Deputizing
The Commanding Officer may deputize the Executive Officer, Auxiliary Support Officer, Staff Officers or Synthethic to make arrests and enforce Marine Law should MPs be unavailable or unable to respond in a timely manner. When Deputized, one is required to follow Marine Law like an MP.
Commanding Officer: A whitelisted USCM Commanding Officer. Anything with the words Commanding Officer only applies to Whitelisted USCM Commanding Officers. These rights cannot be transferred.
Commander: The current Commander of this ship. Anything that mentions the Commander also applies to acting Commanders. These rights are transferable to any new Commander, proceeding down the Chain of Command.
I propose we change Commanding Officer to Commander in the military law section regarding deputizing. In a lower population situation where there are no MPs to deal with a military law concern there usually isn’t a whitelisted role like a Commanding Officer to deputize someone.
I also would suggest that the roles allowed to be deputized should be less limited (maybe make it so only the Commanding Officer can deputize people outside of the XO, ASO, SOs, or Synth).
5 Likes
I agree with the “commander” change, but disagree with the broadening of roles.
Command at the very least carries some degree of authority. Sending a Squad Leader, Doctor, or Engineer out to do an arrest sounds like trouble.
3 Likes
MPs are Sergeant or Lance Corporals so I wouldn’t want to limit it by rank. It makes less sense to me for you to tell a staff office an arrest instead of a PFC. I’m guessing it is the policing skill that’s holding this back really. We could give the deputized people without policing skills wooden batons.
My own personal issue is “don’t send anybody you would miss if they were stomped to death in a riot” combined with “don’t send anybody without rank or combat skills” excludes the majority of the ship, with Command therefore being less about rank, and more about an IC and OOC “Oh . . . maybe I can’t PB this person to death because they wanted to arrest me for DASO and get away with it . . .”
For the record, squad leader used to be capable of doing arrests, and still has leftover bits of kit (zipcuffs) from that era. They were in the past a bit of an insubordination wrangler. Or, they were meant to be able to be. Not that a whole lot of people actually DID that…
Don’t quote me, but I’ve read some staff member state in recent memory that a Squad Leader “can” arrest another Marine, but they must still adhere to the arrest guidelines/procedures while doing so. Of course, SL’s lack most equipment to pull off an arrest outside of zipties, and generally the only time I’d expect to see a SL arresting a Marine is if the Marine is being a literal shitter and a MP is not present to resolve it.
My contention isn’t “the SL has never and should never be the arrester”, instead, “the SL heavily relies on people liking them in order to succeed and having your boss arrest a buddy and then lead you into a charge is a bad idea”.
The idea behind this change is to give the acting commander more tools to handle issues during low pop situations. Sometimes an arrest must be made but there are no MPs. It is dumb that the captain cannot deputize a staff officer to legally make an arrest.
I also feel like while it may not be your first choice, if you take a CLF prisoner on the planet, the Captain should be able to place the same private that escorted him up there to watch the brig until something changes.