Posted on 08/15/2003 11:01:01 AM PDT by InvisibleChurch
TheIndyChannel.com IPD Officers Getting High-Powered Assault Rifles Department Receives 200 M-16 A-1 Assault Rifles
INDIANAPOLIS -- The Indianapolis Police Department has a new high-powered weapon in its arsenal after taking possession of more than 200 M-16 A-1 assault rifles this week.
The rifles will be selectively deployed throughout the force, RTV6's Jack Rinehart reported.
Police say the weapon is more powerful, more accurate and gives an officer a greater chance for survival on the streets.
"It would give the patrol officer an opportunity to respond with a level of force equal to any civilian counterpart," IPD firearms instructor Lon Harness (pictured, below) said.
In the past year, Indianapolis police officers have seized more than 200 illegal, but similarly-sized weapons from the street, Rinehart reported.
IPD officers have also come under attack at least six times from suspects armed with assault-style weapons in the past year. Almost two years ago, Marion County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Baker was killed while the suspects held two police agencies at bay for hours with an assault rifle.
"It gives the guys an opportunity to do something that they might not otherwise be able to do with their pistol," Officer James Gray said.
Each shift and policing district will have the rifles available around the clock. Officers on the beat will use them to defend themselves and the public in situations where suspects are actively shooting.
"What did we learn at Columbine? The police show up, they do a perimeter, and they wait for SWAT to come up. Now SWAT has excellent response time, but when you have people actively being killed on the inside, we have to move," IPD Chief Jerry Barker said.
Not every officer will get a rifle. Barker said the department will go through a careful selection process looking for officers who combine good judgment with proficiency with a firearm, Rinehart reported.
The rifles should be on the street by the end of the year.
That's what I was trying to get at. How many of those kinds of laws would actually be enforced if the police were made up of conservative freeper types. I would imagine very few. It sure would be a nice change.
In Milwaukee, the recruits for the cop shop are by and large unable to aim the old S&W revolvers, and they are also incapable of aiming shots with their Glocks.
May as well use the M16A1. Spray and Pray with VIGOR!!!
I'm just a little ol' civilian whose daddy taught her to shoot a .45 and a .30'06 deer rifle . . . I worked one summer for the police department, and I could out shoot every single one of the officers on the range except for one lieutenant who was also a sport shooter and gun collector.
I think you were on the thread where I mentioned a shootout between two officers of one of our local PDs and an armed robber . . . the officers had 9mm Glocks with a couple spare magazines and the best they could figure afterwards nearly 100 rounds were fired and NOBODY hit ANYTHING . . . not even the robbers car . . . although a dumpster at the edge of the parking lot sustained a couple of hits.
I think the problem is that to your average police officer the sidearm is just another tool, like a radio or a flashlight, and their competence is about what you would expect in that situation.
Giving them full auto is going to just encourage more "spray and pray" with predictable results.
They need to find the sport shooters and hunters in the PD, give them each a nice Remington 700 in .308 with a Leupold scope on top, and a couple hundred rounds for practice. When they are MOA accurate at 200 yards, they're ready. Shouldn't be too hard.
Same consequences, like 200 counts of possession of unregistered machine guns, 200 counts of failure to pay $200 tax, with enhancements for possession of firearm during the commission of other crimes, conspiracy to violate the NFA, conspiracy to violate the Assault Weapons Ban, conspiracy to violate federal laws under color of authority, interstate trafficking of banned firearms ... that kind of "same consequences" ?
I see alot of the 'usual suspects' are here to cheer them on too.
Ah, 'tis a thankless job. But it pays so well LOL. (free doughnuts too!)
That's the crux of the whole thing.
There's a different kind of man or woman attracted to police work than used to be the norm.
Unless they can work within the system - which WE have imposed! - they don't want that occupation.
It's not a matter of enforcing the laws so much anymore as it is abiding by departmental policies.
Statements like this give me the willies ! I am 100% for the LEO's having the ability to take out bad guys with a AR style or bolt gun. I am 101% against LEO's with such a toooood as this turd !!
Stay Safe !
Amen!
With all those HiPoint and Jennings quality firearms the grimlins have, it's a wonder there are any cops left alive anywhere.
As it is, I think the community is in more danger with this program, not less.
Neat, huh?
Can you say "select militia"?
A regular standing army or police force is always a select militia, and it may serve the will of those in power, and be used against the people.
I knew you could.
I think I "missed" that one (lol) but sadly it's not an unusual situation. Witness the Tacoma News Tribune from several years ago (I used to be stationed at Fort Lewis) where there was a true movie like shootout featuring a notorious drug gang and a squad from the 2nd Ranger Battalion who had a sergeant living in the neighborhood.
This guy sees all the carnage, and terrorized residents and gets together with some buddies from the battalion and they decide to run a little "operation" on their own.
They connive to get a couple of SAW's and an M60 and some M4's from their arms rooms along with some stashed ammo and they light up the area one quiet summer evening. Thoughtfully, they warned the good guys living in the KZ. That was a good thing because none of their rounds (estimations were they fired something like five thousand rounds) struck a hostile target. In fact nobody was hit by either side. But the homes, cars, dumpsters all looked like Beirut. I teased my officer buddies at the time in that battalion no end that they all need remedial marksmanship training.....but the problem is symptomatic of a bigger problem:
Why can't most current soldiers and cops shoot? They don't view their weapons as tools, they see them as necessary evils. This is because the liberals have done such a pervasive job of convincing the public schools via their curriculum that ownership and even justifiable use of firearms is in itself, evil.
There is apparently a LEO database that just any incorporated PD or Sherrif can link with that can request all sorts of equipment free of charge! There was a 60min on CBS a few years ago that told the tale of a sleepy little town in central Florida with an officer count of about 40 full time cops at the most. But their chief is a computer whiz by local standards and on a whim one day he just sat down at the terminal and started to "interface." before he was done, he had over 100 M16's, 50 MP5's, A couple of M21 Sniper Rifles. But that's all small stuff. Wait till you hear about the used USMC LAV and the three UH-1H Huey choppers out at the old airport...with current state of the art aviaonics......and they're thinking of turning them into gun platforms......Maybe just in time to work in concernt with an evolution in revolution in platform techonologies and bite us HARD/on the butt...the 5th Point of Contact as it were.
Springfield M-1A and STG-58 rifles are better than the M-1 Garand. You have atleast a 10 round magazine and have the option of reloading much faster if you have only fired five rounds. The extra money you would spend to get an STG-58 or Springfield M-1A is well worth it. M-1 Garand rifles are heavier than a fully loaded M-1A with twenty rounds of 7.62 x 51 in the magazine.
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