5 ms·

Well, ultimately, you did. But really, there were funds made available through the Department of Homeland Security for local police departments to purchase mil

by chiph 13y ago

Well, ultimately, you did. But really, there were funds made available through the Department of Homeland Security for local police departments to purchase military surplus armored vehicles (and weapons, helmets, etc.), as part of the post-9/11 anti-terrorism push. IMO, the money would have been better spent on training instead of hardware. The NYPD budgets 150 rounds a year per officer for firearms proficiency testing & training. The NYPD is also known for violating the civil rights of the people they interact with -- if only they knew more about the law...

hga 13y ago
The NYPD suffers from a severe lack of a local gun culture---the city has a bit over 50,000 each of legally registered handguns and long guns, and there aren't many places to shoot---as you note does very little proficiency training, I myself shoot around 200 handgun rounds per range visit, their leadership is notoriously gun ignorant and saddled them with Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) rounds for a long time, and still uses the heavy New York trigger modification, and the force is notorious for a very large fraction being poor in gun fights. There was a recent incident where ALL the civilian casualties were from the cops, and most specifically we believe from one who screwed up big time, the other did the right thing for himself and others, to the extent we could determine.
stcredzero 13y ago
150 rounds a year is probably approaching an order of magnitude too low. You need 1000's of repetitions to achieve conditioning that can overcome combat stress. I suspect this had lots to do with the Fruitvale Station incident. Taser cartridges cost 30 or more times more than bullets, so the conditioning strength of taser use was a whole lot weaker than the conditioning strength of firing the pistol. I see this as a big problem.
- hga 13y ago
  Nah, see the reply I made in this subthread. The people who run the NYPD are cheap, stupid about guns, and don't give a damn about any civilians who aren't politically powerful or the like, e.g. they run one of the most restrictive concealed carry permitting systems in the nation. Plus there's a lot of pro-criminal sentiment in the city's movers and shakers. Ah, I now remember there's a recent RAND report on how badly this is done. But you're generally right about the required amount of training, and that explains the various Federal unit cartridge procurements that have raised so many eyebrows (mostly because people don't know they're indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity ones, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDIQ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDIQ). I only looked closely at the one for the fish police as I like to call them (NOAA armed officers who police things like sea fishing, see http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/ole/ http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/ole/), it attracted attention due to a clerical error listing it under weather forecasting, and running the numbers resulting in appropriate quantities for training, obviously a lot more than the NYPD's 150/year.
  - stcredzero 13y ago
    Exactly how many repetitions do police get with TASERs, then?
    - hga 13y ago
      No idea whatsoever, besides us all noting TASER rounds are fantastically more expensive, i.e. I suspect we'd not be surprised if most officers in the nation have practiced firing 1 or 0 rounds. As an (fire-)armed citizen, so called "less lethal" weapons are not particularly practical to cart around, or wield while checking out a bump in the night while also carrying a flashlight, so I have not seriously studied them and e.g. the way they're deployed and used by police. They're still potentially lethal, so as a citizen without all the protections police have I might as well use the most effective means of self-defense, I'll be judged the same if an adversary dies and very likely if not. Especially since I'm not expected to intervene in situations like the police are. On the other hand this has little to do with the Fruitvale Station incident, the error there was in drawing the wrong weapon and not recognizing that before pulling the trigger (when I looked at the officer's face his expression of horror was very clear). It could be addressed by simply putting it in a hard or very strange place to draw from, so the muscle memory of drawing the two is sufficiently different. Even a waist cross-draw with it located on the non-dominate side of the body, since it's less lethal, and wouldn't be effective at all again body armor, weapons retention is less of an issue. That was my first thought after seeing the incident (well, there's also second guessing the decision to escalate the level of force used, but I didn't seriously consider that; again, as a civilian, all this will never come up).
      - rdl 13y ago
        I find a flashlight and OC spray incredibly useful, and very rarely (in the US) would ever carry a ccw handgun or rifle/shotgun without a light (mounted to weapon or for use in hand) and also pepper spray. And a knife, which is incidentally a retention tool for the firearm, but mainly utility (except when I had my overt body armor, where I carried a large fixed blade near to on-vest pistol). Without a non-lethal option, you're stuck. There are situations which don't warrant a lethal response, or which don't absolutely require a lethal response, but where if you get close, weapon retention becomes a serious issue, turning the whole thing into a lethal force justified encounter. Which is a huge problem for police who open carry handguns; less of an issue if you CCW. Tasers are huge, and unless openly carried or in a house, are basically the same form factor as a handgun. If I were a high-risk person (smaller, female, disabled, etc.) in a place where I couldn't or wouldn't carry a handgun, it would be an option. It might also be an option in a place where use of force but non-lethal force was likely, like a mental hospital, bar, etc. Otherwise, the optimum seems to be OC/knife/light, and then handgun.

