Task Force Raptor: Motivated by Money

In 2012 the US Army Criminal Investigative Command created Task Force Raptor to investigate the soldiers who participated in Guard Recruiting Assistance Program.  Task Force Raptor consists of roughly 200 CID agents who are pulled from Active Duty, Reserves and the civilian sector.  These agents were ordered to investigate all 109,000 Recruiting Assistance Program participants, starting with those who received the highest funds first and then to start working their way down.  To date these agent’s actions have lead to the prosecution of thousands of soldiers.  However, it’s not always done legally.

The participants of Task Force Raptor are comprised of a large majority of Reserve Army Soldiers and civilian contractors.  That means these individuals are given the job of finding and prosecuting soldiers and once they can’t find anyone else to prosecute they will lose their jobs.  That means many of these agents are motivated by money and job security to ensure that soldiers who participated in the G-RAP program are prosecuted.  As an analog, that would be like policemen being told that as long as they arrested people who drive cars for grand-theft auto they would keep their jobs.  If that were the case there is no doubt we would instantly see a national increase of people being arrested and or prosecuted for grand-theft auto.

One must also question the cost of Task Force Raptor.  If Task Force Raptor has been going since 2012 with 200 working agents and each agent makes at least $50,000/year then tax payers are forking over $10,000,000/year just to keep the agents paid while they attempt to prosecute innocent soldiers.  That means since 2012 Task Force Raptor has cost tax payers $30,000,000 in CID agent salary alone and that’s a very conservative number.  What’s not included in that number is the cost to fly or drive the agents around the country to interview witnesses, their hotel rooms, their per diem, housing allowance and all of the other costs that go into an investigation.

The other intrinsic issue with Task Force Raptor is that it isn’t comprised of a Task Force of highly trained FBI agents who understand white-collar crime and know the norms of prosecution, investigation and what constitutes an actual crime.  Instead, these are reserve CID agents who could be just out of basic training and are used to busting small-scale crimes on local bases or on overseas deployments.  As a result the investigations are riddled with errors; CID agents often prosecute individuals who are innocent.  These agents are also pressured by the US military to ensure ongoing prosecutions or they will lose their job and be forced back into a reserve status.