Posted on 08/17/2006 11:55:11 AM PDT by BurbankKarl
Since 1985, there have been more than 350 accidental discharges by LAPD officers. There also have been more than a dozen so-called friendly fire incidents.
Though the resulting wounds tended to be less serious than in gun battles with suspects, scores of officers and more than two dozen suspects and bystanders have been injured in incidents that department officials blame on careless handling of firearms.
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One off-duty officer shot himself in a leg as he sat behind his desk and, according to department records, contemplated "a complex mathematical problem." Another officer inadvertently pulled the trigger when his African gray parrot flew into his face.
One officer accidentally shot his girlfriend in a leg while trying to retrieve a cartridge from his handgun as a "memento" of their date. Yet another officer admitted that he accidentally fired his gun because he was startled by a woman holding a teddy bear. Two officers accidentally discharged their weapons as they handled them at home while watching themselves in mirrors.
Even officers from the department's elite SWAT unit have accidentally fired guns while on duty.
In one case, officers had just completed a highly dangerous operation in which they entered the home of a barricaded suspect. Though they emerged from the house unscathed, one of them errantly fired his shotgun while unloading ammunition from another weapon. Shotgun pellets struck the ground between his feet, with metal fragments ricocheting into his partner's upper leg.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
There is simply no excuse for this. There is also no such thing as an 'accidental discharge'; There is only a 'negligent discharge', with the emphasis on the word negligent.
I was thinking they never had this problem with revolvers.. Not in this proportion anyway.
Maybe Andy should just give them one bullet and have them carry it in their pocket.
The officer thought he had removed all of the rounds from the cylinder of his .38-caliber weapon when he pointed it at a wall and began to explain "trigger pull pressure." As he pulled the trigger, a round that had been left in the chamber discharged into the wall.
his African gray parrot
More racism from the mainstream media.
Just applying liberal reasoning to the liberals.
Ok, that really makes these LEOs look bad.
Darn right! It's not an African gray parrot, it's a parrot of color.
Does it matter what it's unladen airspeed is?
....One off-duty officer shot himself in a leg as he sat behind his desk and, according to department records, contemplated "a complex mathematical problem."....
The problem is "Glockitis" and keeping the Barney Finger on the trigger.
I shoot all the time, and the ONLY accidental discharge I ever had was with a Glock.
I pack a 1911. If the hammer isn't cocked, you don't have to worry at all.
Well, that is Metropolitan Division with the Kimbers. Rank and file can select three different sidearms...plus these statistics go back to the pre 92F days.
Well I own to Glocks and I have yet to have a negligent discharge. Maybe because that's all I own I always remember rule #2.
NEVER PUT YOUR FINGER ON THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO FIRE.
That's one of those new-fangled self-loading revo's.
Although most accidental discharges, and nearly all accidental discharges resulting in injury, involve negligence, there are some exceptions. Things like slam fires can sometimes occur even with properly-maintained weapons. On the other hand, if a slam-fire injures someone, odds are good that it's because someone was careless.
Of course. If it is faster than a speeding bullet, it might just have a chance of staying alive around LA cops.
I have always been a revolver guy. Revolvers give me great confidence.
Oh.... Wise guy..... Nyuuk nyuuk nyuuk.
Negligence is not limited to just the officer(s) in question but anyone involved with the maintenance and inspection of all the weapons. A slam discharge or doubling is a maintenance issue. But this is an extremely rare occurance in my experience, in fact in almost 20 years with the US Army, I have never even seen it happen. But I have seen numerous ND's due to negligence, carelessness or out and out recklessness.
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