Police Officer’s Glock Jams…Badly

[FrankB]

I don’t know if this is the right sub forum for this, but the second officer’s BWC shows a nasty series of malfunctions after being confronted by an AK wielding nut! The Malfs begin at 2:15, and look like a couple of double feeds. Fortunately, officer one quickly dropped the guy.

[TGS]

The gun didn't jam badly. That's just a jam which was handled incorrectly.

It needed remedial action, and he performed remedial action incorrectly. Instead of inserting a fresh magazine after removing the magazine and racking the slide, the officer inserted the same magazine. We can see a round sticking up from the magazine feed lips, which obviously was the cause for the continued issues. The officer understandably doesn't realize his magazine is the problem in the middle of the gunfight, and keeps trying to address the issue by inserting the same magazine. Thankfully the magazine unfucked itself.

The proper way to handle remedial action is:

Drop the mag
Rack the slide
Insert fresh magazine, as magazines are primary culprit in malfunctions

There's a 341 page LE OIS thread this could be moved to by the mods instead of being in GD, or to Marksmanship and Gunhandling for a discussion on addressing stoppages and malfunctions.

[FrankB]

The gun didn't jam badly. That's just a jam which was handled incorrectly.

It needed remedial action, and he performed remedial action incorrectly. Instead of inserting a fresh magazine after removing the magazine and racking the slide, the officer inserted the same magazine. We can see a round sticking up from the magazine feed lips, which obviously was the cause for the continued issues. The officer understandably doesn't realize his magazine is the problem in the middle of the gunfight, and keeps trying to address the issue by inserting the same magazine. Thankfully the magazine unfucked itself.

The proper way to handle remedial action is:

Drop the mag
Rack the slide
Insert fresh magazine, as magazines are primary culprit in malfunctions

There's a 341 page LE OIS thread this could be moved to by the mods instead of being in GD, or to Marksmanship and Gunhandling for a discussion on addressing stoppages and malfunctions.

I thought about changing the topic title to reflect exactly what you outlined above.
ETA Title Changed.

[BillSWPA]

Equally important question: what caused this malfunction, and could anything have been done to prevent it before it occurred? I assume most or all here are testing their equipment as well as cleaning and maintaining it as needed (recognizing that there are different thoughts on cleaning). Unfortunately even after doing everything right in terms of maintenance and testing, things can still go wrong.

[WobblyPossum]

This has been discussed on the forum before. We tend to see more malfunctions in video footage of actual gunfights than during training, practice, or competition. I believe the main reason for this on the LE side (because the equipment is generally better than what the bad guys are using) is that many gunfights don’t start with both parties already having guns in their hands. When the first clue that you’re in a gunfight is the other guy trying to shoot you and you scramble to get your gun out of the holster, there’s a decent chance you’ll have a compromised grip. Semi-autos are quite sensitive to your grip being proper, whether that’s unlocked wrists, hands making contact with the slide and impeding its travel, or hands inadvertently activating controls like slide locks or mag releases. There was a good video with an example in the LE UoF video thread out of Houston, I believe. The officer fired a round or two and his magazine dropped out so he reloaded. Then he fired another round or two before the new magazine fell out forcing a second reload. I think he was accidentally activating the mag release with his grip because he had to get the gun out of the holster in response to being shot at as opposed to starting the encounter with it in his hand. His compromised grip made the gun malfunction.

For any pistol malfunction in which the slide had attempted to feed a new round from the magazine before the stoppage, there’s a good chance the top round in the mag is half way in the mag and half way out before you rip the mag out. If that top round doesn’t fall free when the mag comes out, reinserting the same magazine to reload the gun will likely cause another malfunction. That’s one of the primary reasons it might be better to reload with a fresh mag. The mag itself might be perfectly functional as a piece of hardware, but its current condition might be usable.

[SecondsCount]

So can we have a "How to keep a serious Glock running" thread now?

