Large LE agency in the Los Angeles area going to AR Pattern 9mm Rifle maybe?

[jlw]

Rollover prone with a Berretta 92 would have ended it with 35 yard head shots.

Convince me otherwise:

On June 20, 1994, a mentally disturbed former airman returned to Fairchild Air Force Base (AFB) to kill the doctors who had previously tried to help him. He took a cab to the base hospital, located near Spokane, Washington, and entered the mental health clinic carrying a duffle bag that contained a rifle and a 75-round drum magazine.

Minutes later, the Fairchild AFB Security Police received the first call about a shooting at the hospital. Senior Airman Andy Brown immediately responded from three-tenths of a mile away on his police bicycle, and confronted the murderer outside the hospital.

When the killer refused commands to disarm and fired shots at the young police officer, Brown fired at him four times with his M9 pistol, striking him in the shoulder and face, and ending the threat. Post-event investigation indicated that Brown’s final pistol shot was fired at a distance between 68 and 71 yards, but his first hit would have been made at an even farther distance, since the killer was advancing on him as he fired.

I'm the choir.

[BobM]

Yeah, LE is regional. In CA it most definitely was the incident that pushed patrol rifles.

It was in my small semi rural agency also. The chief came to me wanting to know what weapons we should have to stop people like that. The fact that only two weeks earlier I’d had my own encounter with a rifle armed homicide suspect.

We ended up installing Mini 30s in each car. Post 9/11 I was able to trade them for AR15s.

[kwb377]

When my department agonized for years over Patrol rifles(with some truly high-larious pearl clutching and bizarro requirements and equipment limitations).

I worked at an agency next door (back there part time again)...if I remember correctly, yall's guys told us that having a sling was a no-no. Not just that the rifles weren't issued with slings, but that being caught with one on your rifle on a call was a write-up.

[HCM]

Rollover prone with a Berretta 92 would have ended it with 35 yard head shots.

Convince me otherwise:

On June 20, 1994, a mentally disturbed former airman returned to Fairchild Air Force Base (AFB) to kill the doctors who had previously tried to help him. He took a cab to the base hospital, located near Spokane, Washington, and entered the mental health clinic carrying a duffle bag that contained a rifle and a 75-round drum magazine.

Minutes later, the Fairchild AFB Security Police received the first call about a shooting at the hospital. Senior Airman Andy Brown immediately responded from three-tenths of a mile away on his police bicycle, and confronted the murderer outside the hospital.

When the killer refused commands to disarm and fired shots at the young police officer, Brown fired at him four times with his M9 pistol, striking him in the shoulder and face, and ending the threat. Post-event investigation indicated that Brown’s final pistol shot was fired at a distance between 68 and 71 yards, but his first hit would have been made at an even farther distance, since the killer was advancing on him as he fired.

Easy to say.

Doable in practice under controlled conditions.

Harder to do under fire.

The basic marksmanship problem of target size and distance aside, the head of a living, moving opponent moves… a lot.

LAPD is a marksman ship / gun fighter culture by police standards. They literally pay a cash bonus for officers who can shoot to a higher standard. Elite units like SWAT even more so, with many being Gunsite graduates. And yet North Hollywood didn’t end with two head shots.

[HCM]

He fired a burst from about 2 car lengths away while wadded up under a squad car into the robber's legs while he knelt behind the hood of his car. Basically from under his trunk to under the front of the suspect's car.
That feller bled to death while they searched for a supposed third robber and then rendered medical aid(including some flu shots possibly) to everyone else first.
Poor soul, I guess he was just too high strung.

Yes. It was great work.

As for the other, bad guys are last on the priority of life scale because it’s their fault.

[Erick Gelhaus]

Everyone in this thread who was a working cop on the day of the North Hollywood shoot-out, please raise your hand. I was working a gang enforcement team at the time, partnered with street crimes guys & gang cops at a local PD. Three of them had come up from LAPD's West Bureau CRASH team - I'd met & rode with them when I went there for gang school. They knew the immediate ground pretty well.

Out in CA, pre-NHW/BofA, there were a few agencies that allowed or issued patrol rifles. We got our authorization in '93, after 5+ years of it going up and down the chain of command, because of an incident where a few of our deputies were pinned down on the hillside of a rancheria (small Indian reservation) for several hours while our SWAT team was a couple of counties away on a protest.

NHW/BofA absolutely drove the adoption of patrol rifles in Califonia. I can't speak for the rest of the country, though.

Could a 9mm carbine have ended the event? Maybe, maybe, though, it would have been an iron-sighted one. Maybe, the BadGuys were chemically altered. Maybe, the officer(s) would have had to deal with incoming centerfire rifle rounds. Maybe, the engagement distance was considerable.

Slugs? They could have caused some blunt trauma (backface deformation) to the homemade armor suits the BadGuys were wearing. That could have put them on the ground and allowed other options for finishing them.

One of the toolbags was hit by a pistol round while walking down the street & subsequently offed himself. The other one failed at carjacking another vehicle and then met three studs from D platoon - Anderson, Gomes, and a third officer. They engaged #2 under the patrol car from maybe car length and a half away with Mp5s, not quite the same ballistically as a PCC at 50 yards+.

