New York, San Francisco and Philadelphia are suing the Pentagon to fix a long-standing problem first flagged by an inspector general report in 1997. The Department of Defense and the military branches that we've sued have failed miserably in their reporting obligations over the course of the last two decades. One deadly mistake, Devon Kelly found guilty of domestic assault in a military court but the Air Force never entered the conviction into the FBI database. He bought a rifle and killed 26 people at a Texas church last month including the pastor's daughter.
She is frolicking with the Angels at this point. The Pentagon is struggling to determine if they have a systemic failure human error or both. A December audit found problems across all services. The Army failed to submit the proper paperwork to the FBI forty-one percent of the time. The Navy and Marine Corps 36 percent of the time. And the Air Force fourteen percent. The lawsuits hold Pentagon officials including Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis in contempt of court if they don't accurately enter all information. Officials at the Pentagon say they have a big task ahead. At the Air Force some 60,000 electronic cases go back to 2002. After that they need to determine if paper records were properly entered.