Cops & GLOCKS: Hardware isn't the Issue

SOTG 170 – Glocks Unsafe for Police Use

Is the GLOCK unsafe for police use? No, we did not just arrive here in a time machine from 1995. Someone from the gun culture actually made the argument that GLOCK pistols are unsafe for law enforcement and it was published in the LA Times.

The SOTG guys discussed more criminal barbarism, this time in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Sickeningly, one politician has already stepped up to suggest that Second Amendment freedoms are at fault for the murder of police officers by vermin.

SOURCES:

From www.nydailynews.com:

A fourth suspect was arrested Sunday in the slaying of two Mississippi police officers who were gunned down Saturday night in a traffic stop turned bloody.

Cornelius Clark, 28, was charged with obstruction of justice in twin killings, authorities said. He joins three other suspects in custody for the brutal crime, including two who are charged with capital murder, a state law enforcement spokesman said.

Few details were immediately available regarding what spurred the hail of bullets at 8:30 p.m. in small town Hattiesburg following a routine traffic stop, authorities said.

K-9 officer Benjamin Deen, 34, and recent police academy graduate Liquori Tate, 25, had pulled over a Hyundai when one of the suspects opened fire, said Warren Strain, a spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety.

As the suspects made a run for it, Hattiesburg resident Tamika Mills said she was one of two bystanders who came upon the officers on the ground.

Hattiesburg, Miss., lawmen respond to the scene of the fatal scene Saturday night in which police officers Liquori Tate and Benjamin Deen were shot to death.
One of them asked, “Am I dying? I know I’m dying. Just hand me my walkie-talkie,” Mills told The Clarion-Ledger.

She added that seeing the sight of the dying officers was “shocking and heartbreaking.”

It wasn’t clear how many shots were fired or who pulled the trigger.

“All I know right now is that there was a traffic stop and someone started shooting at them and both of the officers were struck,” said Lt. Jon Traxler, a Hattiesburg Police Department spokesman.

Strain said that 29-year-old Marvin Banks and 22-year-old Joanie Calloway were each charged with two counts of capital murder.

Banks faced additional charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and with grand theft for fleeing in the police cruiser after the shooting, Strain said.

“He absconded with a Hattiesburg police cruiser. He didn’t get very far, three or four blocks and then he ditched that vehicle,” Strain said.

The police car was found abandoned on rail tracks behind a train depot in the town of about 50,000 people.

A Hattiesburg city employee, left, reacts Sunday morning as a police officer surveys the site where the two cops gunned down during a traffic stop.
PreviousNextA City of Hattiesburg employee, left, reacts Sunday morning, May 10, 2015, as a police officer surveys the site where two Hattiesburg, Miss., police officers were shot to death during a Saturday evening traffic stop. Warren Strain, a spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, tells The Associated Press that 29-year-old Marvin Banks and 22-year-old Joanie Calloway have each been charged with two counts of capital murder, and Banks’ 26-year-old brother, Curtis Banks, has been charged with two counts of accessory after the fact of capital murder.

New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton holds a Detective First Grade shield as he promotes New York City Police officer Brian Moore, during his funeral at the Saint James Roman Catholic Church on May 8, 2015 in Seaford, New York. Officer Moore died last Monday after being shot in the head while on duty two days earlier in Queens. The 25-year-old officer and his partner stopped a man suspected of carrying a handgun when the man opened fire on them. As many as 30,000 police officers from across the United States payed their respects at the Long Island funeral.

A Hattiesburg city employee, left, reacts Sunday morning as a police officer surveys the site where the two cops gunned down during a traffic stop.

Banks’ 26-year-old brother, Curtis Banks, was charged with two counts of accessory after the fact of capital murder.

The first three were busted in separate locations overnight without incident, and law enforcement agents collared Clark on Sunday morning.

Calloway was arrested at a convenience store. Marvin Banks was found at a hotel in the area. Curtis Banks was taken into custody at a Hattiesburg apartment.

“No sir, I didn’t do it,” Curtis Banks told reporters as he was led inside police barracks.

Cornelius Clark was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice.
The investigation was ongoing.

“At this point a weapon has not been recovered. However, warrants have been issued to search several properties in the Hattiesburg area. We are hopeful and believe that the murder weapon will be recovered,” Strain said.

“At this point, it appears to have been only one weapon.”

Both cops died at Forrest General Hospital.

Joanie Calloway (l.) and Marvin Banks (r.) are both charged with capital murder, and Curtis Banks (c.) is charged with two counts of accessory after the fact of capital murder.
Deen was once awarded “Officer of the Year” in Hattiesburg. Tate was a newcomer to the force who had graduated from the police academy last year.

Their deaths come one day after the funeral for NYPD cop Brian Moore, who authorities say was shot in the face in Queens by a career criminal.

“Our prayers are with everyone at Hattiesburg Police Dept. & the families of Police Officers Deen & Tate. We will never forget,” NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton tweeted Sunday.

The Mississippi attack also comes amid a searing national debate about law enforcement and race.

The shooting deaths come just one day after NYPD Officer Brian Moore’s funeral, who was shot in the face while working in Queens on May 2.
Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree told The Jackson Clarion-Ledger the shooting was a tragedy.

“The men and women who go out every day to protect us, the men and woman who go out every day to make sure that we’re safe, they were turned on (Saturday) night,” DuPree said outside Forrest General Hospital.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant released a statement saying he was “mourning” the loss of the officers.

“This should remind us to thank all law enforcement for their unwavering service to protect and serve. May God keep them all in the hollow of his hand,” Bryant said.

