In the late 1980’s I was the senior investigator, (military), on an aircraft carrier. Because of the size of the ship, NIS, (later name changed to NCIS), had an agent assigned to the ship.
When ever there was a crime such as a major robbery, assault resulting in major injuries, etc., I was required to report the crime to the NIS agent for him to decide if he was going to investigate it. Many times he would decline.
One case was a robbery of the ship store daily receipts of around $15,000. The ship store custodian and his supervisor were assaulted in a passageway and robbed by two masked sailors. The ship was at sea and not scheduled to hit port for another six weeks.
Th NIS agent declined to investigate because there was no obvious way to identify the culprits. I took the case on and after 45 days had developed information that led to searching of a storage box in a secluded storeroom and recovering the stolen money and arresting the two sailors involved.
The NIS agent then demanded that the Captain order me to give him the case file, remove my name from it as the lead investigator and designate him with that title. The Captain refused and I eventually got a conviction by court martial through the base Legal Office, (JAG).
NIS agents are not the brightest bulbs, especially once the Navy decided that they all had to have college degrees in order to qualify for the job.
Yeah...I remember when they were called NIS.
I was on a carrier, and we had an expensive piece of equipment disappear (it was an intake screen) which was anonymously reported to have been thrown over the side in a fit of anger.
They had NIS investigating, and they interviewed everyone in my shop. I think everyone probably knew who did it (I had my guess, and it was the same as everyone else’s) but nobody was interested in ratting the guy out.
He wasn’t a bad guy, but was known to have an extremely bad temper, which I can personally vouch for. He was a big guy, with a bushy black beard. He didn’t show up for his shift one morning, so my Petty Officer sent me to wake him up. I tried to get him up, but he refused...I grabbed one of his big toes and gave a slight gentle shake and said “Come on, just get up...”
And he did, leaping out of his rack and advancing menacingly at me while he yelled “YOU DON’T TOUCH MY F***ING TOES! YOU TOUCH MY TOES AGAIN AND I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.” Then he climbed back into his rack.
I went back to my shop and told the 1st Class in charge that he wouldn’t get out of bed, so he says “Come on.” and walks back towards the berthing space.
As we entered the compartment, he reached over without slowing down and pulled a swab in a bucket of black, dirty water, and walked over to the rack. Using the swab, he shoved aside the guy’s blue curtain (that stupid little 3x4 foot “curtain” that goes next to your head) and began shoving the swab in the guy’s face saying “Come on ****, get up outta that rack. Get up.”
The guy leaped out of his rack ready to kill someone with filthy water streaming down his face, his fists balled, but when he saw it was the 1st Class, he just stopped, blinking the water out of his eyes.
I swear, if it had been me, he really would have beaten the snot out of me, but when he saw it was the 1st Class...he couldn’t do anything.
Anyway...he wasn’t a bad guy, really. He just had a really bad temper. Anyway, even though nobody approved of throwing that intake screen over the side, nobody knew for sure, so they weren’t going to even mention his name.
You know what I am talking about, right, the “good of the service” thing?
Heh, my dad was career Navy, and was the type of guy who would have fallen on his sword for the good of the service if the situation was right, but I remember my mom would get really angry about that concept when she heard it mentioned...her eyes would flash with real honest to goodness Italian/Armenian anger while she held that cigarette in one hand!
She had no patience for that at all!