A Day in the Life: Military Police

FORT SILL, Okla. (TNN) -In this A Day in the Life segment we’re highlighting the different divisions of the military police on Fort Sill, from desk sergeants, to traffic accident investigators, and military police investigators. 7 News Anchor Makenzie Burk found out what type of training is required to be a military police officer, and what their divisions do.

To be a military police officer, you must first complete your 9 weeks of basic training, and then Advanced individual training which is focused on law enforcement.

Anthony Santos is a 40th MP Detachment Sergeant. He says, the job of a military police officer is never routine.

“Every traffic stop or every contact we make with somebody from the public, it’s always different,” said Santos. “Whether that’s community policing, making contact with somebody in the PX, getting a vibe for how things happen or what’s going on on the installation.”

The desk sergeants work to update and brief the higher ups on post about any incidents involving soldiers, traffic accident investigators work anything from minor traffic accidents to fatalities. Santos says it’s a lot of fun piecing together how the accidents happened.

“Figuring out how fast someone was going just based off their skid marks before the two vehicles made contact,” said Santos. “Math has always been a lot of fun in order to figure out stuff like that.”

And the military police investigators, like Sgt. River McAnally, investigate criminal activity.

Sgt. McAnally says he enjoys being an investigator because he gets to see the final result of cases.

“It’s further in depth with the investigation,” said McAnally. “Because typically, if you just work the road, you respond to it and you hand it over to the investigators. So it’s nice to be able to see the final outing of all the cases and stuff.”

McAnally says being a military police officer can be difficult with the situations they’ve come across, but it’s rewarding.

“I enjoy just taking care of people in general,” said McAnally. “Not necessarily just soldiers. So it’s nice to be able to go out and interact with all sorts of people and get their advice and their experiences, but being able to relay that to other people that are in trouble and in need. And helping them in any way I can.”

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