Experts Find Glocks Prone To Accidents

Syracuse Post-Standard ^ | 8/7/02 | John O'Brien

[jalisco555]

INSIDE

When a Syracuse man was struck last week by a bullet fired through the ceiling of his apartment, it marked the third time in eight years that an Onondaga County probation officer had unintentionally discharged one of the department-issued Glock pistols.

Those three incidents, and similar cases in Central New York and elsewhere, come as no surprise to Joseph Cominolli. Cominolli was a Syracuse police sergeant in 1987 when he was assigned to find the best semiautomatic handgun to replace that department's revolvers.

The hot new Glock pistol that other police agencies were then buying had two drawbacks that caused Cominolli to reject it. The Glock had no manual safety switch and no magazine safety that made the gun inoperable when the magazine was removed.

A Glock is a safe weapon, Cominolli said, but only if the person handling it knows how to use it. If the gun is unloaded in the wrong order, for example, a round of ammunition can be left in the chamber without the user realizing it, he said. With no manual safety, the gun will fire if the trigger is pulled.

"Even with good training, people forget," he said. "And guns are not forgiving."

On July 30, Stacey Nunn, a probation officer for about a year, was unloading her .40-caliber Glock when it fired into the floor of her second-story apartment at 1904 James St. The bullet struck her downstairs neighbor, Michael Chapman, in the chest as he was making dinner in his kitchen. Chapman's condition improved from critical to serious this week at University Hospital.

Nunn had removed the magazine from the gun before the weapon fired, according to police.

In 1994, probation officer Susan Beebe shot herself in the knee while unloading her Glock. In September 1998, a firearms instructor for the probation department unintentionally fired his Glock into a wall while teaching a class how to remove the weapon from a holster. The shot put a hole through a classroom wall at the Elbridge Rod and Gun Club.

The gun's inadvertent firing in the hands of a gun expert caused concern, Probation Commissioner Robert Czaplicki said.

"We took a look at what went on," Czaplicki said. "We had a group of people look at it. It raised some red flags."

The firearms instructor is still teaching probation officers, said Czaplicki, who would not identify the instructor.

Cominolli, who is retired from the police, has designed and patented a manual safety device that can be added to Glock pistols. Last year, he talked to Czaplicki about adding the device to the probation department's guns.

Czaplicki said the county then talked with Glock officials about having the device installed. But the county rejected the idea after Glock said it would void the warranty on the guns if the safeties were added, Czaplicki said.

Czaplicki said his department is reconsidering the safeties in light of last week's unintentional discharge that injured Chapman.

Cominolli said he knows of dozens of "unintentional discharges" of Glocks in Central New York over the past 15 years, and estimates there have been thousands across the country. He won't refer to them as accidents because that implies the shootings could not have been prevented.

Syracuse police use Smith & Wesson firearms.

No national statistics are available on which manufacturer's handgun has the most unintentional firings. The Washington Post reported in 1998 that District of Columbia officers, who use Glock 9mm handguns, unintentionally fired their weapons more than 120 times over 10 years.

In 1988, the FBI issued a report on Glock handguns giving them low marks, citing a "high potential for unintentional shots," according to the Post. The agency will not release the report, according to an FBI spokesman in Washington, D.C.

Despite that report, the FBI issues Glocks to its agents.

Last week, a Queens corrections officer fatally shot his son while the officer was unloading his 9mm Glock handgun in his home, according to Newsday. A police chief in Coral Gables, Fla., accidentally fired his .40-caliber Glock last month into his locker at a health club, according to The Miami Herald.

The Onondaga County Sheriff's Department, which has used Glocks since 1992, has had at least three unintentional discharges with the weapon, according to Lt. Thomas Morehouse, a firearms instructor. A deputy fired a shot that grazed his hand in 1992. A detective fired a round into the floor of his patrol car a few years ago. And a deputy accidentally pulled the trigger three years ago and fired a round into the ground at the training range, Morehouse said.

In December, an Oswego County sheriff's deputy accidentally fired his Glock handgun into the foot of a security officer at a nuclear power plant.

Cominolli, a nationally known firearms expert, said he's gotten dozens of calls from lawyers representing police officers who'd shot themselves with Glocks. He tells them he's never heard of a case of the gun malfunctioning. It's always operator error, he said.

'Brain fade' protection

That's why he designed the safety device and is marketing it to police agencies and private gun owners across the country. With the safety on, the trigger bar inside the gun can't move.

"If you have a brain fade and pull the trigger, it won't go bang," Cominolli said.