by chiph 13y ago

hga 13y ago

The NYPD suffers from a severe lack of a local gun culture---the city has a bit over 50,000 each of legally registered handguns and long guns, and there aren't many places to shoot---as you note does very little proficiency training, I myself shoot around 200 handgun rounds per range visit, their leadership is notoriously gun ignorant and saddled them with Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) rounds for a long time, and still uses the heavy New York trigger modification, and the force is notorious for a very large fraction being poor in gun fights. There was a recent incident where ALL the civilian casualties were from the cops, and most specifically we believe from one who screwed up big time, the other did the right thing for himself and others, to the extent we could determine.

stcredzero 13y ago

150 rounds a year is probably approaching an order of magnitude too low. You need 1000's of repetitions to achieve conditioning that can overcome combat stress. I suspect this had lots to do with the Fruitvale Station incident. Taser cartridges cost 30 or more times more than bullets, so the conditioning strength of taser use was a whole lot weaker than the conditioning strength of firing the pistol. I see this as a big problem.

hga 13y ago
Nah, see the reply I made in this subthread. The people who run the NYPD are cheap, stupid about guns, and don't give a damn about any civilians who aren't politically powerful or the like, e.g. they run one of the most restrictive concealed carry permitting systems in the nation. Plus there's a lot of pro-criminal sentiment in the city's movers and shakers. Ah, I now remember there's a recent RAND report on how badly this is done. But you're generally right about the required amount of training, and that explains the various Federal unit cartridge procurements that have raised so many eyebrows (mostly because people don't know they're indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity ones, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDIQ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDIQ). I only looked closely at the one for the fish police as I like to call them (NOAA armed officers who police things like sea fishing, see http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/ole/ http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/ole/), it attracted attention due to a clerical error listing it under weather forecasting, and running the numbers resulting in appropriate quantities for training, obviously a lot more than the NYPD's 150/year.
- stcredzero 13y ago
  Exactly how many repetitions do police get with TASERs, then?
  - hga 13y ago
    No idea whatsoever, besides us all noting TASER rounds are fantastically more expensive, i.e. I suspect we'd not be surprised if most officers in the nation have practiced firing 1 or 0 rounds. As an (fire-)armed citizen, so called "less lethal" weapons are not particularly practical to cart around, or wield while checking out a bump in the night while also carrying a flashlight, so I have not seriously studied them and e.g. the way they're deployed and used by police. They're still potentially lethal, so as a citizen without all the protections police have I might as well use the most effective means of self-defense, I'll be judged the same if an adversary dies and very likely if not. Especially since I'm not expected to intervene in situations like the police are. On the other hand this has little to do with the Fruitvale Station incident, the error there was in drawing the wrong weapon and not recognizing that before pulling the trigger (when I looked at the officer's face his expression of horror was very clear). It could be addressed by simply putting it in a hard or very strange place to draw from, so the muscle memory of drawing the two is sufficiently different. Even a waist cross-draw with it located on the non-dominate side of the body, since it's less lethal, and wouldn't be effective at all again body armor, weapons retention is less of an issue. That was my first thought after seeing the incident (well, there's also second guessing the decision to escalate the level of force used, but I didn't seriously consider that; again, as a civilian, all this will never come up).
    - rdl 13y ago
      I find a flashlight and OC spray incredibly useful, and very rarely (in the US) would ever carry a ccw handgun or rifle/shotgun without a light (mounted to weapon or for use in hand) and also pepper spray. And a knife, which is incidentally a retention tool for the firearm, but mainly utility (except when I had my overt body armor, where I carried a large fixed blade near to on-vest pistol). Without a non-lethal option, you're stuck. There are situations which don't warrant a lethal response, or which don't absolutely require a lethal response, but where if you get close, weapon retention becomes a serious issue, turning the whole thing into a lethal force justified encounter. Which is a huge problem for police who open carry handguns; less of an issue if you CCW. Tasers are huge, and unless openly carried or in a house, are basically the same form factor as a handgun. If I were a high-risk person (smaller, female, disabled, etc.) in a place where I couldn't or wouldn't carry a handgun, it would be an option. It might also be an option in a place where use of force but non-lethal force was likely, like a mental hospital, bar, etc. Otherwise, the optimum seems to be OC/knife/light, and then handgun.