The Criminal Investigation Division Brassard was approved for wear on 9 May 2007. Brassards serve to identify designated personnel who must perform a specialized task or have interactions with the public; their wear is not authorized except when they are actively carrying out the duty associated with the Brassard and it is necessary that others are able to identify them while they do so, such as during field operations or an event response. The exception to these restrictions it the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Brassard, which was authorized for full-time wear in 2019.
Brassards are not meant to be worn while the wearer is engaged in a daily activity or a routine job-related task, conducting staff activities, or while in a stand-by or on-call status.
The Army’s Criminal Investigation Division was originally created during World War I but was decentralized and reduced greatly in size following the end of the war. With the onset of World War II, it was revived and expanded, but with peacetime it was once again decentralized. The 1960s saw organizational changes designed to make the service more efficient and possess a worldwide capability, and in 1969 the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Agency was created and tasked with the supervision of all CID activities across the globe.
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Criminal Investigation Command Unit Crest (SSI)
Criminal Investigation Command Unit Crest (DUI)
Criminal Investigation Command Combat Service ID Badge (CSIB)But the Agency was hamstrung in that it did not possess Command authority. At the behest of Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, the Secretary of the Army established the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command was established as a major Army command on 17 September 1971.
Normally, the Command would be referred to by the initialism USACIC, but USACID was used in spite of its inaccuracy as a way to honor the tradition of the thousands of Soldiers who had served in the CID role over the decades. This changed at some point in the early fall of 2021, when the banner on the Command’s Web site https://www.cid.army.mil was changed without explanation to “U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division.”
Despite this change, you will notice that we still continue to refer to the Command by its old designation when referring to its various insignias because The Institute of Heraldry has not yet changed their designations. We use “Criminal Investigation Division” for the Brassard for two reasons: This is the terms used for the item in DA PAM 670-1, and it is also an accurate rendering of its initials.