Newly hired probation officers in Onondaga County must carry a firearm after undergoing 35 hours of training on the shooting range and 14 hours in the classroom, Czaplicki said. Veteran officers in the department have the option of carrying a gun. Probation officers are trained by the department's two state-certified firearms instructors, he said. Forty-one of the county's 84 probation officers now carry a gun on the job. All carry Glocks.

In response to last week's shooting, the department is reviewing its training procedures, Czaplicki said. He wouldn't comment on details of the shooting, except to say it's certain that the trigger on the gun must have been pulled. Initial police reports erroneously said the gun had fired when the officer dropped it.

Mark Doneburgh, Glock's district manager for the Syracuse area, was an Onondaga County sheriff's deputy 14 years ago when he first looked at Glocks. He questioned whether they could hold up because they're made of plastic, so he took the gun up in a helicopter and dropped it to the ground. It didn't break and didn't fire, he said.

Glock doesn't fit its guns with manual safety switches because the guns have three internal "passive" safeties, Doneburgh said. Those safeties automatically disengage when someone pulls the trigger, but they prevent the gun from firing when it's dropped or when the trigger gets bumped from the side.

Remembering the safety

Glocks are popular with police because the revolvers they replaced had no manual safeties, he said. The fear was that officers would have trouble getting used to having to turn off the safety in a gunfight, Doneburgh said. He studied the Glock for the sheriff's department.

"We needed a gun that we could easily transition my people with and that they could feel confident with," he said. "It's a draw, point and shoot gun."

Onondaga County Corrections Commissioner Timothy Cowin said he would not outfit his officers with Glocks until they were fitted with Cominolli's manual safety last year.

"I've been in this business a long time, and I can tell you there are many, many accidental discharges that never get reported," Cowin said. "When people are holstering or drawing that weapon, they automatically put their finger in that trigger guard without even thinking about it."

With training, officers not accustomed to turning off a manual safety can make it a habit, Cowin said.

Cowin said it's unclear whether the added safety means Glock will no longer honor its warranty. He said he decided to make the change anyway because the weapon is unlikely to need any repairs that the correction department's own armorer can't fix.

Many accidental Glock discharges involve unloading. Doneburgh, who teaches gun safety courses at Onondaga Community College, said he always demanded perfection from his police recruits when they unloaded guns during firearms training.

"I used to tell them, No. 1, 'mag' out," he said of the need to remove the magazine before clearing the chamber. "I told them, 'Put your finger on the trigger and I'm going to take a knife and cut it off.' And they believed me. Hopefully, that's going to stay with them for 20 years."

Never found liable

Glock doesn't fit its guns with safeties because many police officers are used to not having to switch them off and because the company has never been found liable for any unintentional shooting, Doneburgh said.

"We've never lost a lawsuit," he said. Doneburgh said he didn't know how many lawsuits the company had settled, and a lawyer for Glock could not be reached for comment.

Cominolli said he's sold between 600 to 800 of the safeties to police agencies and private gun owners in the first year and has orders for more. He charges $75 a gun for law enforcement agencies. Local Glock owners can buy the device at Ra-Lin Discount in Syracuse.

The Kenmore Police Department, near Buffalo, wouldn't have bought Glocks without the added safeties, Cominolli said.

Twelve of the 17 police departments in Onondaga County, including the sheriff's department and state police, issue Glocks to their officers. The only ones that don't are Syracuse, DeWitt, Baldwinsville, North Syracuse and East Syracuse, Doneburgh said.

DeWitt police Capt. Bruce Wahl said he chose the Smith & Wesson semiautomatic partly because it has a manual safety and another safety that makes the gun inoperable without the magazine. Officials at other police agencies, such as Camillus, said they've never had an unintentional firing of a Glock.

"The Glock is accepted by 70 percent of law enforcement agencies in North America," Doneburgh said.

He said he's heard reports of a Glock being unintentionally fired, and each time it's because someone messed up; the gun itself has never malfunctioned.

"We're in a society where we're making inanimate objects responsible for our stupidity," he said. "You have to put warnings on things. You can't put your dog in a microwave oven to dry him. Common sense has to take over here."

[Travis McGee]

JAG files are full of cases of guards shooting one another during horseplay at changing of the guard. For real.

[Travis McGee]

Let's face it, most cops and ordinary folks would be better served with a hammerless revolver with a 15 pound DA trigger.

Not to mention their coworkers, neighbors and children.

[Travis McGee]

"Too intimidating"? I thought that was the entire point, to get the perp to surrender without a battle? How can you be "too intimidating" as long as you are polite when addressing the public?

