South Korea Based Sergeant Major Shows Up on FBI Criminal Database Despite Never Being Convicted of a Crime

This Sergeant Major in Korea faced a real nightmare upon trying to retire:

Retired Sgt. Major Eriq Brown first learned of his criminal record in 2021 during a screening for veteran disability benefits as part of his retirement from the Army. He met with a civilian psychologist in South Korea as part of a post-traumatic stress disorder screening. The psychologist asked him whether his pending criminal charge was causing him emotional distress. Brown, who spent 28 years doing human resources work in the Army, said he looked at the doctor perplexed.

Two years prior, a fellow soldier in Korea accused him of assault. She told military police that Brown in a period of three months had hit her on the back of the neck, bumped her in an on-post store at Camp Humphreys and then grabbed her arm after an event. No charges came of the accusations, according to Brown’s service record and documentation that he would later present to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records.

An officer in Brown’s chain of command with 8th Army conducted an internal investigation and found no evidence it happened — even discovering Brown wasn’t on post the day that he supposedly bumped the woman at a store, according to correction board documents. He was never arrested or detained or read his rights. There was no court-martial or nonjudicial punishment. Instead, Brown received a reprimand in his personnel file for unprofessional behavior. The letter scolded Brown for touching the woman’s neck and then reaching for her arm after she had told him that she did not want to be touched.

“You have exhibited poor judgment,” Brig. Gen. Patrick Donahoe wrote in the reprimand dated Aug. 21, 2019. Nowhere in the letter does he write Brown was arrested or committed a crime. Sitting in that doctor’s office, Brown realized none of this was behind him. The ordeal had left him with a criminal arrest listed on his background check with no resolution — as if he is still waiting to face judgment for a misdemeanor assault charge. “Think about the embarrassment of that,” said Brown, now 47. “I definitely wouldn’t let my children go in the military after this.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read much more at the link, but what is going on is that Soldiers accused of crimes are entered into an FBI data base. Later when it is found that no crime occurred their alleged crime is still showing in the FBI database as if it did occur and it is very difficult to get it removed.

Of course this is not something done in the civilian sector, but in the military this policy was enacted as an over correction from a mass shooting committed by an Air Force veteran in 2007. That veteran had a domestic violence conviction during his time in the Air Force that was not entered into the FBI database which allowed him to buy a gun. Why doesn’t the military just enter people into the database that are actually convicted of a crime?