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."

[pimaarms]

My local PD has used S&W 4046s for many years. This model is DAO and has NO external safety. The first group they ordered were even modified, by the factory, to fire with the magazine out. [ I asked one of the officers why they did this, he said they felt that it would be more likely to need to fire the weapon in the middle of a reload, than need the magazine safety to prevent them getting shot with their own weapon. Not sure I agree with that, however.] S&W had many problems getting this modification to work properly, so they refused to make the same modification on further orders.
Now I'm sure your saying, "so what does this have to do with Glocks?"
Well, I just thought it interesting, that after all these years of carrying the "safer" S&W, next month they will be changing over to the Glock 22.

[Pete-R-Bilt]

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

and since they‘re built like glocks and Kimbers
most morons walk away from problems
unscathed

[glock rocks]

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

LOL....

ND's with a Vette can be humiliating. (not only have i not ever put a scratch on her,
i haven't had a ticket since i've owned her.) can't say i haven't experienced the triple
digit full testosterone/adrenaline rush, however. isn't that what this is all about?

zero to utah legal max in 5.2 seconds. woo hoo. stock specs say 160 top end...
well, she's no longer stock.

aw what the hell, i think i'll hit the range first thing in the AM.
... and maybe i'll drive my Glock.

[Travis McGee]

"Now This Is No $#!T" (True Sea Story Alert)

A very unpopular vitamin chomping mustang SEAL LT of very short stature and VN era vinatge left his CAR-15 variant briefly out of his sight topsides on the gator freighter hauling his platoon across the Atlantic.

One of his quicker platoon members immediately took it to the rail and dropped it overboard.

"Now where did my rifle go??!??" was all the LT could come up with.

Lots of paper work on that one, fer sure. The platoon never fessed up who did the deep sixing. Score another one for the enlisted swine.

[Travis McGee]

So I guess you can't wear black leather gloves with the finger tips cut off? LOL!

I like wheelguns too. They always go bang when I pull the trigger, and I can see the bullets. (I like simple things.)

[Travis McGee]

Every word the truth.

[longrider]

I own and carry a Glock 23, it's a fine weapon. And I carry it with 10 in the clip and one in the tube. I know that it is always readly to fire, so I keep my danm finger off the trigger. If I want to break it down, I drop the clip out, then jack the slide back to get the rd. out. THERE IS NO REASON TO PUT MY FINGER ON THE TRIGGER WHEN I DO THIS. When it broken down, that when it's unloaded.When I see revolver or pistol any where I treat them as loaded.

[glock rocks]

you know what you're doing. ;o)

[fella]

Unfortunately to unload a Glock you remove the clip then pull back the slide to empty the chamber (thus cocking the weapon) then you must pull the trigger to uncock it. If you get out of order you fire the weapon. I never have liked the safety in the trigger feature of the Glocks, that's why I prefer my Jerico over my Glock.

[archy]

Now This Is No $#!T" (True Sea Story Alert)

[unattended weapon war story snipped]

Lots of paper work on that one, fer sure. The platoon never fessed up who did the deep sixing. Score another one for the enlisted swine.

Just to let you know that the groundpounders are no less creative and imaginative.

Long ago in the days when fatrigue uniforms were green, nametags were white and US Army tapes gold and black, I had graduated from basic and tank crewman's AIT, and was made an acting instructor and range safety NCO training potential tankers on the M3 and M3A1 .45 caliber *greasegun* submachinegun. After a couple of cycles, I actually began giving some of the instructional blocks on adisassemble, maintenance and cleaning, and soon had a shiny new pair of corporal's stripes sewn on my fatigue jacket sleeves- yes, we wore them there back in those days when dinosaurs were still around and kicking.

We also had another particularly disliked instructor who looked on the trainees as a near unexhaustable source of amusement or slave labour for him, extending to such things as shining his boots. Everyone knows that REAL tankers don't bother with such chores, since Diesel fuel and hydraulic fluid pretty quickly turns a tanker's real working footgear into something less suitable for parades and inspections, but were wer high-visibility instructors in a training unit situation, and really did need to keep our appearance sharp. But it's really more professional to keep an extra pair of boots or two stashed in a car trunk than to armtwist the trainees into repeatedly cleaning your boots for you.../

One weekend we were holding an in-ranks inspection with the .45 pistol, to show off the new skills the rookie tankers had learned in their hoped mastery of the manual of arms for the pistol, semiautomatic, caliber .45, M1911A1. There weren't enough to go around for all trainees and instructors, so us corporales stood the inspection equipped with the .45 caliber greaseguns instead, and figured we'd be skipped over in ranks.