[Travis McGee]

(From the Wash Post article:

The string of accidental shootings by D.C. officers came amid 10 years of warnings from firearms experts about the Glock's light trigger and propensity to fire an unintentional shot when handled incorrectly. Such a sensitive gun was designed for highly trained users.

Yet the [DCPD] department stinted on training for recruits and failed to keep veteran officers to a twice-yearly retraining schedule that experts consider the bare minimum for firearms competence. A Washington Post investigation found that 75 percent of all D.C. officers involved in shootings during 1996 failed to comply with the retraining regulation. One officer waited so long to come to the range that firearms instructors found a spider nest growing inside his Glock.

(The DCPD retained the factory 5.5 pound trigger pull.)

[Travis McGee]

Check out the linked WP article on the DCPD.

[Squantos]

http://www.glockmeister.com/triggers.html




Good points, the link above says a lot about glock triggers......


Stay Safe !

[jalisco555]

"Mark Doneburgh, Glock's district manager for the Syracuse area, was an Onondaga County sheriff's deputy 14 years ago when he first looked at Glocks. He questioned whether they could hold up because they're made of plastic, so he took the gun up in a helicopter and dropped it to the ground. It didn't break and didn't fire, he said. "

Now how far will a a 9 mm round go?

I wondered about that myself. Hope this expert dropped his Glock in an extremely secluded spot where he first insured that no one was nearby. Sounds like a pretty dumb way to test a weapon but what do I know. I'm no expert.

[Jonah Hex]

A spider nest? Oh man, that's bad. I don't feel confident unless I spend a few hours on the range at least once a month, and I try to practice at least once a week.

[archy]

"Mark Doneburgh, Glock's district manager for the Syracuse area, was an Onondaga County sheriff's deputy 14 years ago when he first looked at Glocks. He questioned whether they could hold up because they're made of plastic, so he took the gun up in a helicopter and dropped it to the ground. It didn't break and didn't fire, he said. "

Now how far will a a 9 mm round go?

Several years back, I was with an Israeli Chen troopie in the Negev Desert on a jeep trip, with my shoulder stocked 9mm Browning GP/Hi-power and her 9mm Uzi SMG for company. Her unit had considerable excess 9mmm pistol ammo available, as most of their Uzis had been exchanged for 5,56mm M16A1 rifles, which she didn't care for. Accordingly, we had along 3 cases of 2000 rounds apiece of 9mm ammo that didn't have to be returned, and wasn't.

Before that day was over, we literally ran out of rocks for targets, but among other amusements, we fired a few magazines with the weapons held at various extreme angles in the 45º-60º range trying to determine which would give the greatest effect. We were curious too as to whether there'd be a significant difference between the effect with the 5-inch barrel of my Browning's pistol barrel and her Uzi's 10-inch barrel.

Observing bullet strike with her binoculars and the 500mm telescopic lens [10x] of my Nikon camera, we found that when so fired, the round for either pistol or buzzgun was good for a maximum range a little better than 2000 meters- call it 2500 meters, which we found from the odometer on the jeep was a bit less than 3 miles.

By the time our amusement was done, she was quite skilled with both the Uzi and my GP, and the full-jacketed Israeli military ammunition remains quite lethal out to the ranges at which a target can be reasonably expected to be hit with such a weapon, a couple of hundred yards. But I would not care to have a 5-round burst rain down on me from the extreme distances we had been playing at, though serious injury rather than death is more probable.

As for my handgun, the effective range is pretty simple to determine: it's about as far as you can throw the gun at a person and hit them with it. Beyond that, use something more appropriate, like that Uzi or an M16.

I could do a little better with that particular pistol, with which I had already practiced quite about, and which the detatchable stock really helped. But it's still a good rule of thumb.

About 300 meters maximum,, as a practical matter. Something less than 3000, absolute maximum distance the bullet will actually fly, though hitting an individual target at such a range is more a matter of luck than skill.

-archy-/-

[RogueIsland]

As others have noted, the standard Glock does not have a 2-1/2 - 3-1/2 lb trigger pull. The standard is 5.5 lbs for typical duty weapons.

I was trying to illustrate a general point of theory. That should have been clear from a subesequent post where I mention specifically GLOCK trigger pulls.

[archy]

JAG files are full of cases of guards shooting one another during horseplay at changing of the guard. For real.

