He cautioned, however, that it can take “six months to a year” to separate someone from the military when they are convicted of a crime.

Knight described how he had worked with lawmakers last year to establish provost marshal positions in the Guard to help bridge the gap between the civilian and military systems of justice. His first assignment for those marshals, who just started work three weeks ago, was for them to do a “thorough scrub of our criminal record systems.”

“The intent of that is to find any other bad actors that we have that we may not know about,” Knight said.

Whenever a Guard member is arrested or charged with a crime, “we have a duty to report,” but, Knight acknowledged, “it doesn’t always happen” and “sometimes, we don’t catch everything.”

To improve this gap, Knight, a former police officer, said he would ask the Vermont Association of Chiefs of Police and the Attorney General's Office to ensure that people are asked when they're arrested whether they are in the Guard. If they are, Knight said, the Guard must be notified.

In addition, Knight encouraged anyone with information about Guard members' misconduct to come forward, either to him directly or by using an online application.

“If we have members acting aberrantly in this organization, if there is criminal activity and you know it and you want to come forward, use the [application],” Knight said.

The town hall event, which took place on Facebook Live, addressed a range of issues, including the Guard's overseas deployments, vaccination protocols and anger at the F-35 jets.

Col. David Shevchik, commander of the 158th Fighter Wing that flies the new fighters, said the Air Guard “is on track and on timeline” to complete its training by the end of the year despite the hurdles presented by COVID-19.

In response to a question about the suffering endured by people exposed to the noise of the fighter jets, Shevchik said the Guard does all it can to keep the impact to a minimum while still completing required training to get combat ready.

This includes doing all training exercises in remote areas and changing flight traffic patterns, such as flying as high as possible before landing.

“We do realize the impact on the community and we want to minimize that as much as possible,” he said.

Shevchik added that he expects additional noise studies to be conducted about the Guard’s air operations “later this season.”

And Knight added he is working with Vermont’s congressional delegation on “securing funding for noise mitigation measures.”