Posted on 08/23/2002 2:24:12 PM PDT by archy
Defects in NYPD handguns
Half subject to jamming
By BOB KAPPSTATTER and ALICE McQUILLAN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Tuesday, August 20th, 2002
More than half of the Police Department's handguns are subject to jam without warning, a potentially dangerous flaw that can leave the weapons as "useless as paperweights," police sources said. Although the jamming is rare, the NYPD has been concerned enough to order a recall of 24,000 semiautomatic Glock handguns so they can be refitted.
This problem affects the Glock Model 19S - the gun carried by about 60% of the department's 39,000 officers. The flaw, in which the shell casing fails to eject, has only arisen during practice and tests at the NYPD firing range, police officials say.
"Our studies have shown this to be a rare occurrence," said police spokesman Chief Michael Collins. "In the worst-case scenario...we estimated that this has happened only once in 450,000 times when fired."
However, during an actual gun battle in Brooklyn, two Emergency Service Unit officers reported that their Glocks failed. Collins said that after an investigation of the October 2000 incident, ballistics experts said whatever problem those guns had, it was not the jamming malfunction that is the subject of the current recall.
To correct the problem, the Austrian-based Glock company has sent engineers to the NYPD's firing range at Rodmans Neck in the Bronx. Since June, they have repaired 3,200 weapons in a procedure that takes about an hour. Immediately afterward, officers tested the refitted weapons at the range, where the results have been excellent, Collins said. The process will continue until all 24,000 Glocks are fixed, he said.
There is a delay in fixing all the weapons, sources said, because cutbacks and the redeployment of officers to special details have made it difficult for cops to schedule time to have their guns repaired.
Sources also said that some of the Glocks have a different problem - locking. When a gun locks, a user can get it functioning again by removing the clip holding the ammunition and manually moving the slide to eject the stuck shell casing.
In that scenario, the source said, "You can be back in the gun battle in a matter of seconds, as opposed to the total jam where the guns become [as] useless as paperweights."
From link above:
Retired NYPD MOS Pat Rogers reports upon personal observation that Glock, Inc. has set-up a mini-CAD CAM machine shop with technicians supplied by Glock in a rented trailer at Rodman's Neck where it will be on station for at least one year, and possibly longer.
A milling machine capable of handling eight (8) slides at a time, is performing two cuts, one on the breach face, and another at the ejection port. Some of the newest Models 19 already have one of those cuts done at the factory, and unconfirmed information suggests that Glock, Inc. will be incorporating these changes across their entire product line.
Glock has acknowledged that these cuts are not so much to prevent the malfunction as they are to make it easier for the operator to clear them when they occur. That seems to be barely one step beyond Glock's offer when the Phase Three problems first surfaced, to produce an instructional video on P3 clearances.
While the Glock 19 has been purchased in higher numbers (25,000 units) than either the S&W 5946 or Sig-Sauer P226 DAO variant, approximately two-thirds of NYPD's last academy class chose a handgun other than the Glocks as their duty weapon. DS
That said, I have NEVER seen one jam.
I thought needed to be repeated.
OK, let's look at reality. Glocks are purchased by police departments because they are low-cost weapons, not for any other reason. Would you want to trust your life to the lowest bidder?
Based on all the testing they've done on the range I don't believe limp-wristing is the problem. There's a problem in the engineering itself and Glock isn't addressing it. Mr. Glock tends to discourage criticism of his guns, is what I hear. Glock better get on with serious work IMO.
If this is true, the New York Police Department may have the world's most reliable pistol.
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