Another post about the Alaskan relief for cause

More on the relief of the Sector Anchorage commanding officer... James Halpin writes in the Anchorage Daily News, Anchorage commander removed... faces allegations of misconduct. Looks like whatever has been brewing in the great white north has been on the stove for a while...

Reached Monday night, [Rear Admiral Arthur E.] Brooks, said the investigation of [the CO], who held the third-highest billet in the state, has been going for about a month and is likely to continue for another month or two. The investigation, conducted by the [service's] Investigative Service, has produced increasing evidence of misconduct in that time, he said.

"We do have an ongoing . . . investigation that had determined enough misconduct that I felt that I could no longer leave him in command," Brooks said. "I still don't know the full extent of it, or the degree of this, and so decisions on what to do and where it will ultimately go still pend. But I've reached a point where I needed to relieve him."

And then there was this tidbit:

Perhaps the most visible project [the CO] has overseen in recent weeks was the removal of millions of gallons of crude oil from the Drift River terminal after it was threatened by the eruption of Mount Redoubt. Though he wouldn't comment on the investigation, Brooks did say [the] removal had nothing to do with that operation.

Well, seldom does relief for cause have to do with operations. Wrote someone in a comment to my FB wall:

Anymore it seems, trouble with money would be ok... it's alcohol, command climate, and friggin' in the riggin' that's getting COs relieved anymore.

Sad, really, that we seem to be having this run on reliefs for cause.  I've thought aloud before that we seem to be eating them up and spitting them out. Clearly, at least from where I sit, it appears we have something of a systemic problem. Are we not screening properly? Is there something about mid-life crises that seems to raising its head every once in a while.

My brother is working on a dissertation about law enforcement officers who end up on the wrong side of the law. I wonder if someone could do a formal study about reliefs for cause and attempt to find the root causes, and then develop strategies to stop the run. I think, generally, these men and women are good people; what brings them down? Can we do something to stem the tide?

What do you think?