The Sub Base Nazis

These days, most naval facilities are guarded by civilian rent-a-cops. While I do have some great stories about them, today I'm thinking of a simpler time when Sub Base Pearl had a security force made up primarily of enlisted guys on shore duty. They had a tough job, since they were a natural target for all us disgruntled submariners who some would say tended to drink to excess. Add to that the fact that most of the "cops" were skimmers, and you can just imagine the crap they took trying to keep the peace on the mean streets of Pearl.

Things came to a head one night when security stopped a couple of A-gangers off the Buffalo who were staggering home from Beeman's. We don't know exactly what happened, but one of them managed to steal the "police" car (in reality just another white Navy sedan with a bubble light) and took it for a drunken joy ride all around the Air Force base next door. Even though no one was hurt, the base command freaked out and bought in some hard-ass skimmer lieutenant to take over the security team.

Things got bad in a hurry. The first thing they changed was their whole look - rather than wearing the normal Navy uniforms with arm bands, they started walking around in these all-black stormtrooper outfits, complete with gun and badge. Then their vehicles got repainted to look like real cop cars, and after a few months that's exactly who they thought they were.

Where before the security guys would only hassle you if it looked like you were up to no good (which was often, I'll admit), these new guys would randomly stop anyone not wearing khaki and check their IDs. They started searching the barracks on a weekly basis with the biggest, meanest dogs you ever saw - at first for drugs, but then just to be pricks. We even had guys busted for talking back when security stopped them, which is damn-near a birth right for submariners. And, if they did pick you up, chances are you were going to get the snot knocked out of you on the way to the brig. The Navy, as it so often does, had gone from one extreme to the other.

We complained, but nothing happened until the day they made the mistake of arresting our CO.

One of the things he liked to do was go running at lunch time. At first, all the JO's were jogging with him (never miss an opportunity to shine a little ass, as they say), but the XO put a stop to that in a hurry. He pointedly remarked that, if they had time to go jogging during the normal working day, they obviously weren't all that busy. So the CO ended up jogging alone on North Road most days, which is what he was doing when base security stopped him.

They asked to see his ID, which was a problem because he'd left his wallet in his stateroom. Rather than just escorting him back to the boat (where one assumes they could easily confirm his identity) they instead chose to put the cuffs on him and take him to jail. You might think it's sort of ballsy for a pair of E-4's to arrest a senior Captain in the middle of a Navy base, but the CO never told them who he was.

Our CO was known for this sort of thing. When we got a new ensign, our CO usually picked him up at the airport himself, wearing an enlisted uniform he borrowed from one of the cones. Then he would complain about how crappy the boat was all the way back, just to see what the new butterbar would do. When the security Nazis started hassling him, the CO decided to see what would happen if they thought he was just another blueshirt.

The skipper ended up spending about an hour in jail. Of course, when he didn't come back from his run, the XO and the COB went looking for him. But, by the time they found out he'd been apprehended, the CO was already a free man.

When they arrested him, the base cops told our captain to call his command and tell them what had happened. So that's just what he did: our CO called his CO, the commodore who ran Squadron One, and explained that he'd been arrested while exercising because he didn't have his ID card on him. Instead of just calling back and chewing some ass, the commodore instead called up the CO of Sub Base (who he outranked by a considerable amount) and asked him to go for a little ride.

When all this brass converged on the security office at the same time, the "cops" therein practically busted a gut getting the old man out of his cell. But the damage was done. The Sub Base CO took away all their fancy uniforms and put them back in whites, sans badges, guns, and cop cars. Their lieutenant was quietly replaced with a no-bullshit Senior Chief shortly thereafter, and they went back to writing parking tickets and rounding up drunks on Saturday nights. I'm assuming that busting our CO was not exactly career-enhancing, but who knows?