9mm for LE?

Yeah, a number of them in Illinois still use the 9 mm pistol. Most of the same departments actually allow the officers to have their own choice of caliber. Most allow use of 9 mm, 40 S&W and .45 ACP ammo. But a few still persist in selecting one type of gun and one caliber of ammo for their officers to use. This one and one situation comes about generally when chief of police knows nothing about firearms and only has a few officers to control. Most now allow choices because of tests done by various college related training facilities used to teach police officers.
 
9mm may have been surpassed by the 40S&W awhile back, but it is likely the second most common caliber used by law enforcement in the U.S. But I also don't have any hard facts to back that up directly.

tipoc
 
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Amarillo PD just started issuing Glock 17s a couple months ago. The officers used to carry their own firearms off an approved list (no .40s&w though). The ones that carried their own then can still as they're grandfathered in however new recruits are getting the G17s in the academy.
 
a while ago i was at the range and started talking to a guy who told me that a lot of officers are switching to .45's because they have found that 9mm will NOT stop a person who is high/drunk/disorderly as quickly.
 
In 1990 when the .40S&W 1st came on the scene it offered real advantages over the best 9mm ammo at the time. Today's best 9mm ammo is probably just as effective and many dept's. are actually going back to the 9mm. Some never changed.
 
I know that the NYPD, Indiana State Police, and Bartholomew County (Indiana) Sheriff's Department all use 9mm handguns. The NYPD uses Glock 19's loaded with Speer 124grn +P Gold Dots, ISP uses Glocks (not sure if they're 17's or 19's and I don't know the ammo), and the Bartholomew Co. SD uses Sig 226's and 228's (again, not sure about the ammo). I was told by a local gunshop owner (not sure if it's true) that ISP started to transition to Glocks in .40 S&W, but they had reliability issues so they went back to 9mm's.
 
My Department just switched from 9 mike to 40 in July. We had used the Ranger 147 grain(9) and switched to the Ranger 180 grain (40).
 
"Do any police depts. still use the 9mm, or is it passe for Law Enforcement?"

Many do. And as bullet technology increases, there will be less and less reason for more of them not to do so.
 
Bullet tech and the advances in reliably expanding hollowpoint ammunition coupled with more and more weapons that can handle +P loadings reliably has caused just about all calibers to take a large step forward over the past 10 years or so. Even the .380 isn't anything to guff at any longer, and is, in fact, a relatively effective round presently.

Without "caliber warring", the 9mm is and always will be a contender for self defense among civilians and the police.

~LT
 
boredom said:
a while ago i was at the range and started talking to a guy who told me that a lot of officers are switching to .45's because they have found that 9mm will NOT stop a person who is high/drunk/disorderly as quickly.
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No offense intended, but that's about half a notch up from "a expert at the gun shop told me...".

No police department has enough data about enough shootings with variables controlled to make any accurate statements about the stopping power of one caliber over the other.

All it takes for some departments to change is for a couple of officers to claim the perps they shot didn't drop fast enough, then they clamor for change.

Guaranteed, 2000-2020 will be the era of .40, then they'll claim it's broken and start switching to the newest wunder caliber.
 
Oh my gawsh,,,
Black Talons in disguise.
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Riggs, hes got cop killahs....


My cousin recently retired from Omaha he carried a S&W 9mm for the high capacity. He still carries it to this day as he does armed services for some places around here.

My older cousin still on the force carries his old .38 revolver :) never pulled it yet he says, why change? :) he dont miss either, old farm boys :)
 
Interesting side note. Just went to a training (California) in July. The 'big news' was that a major bay area PD (i think San Jose, can't remember exactly) had switched to .357 sig a year prior and had had 100% fatalities in their officer involved shootings ever since. It was quite a debate of whether to switch back or not, as the connotations of using a 'super bullet' combined with those early statistics may spell dread for the department litigation wise.

For what its worth, I wasn't too worried about carrying a nine mm, i was just happy to switch weapons platforms.
 
I don't have current information but the last statistics I saw from a couple of years ago or so indicated that 9mm ranked second in terms of the amount of ammunition sold to LE organizations.
 
Oddly, the Texas DPS switched away from the 45 to the 357 SIG based on demonstrated performance.
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This was back in 1999. Less recoil from the 125 gr. round (vs. the 230 of the .45) helped troopers scores to improve on the range. Higher round count in a smaller package (Sig P226) helped. They also believed that they lost nothing in terminal ballistics.

tipoc
 
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