Yes, carbines work more like your pistol than a pump shotgun does - but that's not why they took off after Feb '97. Remember, we weren't using optics then. The sight radius helped, as did the other marksmanship aspects related to a rifle - like 4 points of contact. The commonality of teaching stuff only came in years later. Hell, I recall a long conversation with @paherne in the teens in which we kicked the commonality part around and that was a new concept to me.

BTW, as I recall, LAPD got the following approved in the aftermath: .45ACP pistols, slugs for units other than Metro & SIS, and patrol rifles.

Personally, at a time when people are talking about cops needing to engage with long guns at distance - Uvalde? - the idea of a PCC is a hellacious step backwards. But, I'm not in that agency and I'm not dependant on them for support.

[jlw]

Everyone in this thread who was a working cop on the day of the North Hollywood shoot-out, please raise your hand. I was working a gang enforcement team at the time, partnered with street crimes guys & gang cops at a local PD. Three of them had come up from LAPD's West Bureau CRASH team - I'd met & rode with them when I went there for gang school. They knew the immediate ground pretty well.

Out in CA, pre-NHW/BofA, there were a few agencies that allowed or issued patrol rifles. We got our authorization in '93, after 5+ years of it going up and down the chain of command, because of an incident where a few of our deputies were pinned down on the hillside of a rancheria (small Indian reservation) for several hours while our SWAT team was a couple of counties away on a protest.

NHW/BofA absolutely drove the adoption of patrol rifles in Califonia. I can't speak for the rest of the country, though.

Could a 9mm carbine have ended the event? Maybe, maybe, though, it would have been an iron-sighted one. Maybe, the BadGuys were chemically altered. Maybe, the officer(s) would have had to deal with incoming centerfire rifle rounds. Maybe, the engagement distance was considerable.

Slugs? They could have caused some blunt trauma (backface deformation) to the homemade armor suits the BadGuys were wearing. That could have put them on the ground and allowed other options for finishing them.

One of the toolbags was hit by a pistol round while walking down the street & subsequently offed himself. The other one failed at carjacking another vehicle and then met three studs from D platoon - Anderson, Gomes, and a third officer. They engaged #2 under the patrol car from maybe car length and a half away with Mp5s, not quite the same ballistically as a PCC at 50 yards+.

Yes, carbines work more like your pistol than a pump shotgun does - but that's not why they took off after Feb '97. Remember, we weren't using optics then. The sight radius helped, as did the other marksmanship aspects related to a rifle - like 4 points of contact. The commonality of teaching stuff only came in years later. Hell, I recall a long conversation with @paherne in the teens in which we kicked the commonality part around and that was a new concept to me.

BTW, as I recall, LAPD got the following approved in the aftermath: .45ACP pistols, slugs for units other than Metro & SIS, and patrol rifles.

Personally, at a time when people are talking about cops needing to engage with long guns at distance - Uvalde? - the idea of a PCC is a hellacious step backwards. But, I'm not in that agency and I'm not dependant on them for support.

I was not working at the time, but I went to work shortly thereafter. We were given a "familiarity course" with the shotgun in the academy. My agency had shotguns and subguns, but they were locked in a safe with only the supervisor having access. We didn't get shotguns in the field until 9/11 and rifles until after Virginia Tech.

The SO that I later went to work for had patrol rifles in the early-90s.

In my area, the active-killer incidents had much, much more impact than did North Hollywood.

Again, I saw shotguns die in my agency in one range session. It was similar in other area agencies and across the state, and that didn't happen until a decade after North Hollywood. I was in the first GALEFI Patrol Rifle Instructor class and helped several agencies in their switch. North Hollywood simply wasn't a driving factor in those transitions.

[jlw]

To be clear, I'm not advocating dumping rifles for PCCs. I just don't see the sky falling.

[Erick Gelhaus]

I was not working at the time, but I went to work shortly thereafter. We were given a "familiarity course" with the shotgun in the academy. My agency had shotguns and subguns, but they were locked in a safe with only the supervisor having access. We didn't get shotguns in the field until 9/11 and rifles until after Virginia Tech.

The SO that I later went to work for had patrol rifles in the early-90s.

In my area, the active-killer incidents had much, much more impact than did North Hollywood.

Again, I saw shotguns die in my agency in one range session. It was similar in other area agencies and across the state, and that didn't happen until a decade after North Hollywood. I was in the first GALEFI Patrol Rifle Instructor class and helped several agencies in their switch. North Hollywood simply wasn't a driving factor in those transitions.

Hence why someone in this said "All policing is regional."

[feudist]

I worked at an agency next door (back there part time again)...if I remember correctly, yall's guys told us that having a sling was a no-no. Not just that the rifles weren't issued with slings, but that being caught with one on your rifle on a call was a write-up.

True. And locked in a hardcase(locked to the trunk hinge) unloaded in the trunk. And no optics...even though they bought flattops("They've already got sights. We don't want patrol officers thinking they're snipers")
The piece de resistance was when one of our twatwaffle Deputy Chiefs insisted that anytime a rifle was taken out of the trunk, the dashcam had to be turned on.
"Uh, why? And, ha ha, you don't mean during shift change...right?"
"To record the incident."
"What, uh, if the incident happens out of the cameras field of view? Or in a building?"
"Require the officers to position their car before-" "Do you hear the fucking words coming out of your mouth!?!"
And thus it was written. And yes, during shift change.

Thankfully, Roper came along. His comment on the rifle policy was succinct. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever read."