From the washington post:
(although this is not my info and it was posted some time in the past, for those of you who missed it the first time it is well worth contemplating.)
Post.
In the 10 years since D.C. police adopted the Glock 9mm to combat the growing firepower of drug dealers, there have been more than 120 accidental discharges of the handgun. Police officers have killed at least one citizen they didn't intend to kill and have wounded at least nine citizens they didn't intend to wound. Nineteen officers have shot themselves or other officers accidentally. At least eight victims or surviving relatives have sued the District alleging injuries from accidental discharges.
In an extraordinary sequence over the last six months, the District has settled three lawsuits for more than $1.4 million. The District admitted no wrongdoing in the suits, but the cases highlight the chronic neglect of Glock training by the D.C. police.
Last month, the District paid $250,000 to settle a case brought by the family of an unarmed teenager shot and killed at a traffic roadblock in 1996. The family's attorney argued that the officer's gun had discharged accidentally.
In August, the District paid $375,000 to settle another case in which a D.C. officer accidentally shot and killed an unarmed driver at a traffic stop in 1994.
In June, the District paid almost $800,000 to settle a case from 1994, when a D.C. officer accidentally shot his roommate. The officer had not been to the firing range to train with his weapon in more than two years -- 20 months out of compliance with regulations.
One officer waited so long to come to the range that firearms instructors found a spider nest growing inside his Glock.
Almost immediately after D.C. police adopted the Glock, unintentional discharges increased sharply.
The first accident occurred in February 1989 -- less than a month before the guns reached officers on the street. Officer Adam K. Schutz was helping to test and clean the first shipment of guns when he shot himself in the fingers.
"It bit me," said Schutz, who was left with permanent damage to a finger on his left hand. "I was moving my hand to lower the slide and it jumped forward. I had assumed the gun was unloaded."
Nine months later, the 2-year-old daughter of a D.C. police officer died after accidentally shooting herself in the head with her father's pistol in their Northwest Washington house.
By October 1989, the department had experienced 13 unintentional discharges, double the rate of 1988, the last year with revolvers, according to an internal police memo. Then-Assistant Chief Max Krupo noted in the memo to the chief that such problems were to be expected in departments switching to semiautomatics. Krupo suggested that increasing the five-pound trigger pressure to eight pounds "would be satisfactory." But after studying the issue, Krupo decided that a five-pound pull was just as safe as an eight-pound one.
In February 1990, the Use of Service Weapon Review Board -- responsible for monitoring department shooting trends -- issued a report by Catoe, the deputy chief, in response to "the increasing number of unintentional discharges." The report examined nine incidents, blaming "human error" in each case. The report found no deficiencies in either the Glock or the department's training procedures.
But the report reached a troubling conclusion: "The department is obviously experiencing far too many accidental Glock discharges . . . [which] must be eliminated promptly so that serious injury or death can be avoided."
By the early 1990s, the Glock's alleged problems with unintentional shots were the talk of the gun world. Lawsuits against Glock for accidental discharges piled up. The Firearms Litigation Clearinghouse in Washington, an advocacy center against gun violence, currently is monitoring about 60 pending lawsuits against Glock across the country -- 90 percent of all the cases the center is tracking, the center's executive director said.
Despite such publicity, many firearms experts retain deep admiration for the gun.
""Training has a lot to do with accidental discharges," Samarra said in an interview. "Our only concern was training."
In May 1991, an officer accidentally shot Kenneth McSwain, 18, in the back when the officer slipped while serving a search warrant in Northeast Washington, court and police documents show. McSwain, who was unarmed and was not charged with any crime, collected a $42,000 settlement.
In August 1991, an officer accidentally shot Stephen Wills in the chest during a drug bust in Southeast Washington, according to court and police documents. Wills, who was unarmed and was not charged with any crime, collected a $40,000 settlement.
Four officers were wounded with their own guns in 1992. Over and over, officers fired unintentional rounds in the locker rooms at their district stations, or at home while cleaning or unloading their guns, according to police reports.