The last Hattiesburg police officer killed in the line of duty was Sgt. Jackie Dole Sherrill, who died on New Year’s Eve in 1984.

Sherrill, 33, was gunned down as she attempted to serve a warrant on a suspect.

From www.latimes.com:

Timothy Stansbury died in a New York housing project stairwell in 2004 because he startled a police officer. The officer’s surprise at encountering Stansbury caused the officer’s hand to clench and his weapon to fire. The death was ruled accidental by a grand jury, though the officer was later stripped of his gun for the remainder of his career.

Akai Gurley died in another New York housing project stairwell last fall. A rookie officer with his finger on the trigger of his pistol tensed as he pushed open a stuck door; the added pressure on the trigger caused his weapon to fire a shot down the stairwell. The round ricocheted off the wall to strike Gurley. Though the shot wasn’t intentional and the officer didn’t even know Gurley was there, the death has been ruled a criminal homicide, and the officer’s trial is pending.

In both of these incidents, the police officers were using the same weapon, a Glock: a polymer-frame, striker-fired pistol with a short trigger pull and no external safeties.

It’s a popular handgun for law enforcement in New York and beyond. The Los Angeles Police Department has a number of firearms approved for use, including nine Glock models. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department recently began issuing new recruits the Smith & Wesson M&P, a handgun with a short trigger pull that operates in much the same way.

Glock uses the marketing term “Safe Action” to describe its firing-pin system, but the truth is that Glocks are accident-prone. They contributed to more than 120 accidental discharges in the Washington Metropolitan Police Department from 1988 to 1998. Anecdotes of increased accidental shootings have followed the pistol for more than 30 years wherever it has been adopted by police officers and citizens alike.

Glock uses the marketing term ‘Safe Action’ to describe its firing-pin system, but the truth is that Glocks are accident-prone.

Just last month, Ocala, Fla., Police Officer Jared Forsyth was shot and killed by a fellow officer after a Glock training session. The fellow officer failed to do a chamber check before pulling the trigger as part of the handgun’s normal disassembly procedure. When the gun fired, the bullet went through a gap in Forsyth’s body armor. Despite the efforts of paramedics to keep him alive, the young officer died on the way to a hospital.

In terms of mechanical design, there are few flaws with Glock pistols. If a law enforcement officer, soldier or citizen does exactly what they are supposed to do all of the time with cyborg certainty, there will be no problems with the Glock or other popular pistols mimicking its basic design. Unfortunately, “RoboCop” is only a movie, and humans are liable to make similar mistakes over and over again.

The underlying problem with these pistols is a short trigger pull and the lack of an external safety. In real-world encounters, a short trigger pull can be lethal, in part because a significant percentage of law enforcement officers — some experts say as high as 20% — put their finger on the trigger of their weapons when under stress. According to firearms trainers, most officers are completely unaware of their tendency to do this and have a hard time believing it, even when they’re shown video evidence from training exercises.

For more than 35 years, officer-involved accidental discharges with Glocks and Glock-like weapons have been blamed on a lack of training or negligence on the part of the individual cops. What critics should be addressing instead is the brutal reality that short trigger pulls and natural human reflexes are a deadly combination.

Though short trigger-pull guns dominate the law enforcement market, they aren’t the only game in town. A number of major and minor agencies use guns with much longer double-action triggers that are just as easy to fire deliberately but that are much harder to fire accidentally. The half-inch difference of trigger travel may not sound like much, but it can be the difference between life and death.

We’ll continue to see more Timothy Stansburys, more Akai Gurleys and more Jared Forsyths until law enforcement agencies and city governments quit listening to hype about how wonderful these systems are from the companies selling the weapons, and start caring more about the lives of their officers and citizens.

Payouts to settle lawsuits over accidental shootings with these weapons have cost cities millions of dollars. Washington, D.C., for instance, paid out $1.4 million in a single six-month period in 1998. And the casualties and lawsuits keep mounting.

Bob Owens is the editor of BearingArms.com. He is an alumnus of Gunsite Academy, a rifle marksmanship instructor with Project Appleseed and the author of the short ebook “So You Want to Own a Gun.”

From google.com/newsstand:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) spoke about last week’s shooting in his home state to supporters in South Carolina Saturday.

“We saw the ugly face of radical Islam in Garland, Texas,” Cruz said, referring to the incident in which two gunmen opened fire near the Curtis Culwell Center before being shot and killed by police. “Thankfully, one police officer helped those terrorists meet their virgins,” he said, according to The Hill.

He delivered the speech at the South Carolina Freedom Summit in Greenville, which drew roughly a dozen Republican candidates and hopefuls, according to the Washington Post.

Cruz shared three words he said a president must learn to use regularly: “Radical. Islamic. Terrorism,” the Washington Post reported.

The Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, has claimed responsibility for last week’s attack on an event that asked contestants to draw pictures depicting the Prophet Muhammad for a $10,000 prize. The group that hosted the contest, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Republican speakers fired up the crowd by playing to their constituents’ fears, including terrorism, Obamacare and the IRS.

“We’re not at the point of no return yet, but it is close,” Cruz said. “It’s now or never: We either pull this country back or we risk losing the greatest country in the history of the world.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) agreed.

“Radical Islamists behead Christians and even conduct attacks in Texas,” Rubio said. He suggested treating terrorism in the manner of Liam Neeson’s character in the movie “Taken.”

“We will look for you, we will find you, and we will kill you,” Rubio told a cheering crowd.

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