The Army is in search of to revoke the Special Forces tab of a retired colonel who was arrested in 2020 for home violence, Process & Goal has discovered.
1st Special Forces Command has initiated motion to revoke the tab of retired Col. Owen Ray, in line with an official inside U.S. Army Particular Operations Command. Ray, the previous commander of 1st Special Forces Group, was arrested and charged with home violence and assault in 2020 after a two-hour standoff with police. On the time of his arrest, Ray was serving because the chief of employees of I Corps at Joint Base Lewis McChord, Washington. He was finally authorised for an honorable discharge in 2021 and retired.
The revocation of his Special Forces tab is an effort to clarify that Ray’s actions “don’t signify the Special Forces group or the excessive requirements we count on in the neighborhood,” the official stated. The motion has been despatched to Ray and his attorneys, who’ve till the tip of subsequent week to submit a rebuttal.
Jared Ausserer, an lawyer who represents Ray on his civilian prison prices however will not be representing him on the revocation of his tab, confirmed that the Army has initiated the method. Efforts to succeed in Ray and his army attorneys have been unsuccessful.
Ray was arrested within the early morning hours of Dec. 27, 2020, after he allegedly threatened his spouse with a handgun of their residence. In response to charging papers first reported by the Tacoma News Tribune, he and his spouse have been arguing when she hid from him of their youngest baby’s bed room. She heard him say “let’s do that,” in line with the News Tribune, earlier than he went to the storage “the place he saved his weapons.”
He allegedly got here again into their baby’s bed room and have become “livid when she known as police.” The cost sheets stated that Ray pointed a gun at his spouse and proceeded to kick her “time and again along with his boots within the face and chest.”
“The 2 kids had woken up and have been screaming, ‘Don’t kill mother, don’t shoot us,’” the cost sheets stated, in line with the News Tribune.
Ray “refused to conform” with orders from law enforcement officials upon their arrival to the house, and “refused to disarm or give up” as his household was evacuated. He finally surrendered and was taken into custody two hours after police arrived. He was charged with two counts of assault within the second diploma with a firearm, two counts of felony harassment, kidnapping within the first diploma, and reckless endangerment.
Complaints about Ray’s habits predate the 2020 incident. An Inspector Common grievance from his time as the first Special Forces Group commander accused him of making a “poisonous command local weather” and “setting expectations that everybody ought to act like him.”
“He exacerbates this expectation by shaming folks in public and berating them,” a press release included within the IG grievance stated, in line with Army Occasions. “Moreover, he often overreacts on little info and has emotional outbursts.”
In an op-ed in The Cipher Transient final November — a media outlet targeted on nationwide safety, in line with its web site — Ray pointed to deteriorating psychological well being and post-traumatic stress dysfunction as causes behind the occasions of December 2020. He stated he “suffered at nighttime and I might not preserve the warrior, chief and household expectations.” He was “devastated” and “confused” after his arrest, he wrote, including that he was “vilified by the media.”
As soon as Ray and his attorneys resolve to file a rebuttal to his tab revocation, ought to they select to take action, the ultimate suggestion might be despatched to Maj. Gen. Thomas Drew, commander of Army Human Sources Command, for a last choice.
The Special Forces tab “means one thing to folks,” the official inside Army Particular Operations Command stated. “They’re utilizing tab revocation as a instrument to police the occupation inside the Particular Operations Forces group.”
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