The training Brigade commander doing the inspection was a leftover WWII tanker who'd began his treadhead career in Shermans and had crewed in every American tank design and model since. He'd just gotten his new Lt Colonel's shiny silver leaf and was darned well going to show us what *attention to detail* in an in-ranks inspection meant.

All the trainees were required to go through *inspection arms* with their .45s; he checked ALL magazines for cracks, and all the grips on the .45 for broken [plastic] ones, a fairly common condition on handguns used in repeated training cycles. And when he came to the guys with the submachineguns, we got the same attention, though he didn't have any of us field-strip our buzzguns, as he did some of those with their .45s.

But he did check our M3s out closely, and when he came to the one carried by that one particular corporal, who of course had had one of the trainees under his charge clean and oil his M3A1 for him, the Colonel got inquisitive. And sent one of those NCOs accompanying him in ranks to the arms room for a cleaning rod...something was in the gun's barrel....

And the sergeant came back with a cleaning rod for a .45 pistol, which will reach halfway down the barrel of an M3 from either end, but not all the way through. The pistol rod wasn't long enough; something longer was needed, but at least it wasn't a round or bullet stuck in the bore of the gun- something crusty and crumbly was coming out on the rod as it was withdrawn. Whatever it was, it didn't belong there.

Our First Sergeant came over to me, and had me pull the wire stock of my greasegun, the ends of which are threade for use as a cleaning rod for the gun. Yep that was long enough. The cloth patch from the pistol rod was pushed through and out the front end of the barrel they came: jellybeans.

Not only did everyone in the ranks crack up laughing, so did those in the inspection party...and there was no serious attempt to knock it off for a minute or so. It was a fine learning experience....

Following the questioning as to whether the corporal in question had personally cleaned his weapon, and if so, why in the foggy blue morning he had run the jellybeans up there were met with considerable hemming and hawing, and by the end of that week we had a new vacancy among our number. He was not greatly missed.

But until he left, he had a new nickname, happily shared by trainee, fellow instructors and permanent party alike: Jellybean. I understand the name followed him on to his new unit, too....

[Travis McGee]

Was that picture of you taken last week? LOL!

[archy]

Was that picture of you taken last week? LOL!

'taint me, it's a 69th Armored Battalion pal named Wayne. I filled in for a while as a sniper with one of the 69th's HHC companies while they were tasked with convoy escort duties.

There is a pic of me from back in the old days *here*. And a couple of others, more recent, elsewhere.

And interestingly, it looks like the *oar* I haul along on my next trip out of the box will be a Rooshan SVD....that could be interesting....

[Travis McGee]

There was a great test of the Dragonov in SOF last year or so. They got a hold (via the IDF I think) of some in-the-box Russian sniper ammo. With the correct ammo, the rifle shot under 2MOA I believe. Great ammo too, the "poison bullet" construction (so named for the AK74 by the Afghans). You know, the hollow space, "driver" and core that flips the bullet 180* every time in the torso. Folks hit with it stay down for the count every time. Just don't shoot Russian ball ammo through it and expect accuracy.

[bt_dooftlook]

Sorry, with Glock there are few if any accidental discharges; they all tend to be negligent discharges, meaning you pulled the trigger and overrode the built-in safeties...IMHO, treat every gun as if it were loaded and you won't have a problem...

[ampat]

I'm not one for more gun control (except to improve the number of hits), but some people just can't walk and chew gum at the same time. These folks should receive more attention in screening to carry firearms.

[ampat]

It seems to me "manual" safeties are good to have. While the glock operator has one safety (i.e. don't pull the trigger), an operator with a manual safety has two (ie. first put the safety on and don't remove it until ready to fire, and don't pull the trigger). Given what I just wrote, you must have two safety failures before you have an AD with a manual safety weapon.

[COEXERJ145]

LOL, talk about bring a thread back from the dead!

[Travis McGee]

LOL, talk about bring a thread back from the dead!

[LibKill]

Must...keep...finger...OFF...trigger. Unless you actually MEAN to fire the piece.

Works for any weapon.

[Liberal Classic]

...it marked the third time in eight years that an Onondaga County probation officer had unintentionally discharged one of the department-issued Glock pistols.

The conclusion that I draw, is that Onondaga County probation officers are prone to accidents.