You all would be surprised by the number of full auto weapons owned by small police departments around the country. You will find everything from classic 1927 Thompsons to Reisings and MP5s. My little PD had two commercial production M16s when I started. (they have been since sold to class three dealers and the money applied to buying semi automatic duty weapons)
Gary is right in that there is a move to either replace or supplement the standard pump shotgun in patrol cars. The small South Central Illinois PD I work part time for recently bought Colt AR15A3 Tactical Carbines and we are currently developing policy and training standards before we deploy them. I know this because I am writing some of the drafts.
Many PDs are taking advantage of the Feds offer of cheap M16s. Most departments are converting them to fire semi only. Liability is a big issue in Law Enforcement and most administrators recognize that there is almost zero police application for full auto fire.
The move to the 5.56mm cartridge in a carbine sized envelope is not based on these agencies wanting to run roughshod over the citizenry. It's based on many factors, I'll list a few:
1. The rifle or carbine doesn't shoot multiple projectiles like the shotgun. Therefore it's easier for the officer to account for every round fired. (not so easy if you are shooting 00 buck at too long a range). This has become such a liabilty issue that The University of Illinois Police Training Institute is recommending that shotguns be deployed loaded with only slugs.
2. The rifle/carbine in 5.56mm is much easier for the smaller statured officers to handle then the shotgun. (Yes, I know in a perfect world there would be resources to train all officers to be expert with the weapons we ask them to carry, but reality sometimes demands that we look to other alternatives)
3. Several studies have proven that the 5.56mm cartridge actually penetrates less in indoor environments then pistol caliber ammunition. I know this sounds crazy, but the smaller lighter 5.56mm bullet is more likely to break up into fragments that rapidly lose velocity in common building materials, and while they will penetrate they are less likely to cause serious injury to someone you didn't intend to shoot on the other side of the wall.
4. The police rifle/carbine gives the officer the ability to effectively engage targets at longer distances. The department I work for is in a rural area. Many parts of town open up into fields and woods. An officer could conceivably have to return fire at 80 yards or greater. I read somewhere that 80 yards is about the average distance for a police sniper shot in a controlled environment. While every officer will not be capable of the pinpoint accuracy of a sniper (shooting the gun from the hand of a hostage taker) in many rural areas the officer needs this extra range to protect him/herself and the public.
You control your local police department. If you don't think they should have these weapons, because they have proven themselves not responsible enough to handle them, talk to your councilman, mayor, etc. I think you will find that these elected officials don't want their police department to look like a bunch of thugs and killers in the eyes of the public. Believe it or not, these local elected officials like to bury their head in the sand on a lot of these issues. I know city councilmen where I work who think that buying us body armor is a waste of money because we've never had an officer shot and that kind of thing couldn't happen here.
The police community is recognizing that people are concerned about the over-militarization of police departments nationwide.
All I will say is that you can't have it both ways. You can't have an undertrained and equipped police department when the unthinkable happens. There are ways to keep your employees (the police, yes they are your employees)in check. Except at the federal level, I don't think that there is anyway to keep them in check.
DC, Atascadero may be a sleeply little town, but so is the little town that I work for. But guess what, this past summer a national news worthy crime ended here. So saying it's a sleepy little town with not much in the way of violent crime doesn't excuse the department from being unprepared if it happens there. It can happen anywhere, even sleepy little towns.
Jeff
[This message has been edited by Jeff White (edited December 17, 1999).]
