Posted on 06/23/2002 4:36:02 PM PDT by tarawa
Cop guns may go high tech
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Shelly Whitehead, Post staff reporter
The Newport Police Department hopes to be the country's first to use a new technology that keeps a microchip record of the time, date and number of rounds fired from each officer's weapon.
Police Chief Tom Fromme said he will recommend the city buy the device, known as the Accu-Counter, for all departmental firearms when he meets with City Manager Phil Ciafardini and city commissioners in the next week.
Fromme believes the device, invented and patented by a Crestview Hills man, promises to become standard law enforcement equipment because it objectively documents when and how often an officer fires a weapon.
''When it comes down to a situation where an officer has to use his firearm in the line of duty . . . this documents how many rounds are fired and what time-frame they're fired in,'' Fromme said.
''I think it will be a useful tool in cases where people try to say that police are not telling the whole story. . . . I think most of the time . . . it will substantiate what the officers do and say.''
Accu-Counter inventor Kenneth Brinkley met with Fromme, about 20 Newport police SWAT team members and Lt. Col. Robert McCray on Thursday to give officers hands-on experience with the device. Accu-Counter was patented in 1995, but is used only by the U.S. military.
Brinkley showed officers how the quarter-size microchip device slips into the grip of the department's Glock 9mm sidearms without changing the gun's physical configuration. Brinkley said the Accu-Counter operates like the black box in a commercial jet, keeping an indestructible, tamper-proof record of the gun's activity, including the date and time of each firing to within 1/1000th of a second.
The information is downloaded after use by sweeping a scanner across a screw-head-sized window on the gun's grip. The downloaded data appears on the computer monitor as four columns of information detailing up to 500 firings at a time.
''This gives you unbiased information,'' said Brinkley. ''This gives you the whole history of that weapon.''
Fromme said the benefits include everything from more precise firearms maintenance and documentation of practice rounds fired for weapons certification, to more concise and objective use of force documentation for departmental and legal use.
''How about testimony in court?'' McCray asked Brinkley. ''In other words, as far as evidentiary - is there enough data compiled with this that we can pull data for evidence . . . in court?''
Brinkley said that capability is one of the device's strongest selling points, but he prompted officers to take a test run with an Accu-Counter-equipped gun. SWAT members obliged by running the sample ''techno-weapon'' through the paces on the department's firing range.
''Fire as fast as you can,'' SWAT Commander Capt. Cy Sykes directed his team members. ''Don't even worry about hitting the target. Just fire as fast as you can shoot it. . . . Is anybody counting the rounds?''
Somebody was, and when the team scanned the gun's in terior Accu-Counter, it downloaded information with computer-perfect precision. At least one benefit was immediately clear to Sykes, who is also the department's range officer, in charge of firearms records.
Fromme said his department's standard-issue sidearm, the Glock 9mm, has proven a virtually indestructible workhorse which does not demand a schedule of strict or frequent maintenance. But for other police firearms, including shotguns and especially the more sophisticated weapons used by SWAT members, the Accu-Counter's precision firing tallies would ensure the critical timely maintenance demanded.
Fromme said he hopes to obtain approval to buy Accu- Counters for more than 100 weapons.
Fromme expected the cost per weapon to be about $100. He doesn't view cost as the most important factor in the decision.
I wouldn't be surprised. I think most people in the U.S. (on average) kill more people with their cars than with their guns.
The nice folks on rec.guns explained to me why this was an altogether stupid idea (now I know). And a patent search revealed that all of it was patented in 1994 by a fellow in Texas. He even had a compass in the gun to determine which way it was pointing!
Oh well.
--Boris
Wound't you know it, by this time I wrote all this down, some sucker had stolen my idea, done a feasability study, mapped out 3 possible routes, and posted it all to the internet.
Dang plagerists.
Of course, there's a big difference between reasonable expectations for a governmentally-hired police force and private citizens; the former should be (but almost never are) held to higher standards. The one downside I can see to this technology (and it's a biggie) is that those in power want to hold private citizens to higher standards than the police, and this would provide yet another way to harrass the former.
It gives the law enforcement community total accountability of their own, therefore it won't happen.
Ergo, it will be required for us peasants, and LEO's will be exempt. Just like reduced-capacity magazines, etc.
Rethink this. Con: Anything added to the firing mechanism of a gun to conditionally-impede firing will increase the likelihood that the gun will fail to fire when needed. With many if not most such devices it is possible for a moderately-resourceful criminal to make such failure likely if not certain (with electronic jamming devices, etc.).
Pro: If a crook gets a cop's gun, it's always conceivable the crook might not manage to kill the cop if they gun doesn't work. Of course, since the crook would already be at contact range and would have the initiative (evidenced by having gotten the gun), the crook could just as easily slash the cop's throat.
Personally, I'd say think odds of a cop being disarmed by a crook but surviving would be pretty remote even if the crook couldn't fire the cop's gun. What's important is to avoid having the cop get in that situation in the first place.
BTW, if a crook does get the cop's gun and the cop runs away, the cop has in all likelihood just given the crook what will soon be a funcational firearm. The only way to prevent that would be to make the lock an integral part of the firing mechanism, substantially increasing the likelihood of failure. Of course, that wouldn't bother HCI et al. who seem to think the less able a gun is to fire, the "safer" it is.
If the device is (I'm assuming this is how it works) counting the rounds fired by the shock force of the weapon being fired, will this preclude the officer's wife from hammering a nail in the wall with his Glock to hang a picture?
Personally I'm still trying to figure this out.
1. Buttered bread always falls butter side down.....
2. A Kitty Cat tossed into the air always lands on it's feet.
Thus my question is this....
If I tape a piece of buttered bread to the back of my neighbors kitty cat why does it fall back to earth ?!?!?
Stay Safe .......I'll stop now :o) BTW......... GR the socialists are messing with your pistol again.......
now then... if this thing had a display, and split time, it might actually be
useful to get those double tap times down. otherwise, it sounds about as useful as
seatbelts on a toilet.
Police officers losing control of their weapon - having it taken from them by the perp - happens more often than is generally known publicly. Inadequate training and/or lack of maintaining skills is most often the cause.
The shot-counter described in this article can also be used to verify officers are firing the required number of training rounds per month BTW.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.