It happens. Like TGS said, practice properly, so that when it happens you do it the right way.

[feudist]

Lack of training, lack of significant amounts of meaningful practice, lack of appreciation for how fast shit happens when the wheels fall off, lack of exposure to shot timers and how much can happen in one whole second(and there's no do-over) and how slow you really are, lack of understanding the difference between being "qualified" vs being competent vs being lucky, lack of situational awareness, lack of belief that you aren't the center that the Universe revolves around, and people will sometimes try to kill you for no REASON at all...and that they might succeed because chance and Friction* play a major role in combat.

He lackin'. Most are.

* "Everything in war is simple, but the simplest things are difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen war."
Von Clausewitz.

[TGS]

Lack of training, lack of significant amounts of meaningful practice, lack of appreciation for how fast shit happens when the wheels fall off, lack of exposure to shot timers and how much can happen in one whole second(and there's no do-over) and how slow you really are, lack of understanding the difference between being "qualified" vs being competent vs being lucky, lack of situational awareness, lack of belief that you aren't the center that the Universe revolves around, and people will sometimes try to kill you for no REASON at all...and that they might succeed because chance and Friction* play a major role in combat.

He lackin'. Most are.

* "Everything in war is simple, but the simplest things are difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen war."
Von Clausewitz.

I think that's a bit harsh and assuming a bit much.

There's a deficiency in his training, being that he apparently wasn't drilled to use a fresh mag. He performed what he was taught admirably, though. He immediately identified the problem and worked it out, and in the process sought cover and used the environment to his advantage. There's other videos out there where a LEO tries a tap rack for a situation that needs a remedial action and then just goes code black when it doesn't work, and walks around with a non-functional gun...that'd be more fitting for what you're describing.

I'd say the problem here isn't the officer.

[HCM]

I think that's a bit harsh and assuming a bit much.

There's a deficiency in his training, being that he apparently wasn't drilled to use a fresh mag. He performed what he was taught admirably, though. He immediately identified the problem and worked it out, and in the process sought cover and used the environment to his advantage. There's other videos out there where a LEO tries a tap rack for a situation that needs a remedial action and then just goes code black when it doesn't work, and walks around with a non-functional gun...that'd be more fitting for what you're describing.

I'd say the problem here isn't the officer.

I can’t tell you how the Officer was trained but I can assure you not everyone defaults to or follows their training. So presuming the officer is not at fault, and the training is deficient is equally presumptuous.

Our primary malfunction clearance is tap and rack.

If that doesn’t work, as in this case secondary clearance.

Rack slide and lock slide to the rear
Remove magazine
Insert fresh magazine if available

Maybe half actually do that in training. A little more now since locally we’ve worked malfunction clearances 3 quarters in a row specifically because of the increased incidence of malfunctions in actual events which Wobbly Possum mentioned.

However, we still get people doing all kinds of weird s**t and they not getting shot at.

[TGS]

I can’t tell you how the Officer was trained but I can assure you not everyone defaults to or follows their training. So presuming the officer is not at fault, and the training is deficient is equally presumptuous.

Our primary malfunction clearance is tap and rack.

If that doesn’t work, as in this case secondary clearance.

Rack slide and lock slide to the rear
Remove magazine
Insert fresh magazine if available

Maybe half actually do that in training. A little more now since locally we’ve worked malfunction clearances 3 quarters in a row specifically because of the increased incidence of malfunctions in actual events which Wobbly Possum mentioned.

However, we still get people doing all kinds of weird s**t and they not getting shot at.

FFS, I think it's a bit of a stretch to take a guy who reinserts a mag on malfunction clearance and make all the declarations about him that Feudist did, is my point. Lack of awareness? Lack of appreciation for how things can go wrong? Thinking's he's the center that the universe revolves around? Not knowing that people will try to kill him for no reason at all?

Christ Almighty, the guy reinserted a fucking magazine on a clearance drill. That's a bit much.