Why do police departments change weapons so often?

[lonegunman]

This subject came up in another thread, and I am curious why departments change service weapons so often.

I mean, I have bought used LE weapons that were in excellent shape. Its almost unheard of to actually wear a weapon out.

Any LEO's (or anybody else) have an opinion?

 

[bruels]

Mostly in search of the "death ray" pistol and the magic bullet combination, I suppose.

 

[PreserveFreedom]

You have to have the same or better version of what your neighboring community has, wether your officers are confortable with it or not. That's why I am in full support of a department that offers a weapon to an officer, but allows him/her to carry what they want within reason.

 

[johnAK]

it's all grant money from state or federal or whatever, so if you don;t use it, they are gone, if you use it to buy another gun model, good for them,
YOUR TAX MONEY AT WORK!!!

 

[4V50 Gary]

Each agency is unique with respects to its authorized firearms. Some permit the carry of personal firearms and maintains a list of such firearms. Others believe in the "one gun for all" mentality and insist that all officers, regardless of size, capability and skill carry the same gun.

Turning to the issue of why departments change over, the rangemaster/firearms instructor convinces the Chief/Sheriff who in turn sells it to the Mayor/Bd of Supervisors. Sometimes grant money is involved, but I'm not aware of any at the present. Changing firearms is a very long and tedious process. It's not so much that agencies are changing firearms overnight (gun of the week), but rather that we hear about it from the marketers that XYZ Sheriff or Police has selected our brand over the others.

 

[Jim March]

Expect a lot of swapouts in California!

City attorneys and county counsels have figured out that if their cops/deputies/whatever plug somebody with a gun the legislature has declared to be "junk" under the state's fairly new and draconian "junk gun standards", a plaintiff's attorney can use that as evidence that the department was negligent.

:barf:

And if the exact gun model/variant isn't being made any more, it can NEVER be put on "the list".

End result: the new law will cost local law enforcement a potload of money, especially since they're not allowed to sell the used guns except out-of-state.

 

[PreserveFreedom]

Jim -
That's ok. The cost of the swaps just filters down to the taxpayers.

 

[Dangus]

On the other hand....

More used cop guns on the market

Just think about it, everyone pays taxes, and taxes buy these weapons, which often end up in our hands. So, everyone, even the anti-gunners, are helping arm us. heh heh

 

[Mark IV Series 80]

Many of these police guns originally had pre-ban magazines.

The distributors and gun dealers would often trade the used 9mm pistols, with all of the pre-ban magazines, straight across for new .40 caliber (and other caliber) pistols with L.E. only magazines.

It's a good deal for the department and the dealer.

-Mk.IV

 

[Jeff White]

It's the Federal Government.....

When I started on the PD in 1985 we were issued Model 65 and Model 66 S&W .357 magnum revolvers. These had been purchased in the mid 70s and replaced Model 15 .38 special revolvers that dated back farther then anyone then on the dept. could remember. We kept the Model 65s and 66s until 1992 when S&W 5906 9mm autos were purchased. In the summer of 2000 we were faced with replacing the tritium night sights on the 9mm autos.

This is where the 1994 Crime Bill came into play. Our 5906s, each one with 3 legal preban standard capacity magazines were worth enough on trade in that we replaced the 5906s with Glock 21s in .45 ACP for about $140 each. This was only about $30 a weapon more then S&W wanted to replace the night sights. Had we not been able to make that trade in deal, I'm sure we'd still be carrying the SW 9mms. I think that this is one of the reasons why so many PDs are changing weapons and as soon as their supply of legal preban weapons and magazines run out or the Crime Bill sunsets, this will change and agencies will once again keep service weapons for 15-25 years.

Basically, starting in the mid 80's agencies began trading in 20 or more year old revolvers for full size high capacity autos many equipped with night sights (when you upgrade, you might as well do things right). Then congress in it's infinite wisdom restricted private ownership of the standard capacity magazines that went with these weapons making the unrestricted ones in police inventories as valuable as any other pre-ban magazine. So police administrators found that they had a valuable trade in that enabled them to upgrade their weapons at a fraction of the cost.

Of course once the antis realized what was happening, they started putting all kinds of political pressure on the chiefs ad administrators not to trade in these weapons. So I predict that the current practice of the duty weapon of the month club is about to end. No more big trade ins, no more money to change weapons. It's alot easier to get into a new weapon at $140 a copy then it is at $500-600.

Jeff

 

[HankB]

Most decisions to swap weapons are made by mayors, city councils, or police chiefs - not line cops - so the decision is almost entirely political. Now, money is the mother's milk of politics, and when millions of dollars are being spent, I believe that $$$ finds it's way into slush funds, campaign war chests, etc. Maybe not directly, but there's bound to be a payoff somewhere along the line. For example, it's reasonably certain that the Feds "encouraged" NJSP to replace their H&K P7's with SW99's to help S&W, which was suffering from a consumer boycott. Then Gore lost, the prospect of political favors from a new administration disappeared, and the POS jam-a-matics are being returned.

Where politics is involved, it's a safe bet to "follow the money."