During Israel's wars prior to the intifada and operations in Lebanon, the military command noted that their forces had suffered more accidents involving injury and death to personnel with handguns than with all other weapons combined, excepting hand grenades. That is in part due to a wide variety of different types in Israeli service, with different safety arrangements and handling characteristics, and also in part from the ways in which bored or tired soldiers with a bit too much unsupervised time on their hands find to amuse or occupy themselves.

But the shorty M16 *car15* has accordingly replaced most of the handguns carried by Israeli soldiers, other than those in the elite and special raiding units, and even the once-ubiquitous and popular Uzi is rarely seen in the hands of uniformed Army personnel.

-archy-/-

[Wm Bach]

Ahhh, I see that the far, far left wing, commie pinko, islamo-terrorist, pedophile, black-labrador-puppy-kicking,
granola-eating, DU, homosexual, NTSB-defending, Backstreet Bosy-listening, Sarah brady-loving, Glock bashing continues unabated. :^)

[Jonah Hex]

(WARNING: Sea story about to be committed)

Back in my younger days on subs, we had an in-port topside watch complete with M1911A1 at all times including in dry dock. One night about 0-dark-30, the newbie top-side watch was playing Rance McGrew with his weapon (pulling fast draws, twirling it, and reholstering).

Anyway, the yutz fumbled the weapon, dropped it and watch it slide over the side and drop 30' to the concrete drydock bottom! The weapon discharged on impact, but luckliy no yardbirds were hurt.

After that, they took the pistols away from the topside watches and issued batons instead. Just as well, because somebody would still lose one over the side once in a while.

No kidding..... (smile)

[Cap'n Crunch]

Yes, I'm afraid that leather jackets apparently scare the general public. We also cannot wear some types of black leather gloves, and they at one time were considering changing the colors of our cruisers from black to white.

Not to mention that we cannot choke anybody (well, not supposed to anyway) and vehicle chases are almost a thing of the past.

Speaking of spiders in weapons, heres a story. One of our old timers, who retired a few years ago, went out to the range with his issue revolver. It was rusted shut. Had he needed it he would have been out of luck, the cylinder would not turn.

Our dept. schedules our training, usually once or twice a year. One time we went about 2 years without qualifying.

Personally I wouldn't mind carrying a revolver. I always liked them.

[FormerLurker]

"If you have a brain fade and pull the trigger, it won't go bang," Cominolli said.

You never allow yourself to have a "brain fade" while handling a weapon. Ever.

One rule of firearm safety is "allows treat a gun as if it's loaded".

Another rule with automatics is to always inspect the chamber before assuming a gun is unloaded. Obviously, you have to ensure a firearm is unloaded before stripping it down to clean it.

A Glock WILL NOT FIRE UNLESS THE TRIGGER IS PULLED. Unless you desire to fire the weapon, you NEVER put your finger into the trigger guard, except AFTER you've cleared the chamber AND inspected it prior to stripping the weapon down in order to clean it.

A Glock isn't much different than a revolver in the respect that it won't fire unless you pull the trigger. Obviously, there are many who have somehow or another had "brain fades"...

[Wm Bach]

Personally I wouldn't mind carrying a revolver. I always liked them.

Bump for neverfail wheelguns. (unless of course, the cylinder is rusted fast)

[School of Rational Thought]

"I think the problem with all of these semi-autos is that there is a round left in the chamber after the magazine is removed, unless all of the rounds are used up"

Don't these people know to always treat a gun as if it is loaded?

[FormerLurker]

Do you have a source for this? I thought I recalled reading, re some previous case of a LEO's accidental discharge, that the NYPD Glocks were customized to have a LIGHT trigger pull -- which would go a long way toward explaining the high rate of ADs.

The New York trigger isn't called the New York trigger for nothing...

Glock Triggers

The NYPD modified Glock triggers to require a more forceful finger tug to fire them in 1990.

[glock rocks]

Let's face it, most cops and ordinary folks would be better served with a hammerless revolver with a 15 pound DA trigger.

that's true. since i've owned my Vette, i've seen many of them wrapped around poles or upside down...

just because you can afford something doesn't mean you'll have the brains to us it safely.

at the range, i can put twenty holes in a six inch circle at twenty feet from concealed with my Glocks
in less than ten seconds. consistently. i don't carry a revolver. i carry a Glock for backup.

i usually carry a Sig and drive an SUV... not quite as fast as the Vette and Glock, but comfy and thoroughly sufficient.

the creed of the C programmer is "you know what you're doing."

i think it fits many of the parallel discussions going on here.

[Squantos]

Hey !!

I "never" wrecked my Vette !.........:o)

Stay Safe !