chances of deploying. Except for the Army six months is a dream.
Treatment of Army personnel is on par with how Marines are treated (minus the four up bunks on ships). Treatment of Air Force personnel, even Security Forces, is somewhat better than how Navy personel on non-sea duty are treated.
