Personally Owned Weapons

[mongooseman]

My department allows investigators to carry approved personal weapons. We are issued .40 cal Glocks (surprise!) in all flavors. At this point I carry a G19 with Wilson Combat sights and a Crimson trace laser grip. These are the only modifications made to the weapon. The captain of crime scene carries a VP9, which I also carried until one of my kids liberated it.

Our Chief Deputy is making some noise about standardizing on the Glocks, especially considering the current media driven climate. Anyone have any real arguments or examples where different weapons caused problems, tactical or legal, for an agency?

[voodoo_man]

We are allowed to carry personally owned duty guns but they must have ny1 and oem trijicon sights. No other mods are allowed.

This is a product of lawyers and fear of litigation due to modification of firearms used in shoots.

Complete BS...

[LSP972]

Complete BS...

Not always. A sheriff's office near here is about to cut a check for a wrongful death suit judgment; and the check will have an extra zero on it because of a skimmer trigger on the Glock pistol in question.

If the FTU guys are doing their job, and the troops are adhering to procedural orders, then yes; such fears are unfounded.

But when Deputy Cletus, Trooper Bubba, or Officer Nimrod decide they know better than the brass… or when no restrictions are in place to start with… Trouble in River City is sure to follow, eventually.

.

[NorthernHeat]

We are issued Glock 17s but can carry pretty much anything we can qualify with.

No internal or trigger modifications unless done by the manufacturer (example Springfield Armory Custom Shop doing work on their 1911s).

Stippling and sight changes are good as well as added slide serrations (ATEI and the like) .

Our training dept is awesome about the fact of knowing that everybody prefers/ might shoot better with different guns and different grips/ sights etc.

There are guys that have shot low 70s with Glocks but then grab an M&P and shoot high 80s to 90.

Then again, we have about 6-7 different shooting classes available to take each year from our dept that vary from low light pistol to off duty/ plain clothes pistol to 3 day duty pistol and rifle classes (counts as a work days, dept ammo and dept provided steel targets at the dept range )

... so we like training.

Most of the time when I heard depts wanting to only allow one gun it is because of cost (many things factor into this cost), or they do not want to put in the time to great the general order to allow personally owned firearms..."because of liability"

[voodoo_man]

Not always. A sheriff's office near here is about to cut a check for a wrongful death suit judgment; and the check will have an extra zero on it because of a skimmer trigger on the Glock pistol in question.

If the FTU guys are doing their job, and the troops are adhering to procedural orders, then yes; such fears are unfounded.

But when Deputy Cletus, Trooper Bubba, or Officer Nimrod decide they know better than the brass… or when no restrictions are in place to start with… Trouble in River City is sure to follow, eventually.

.

Got a link and summary of facts? I am eager to see what legal decisions and or consequences there are for modifications on duty firearms.

[NorthernHeat]

One of the things with an aftermarket trigger I could see is " I didnt mean to shoot, but this XYZ aftermarket trigger went off when I didn't mean for it to".

If its a good shoot, its a good shoot. Regardless if it has a 3.5 pound trigger or a 12 pound trigger.

I could see a dept actually pushing against the heavier trigger because you could show qual scores that were lower with the heavier trigger, if that is the case. Therefore your dept is not consistently as accurate with your firearms with the 12lb triggers as your dept shooting quals showed to be with the 5.5lb.

Your dept could articulate that your dept needs to be as consistently accurate with its firearms as possible, and "fill in the blank" does that for us.

But heavy triggers are safer, per "admin".

[BehindBlueI's]

We have a fairly liberal policy for off duty and plain clothes on duty carry. Most of the guys still carry the issued Glock 22 or a Glock 27. A couple Sigs are the only exception now that I moved away from revolvers for duty carry and the LT is gone. All firearms are subject to an armorer's inspection and there are minimum trigger weights for DA and for SA, plus no SAO guns. Any modifications from factory must be done by the armorer or by the factory (ie, a Sig Custom Shop trigger job is good to go, Bubba McGee's Backyard Trigger Polishing Emporium is not.) It's been this way for many years with zero issues.

For awhile we were even providing our own carry ammo during the Great Ammo Shortage post-Newtown, if you carried anything other than the issued Glock.

[psalms144.1]

I am ADAMANTLY opposed to the "one size fits some" solution to issuing firearms, as, frankly, there's no single pistol I've ever seen that "fits" every need every officer/agent might have. I would much rather have an agent carry a personal weapon that he/she is comfortable, confident, and competent with, than an issued gun they don't trust, or can't shoot to save a life.

Having said all that, during my agency's response to an active shooter, we had at least one agent who had to beg loose rounds from his partners to reload his ISSUED P239 single-stack magazine after the initial shooting. There were an ENORMOUS number of "oh shit" moments that led to that very competent agent being in his gun fight with no spare magazine, but Murphy was kicking EVERYONE's ass that day. No one was injured or died due to the difference in issued weapons, but, when we decided afterwards that the agency needed a "tactical" element, the direction was that all members would use the issued P229R for all training and call outs. If the agent in question had carried a P229, his very generous partner could have just handed him a spare magazine. That agent, to this day, when talking about lessons learned, says "I will never carry a single stack pistol again, and I will never carry anything but what I'm issued."

So, while I'm a BIG proponent of a generous personal weapons policy, I can see the other side of the coin. The rub is this - picking a SINGLE weapon that doesn't suck, and can be used most effectively by a wide variety of agents/officers. The GLOCK family of pistols seems to do this fairly well - G34/5 for "tactical," G17/22 for "duty," G19/23 for "plain clothes" and every gets a G26/7 BUG. Likewise the P320 makes even more sense, in that officers/agents can all have one platform, fed off one set of magazines (FS mags work in all the smaller sizes), and the grip modules can be adjusted to individual hand size.

BUT, to just say "everyone gets a G22, and make it work" is a poor idea, IMHO.

[Chuck Haggard]

Got a link and summary of facts? I am eager to see what legal decisions and or consequences there are for modifications on duty firearms.

That case is still being settled, and not everything is available in a handy Google search package. I know more than I am supposed to about that case, basically it's a Skimmer trigger, installed against department regs but work down by a department armorer, trigger tested at 1.85 pounds, and a fatal ND into a bystander during the course of an arrest. The trigger in this case is clearly something that is a factor in play.

Personally owned guns are not an issue, in any way. Fuckery can happen with department guns as well. The gun being personally woned has nothing to do with the issues one needs to stay on top of.

BTW, NYPD, LAPD, Chicago, the FBI, and numerous other large agencies have or have had a large personally owned weapons program. It's workable.

[deputyG23]

Our policy is that the issued G23 can be carried on duty only. No personal firearms on the clock at all. The current authorized personal off duty handgun is anything Glock makes.
Our firearms policy is being reviewed and I have submitted a draft policy that allows several manufacturers' striker fired, DAO, DAK, or LEM trigger equpped pistols for off duty. No traditional DA/SA or SAO pistols are listed.
.38 chambered S&W, Colt, or Ruger revolvers have been proposed for off duty as well, but I don't have high hopes of them being approved.