Officers are told during training to avoid such accidents by being attentive to the Glock's unique, simplified design: An officer cleaning a Glock has to pull the trigger before removing the slide to get access to the gun barrel. In many other pistols, taking the magazine of bullets from the gun renders it unable to fire. But the Glock has no "magazine safety" -- if an officer leaves a bullet in the chamber, the Glock will still fire if the trigger is pulled.
In March 1993, Officer Lakisha Poge fired a round through her bed while unloading a Glock in her apartment, a police report states. The bullet went through the floor and hit Glowdean Catching in the apartment below. Catching, who was wounded in both legs, has a suit pending against the District. Poge, who has left the department, could not be reached for comment.
"I submitted reports through channels and said, 'You have problems with this gun,' " former homicide branch chief William O. Ritchie, who chaired the department's Use of Service Weapon Review Board in 1993, said in an interview. "I talked to the union and said, 'There is a hazard here.' "
In January 1994, homicide detective Jeffrey Mayberry shot Officer James Dukes in the stomach at police headquarters. "I hear a loud bang and Dukes is slowly falling to the floor," Detective Joseph Fox, Mayberry's partner, said in a deposition. "Jeff jumps up and says, 'Dukes, I didn't mean to do it, I didn't mean to do it.' "
Dukes said in a recent interview, "He was playing with the weapon. This was the second time I had told [Mayberry] during that tour of duty not to point the weapon at me."
Four days after Dukes was shot, Officer Juan Martinez Jr. accidentally shot his roommate, Frederick Broomfield, in the groin while awaiting dinner in their apartment, according to police and court records.
Martinez was unloading his Glock in his bedroom when Broomfield came in and asked Martinez how he wanted his chicken cooked. The gun abruptly went off.
"I looked down and I seen smoke coming from my crotch and then after that, you know, I looked at Jay and I said, 'Damn, Jay,' " Broomfield said later in a deposition. "Then my leg started shaking and I fell."
Broomfield, who nearly bled to death after the bullet pierced an artery in his groin, sued the District and Glock Inc. His attorneys compiled a voluminous case in D.C. Superior Court, marshaling gun experts who gave statements about the alleged dangers of the Glock and the deficiencies of the District's training.
In June, the District settled the case by paying Broomfield $797,500. Glock also settled, but a lawyer for Glock declined to disclose the amount. In court papers, Glock denied that its gun was dangerous or defective.
Accidents also continued in 1996 and 1997, but at a slower pace -- dropping from a high of 27 in 1991 to eight last year. Although the numbers diminished, the tragic nature of the incidents didn't. In May 1996, Courtney Rusnak, the 3-year-old daughter of Officer George Rusnak, died after she apparently shot herself with her father's Glock in their District Heights home.
"It looks like she found the gun and started playing with it," Mark Polk, a spokesman for the Prince George's County police, said at the time. "The gun was fired once, and she was hit directly in the head."
In June 1996, Officer Terrence Shepherd shot and killed 18-year-old Eric Anderson as Anderson sat unarmed in his car at a routine traffic roadblock in Southeast Washington. Although Shepherd said he fired because he thought Anderson posed a threat, his captain testified that Shepherd told him at the scene that he had his finger on the trigger and the gun "went off." The shooting, the captain added, appeared to be accidental.
When an officer's gun discharges accidentally, the shooting is generally ruled unjustified by the department, a review of department records shows. Discipline can follow, but an officer is not typically subjected to severe discipline unless the accidental shot kills or badly wounds someone, or the officer lies about the shooting.
Of the 12 officers involved in the shooting cases detailed in this account, two were charged or dismissed: Askew was indicted and convicted of lying about his accidental shooting, and Shepherd was fired for negligent use of force. Four other officers have left the department. Six remain with the force.
By 1997, the safety issue had turned some members of the D.C. police union against the Glock, according to Robertson, the former union official. Several officials wanted to switch to the Sig Sauer, a more expensive gun with a heavier trigger pull.
"Several kids were killed here when they picked up their fathers' guns," Robertson said in an interview. "A 2-year-old can pick up the Glock and kill someone. It doesn't take much to fire the weapon."
