The pistol that Haines Borough police officer Brayton Long unintentionally shot himself with in January is a model that’s been involved in a high number of accidental shootings involving police since its embrace by departments 25 years ago.
Critics of the Glock semi-automatic say its lack of an external safety, a light-pressure trigger, lack of a magazine safety and a design that requires pulling the trigger to disassemble it for cleaning make the gun inherently unsafe.
Fans of the gun acknowledge that it discharges more easily than the revolvers it replaced, but say that with proper training, it’s the ideal weapon, particularly when police face wrongdoers holding semi-automatic or automatic weapons.
The debate over the gun – now used as the service weapon by about two-thirds of police departments in the United States – continues.
“We’ll continue to see more (accidents) until law enforcement agencies and city governments quit listening to hype about how wonderful these systems are from the companies selling the weapons, and start caring more about the lives of their officers and citizens… Payouts to settle lawsuits over accidental shootings with these weapons have cost cities millions of dollars… and the casualties and lawsuits keep mounting,” according to a column written in the Los Angeles Times last year by Bob Owens, editor of bearingarms.com, a pro-gun website.
Owens recounted an April 2015 Glock training session in Ocala, Fla., where a police officer killed a fellow officer while taking apart a gun for cleaning. News stories about accidental discharge are so prevalent that a term “Glock leg” has been applied when users shoot themselves holstering or unholstering the weapon.
“If a law enforcement officer, soldier or citizen does exactly what they are supposed to do all of the time with cyborg certainty, there will be no problems with the Glock or other popular pistols mimicking its basic design,” Owens wrote. “Unfortunately, ‘RoboCop’ is only a movie, and humans are liable to make similar mistakes over and over again.”
Owens said there are guns just as easy to fire as the Glock that are more difficult to discharge accidentally.
According to “Light Triggers, Hefty Profits,” a story about Glocks in Mother Jones magazine in 2000, the FBI in the late 1980s predicted that the Glock’s sensitive trigger and lack of external safeties would “inevitably … lead to an unintentional shot at the worst moment.”
The agency later watered-down that description to say “the Glock pistol, in the FBI’s experience, has demonstrated safe and effective performance when accompanied by proper training, correct usage, care, and maintenance habits,” the magazine reported.
Former Haines Borough Police Chief Greg Goodman switched the department to the Glock 21 model about 15 years ago, in part to standardize department weapons.
Like other departments nationwide, Haines took advantage of a generous offer by Glock, acquiring the weapons partly as an exchange for the ones it was using.
“I wanted to standardize the department so we would train one way and one way only,” Goodman said this week.
Goodman downplayed what critics describe as the gun’s flaws, such as the necessity of pulling its trigger to disassemble and clean it after use. Lack of a magazine safety also means the gun can still fire after its magazine is removed. Neither feature is universal on semi-automatic pistols.
Anyone who has handled guns very long knows to check if a round is chambered before pulling the trigger, Goodman said.
“It’s a very simple gun. It’s easy to handle and to maintain. In the right hands, it is a very, very safe weapon,” Goodman said. He acknowledged hat other semi-automatic pistols are equipped with safeties. “Training and familiarization is the key.”
Training, Goodman said, isn’t as much about perfecting aim as it is about becoming familiar and comfortable with a weapon. “It’s about familiarization and muscle memory, so when you need to use the gun – and God forbid you do – you do it automatically.”
Glocks were initially adopted by big-city police departments needing guns that shot fast and reliably for officers facing urban gangs using semi-automatic weapons. But Goodman said Haines Police need the same level of firepower.
“My personal feeling is the only people who should have handguns are the military and police, but you have to give police tools to use to combat the tools that the (National Rifle Association) demands the public has a right to be given. You have to give police a gun that has stopping power. Otherwise, it’s unfair to people who wear the badge and who are a target every day,” Goodman said.
Goodman said he unholstered his gun about three times during his 17 years on the local department.
Haines Police have yet to explain the circumstances of the Long shooting, but interim chief Josh Dryden this week said it was not related to the Glock’s unique features. Dryden also said the accident didn’t occur while Long was cleaning the weapon.
“The Glock in question was not defective; it was operator error,” Dryden said.
Dryden, who said the department recently transitioned to the Glock 22, said the accident didn’t change his thinking about the weapon. “It’s a reliable tool. (We) will not carry anything else.”
The Skagway and Juneau police forces both use Glocks as their standard service firearms.
According to Juneau police spokesman Lt. David Campbell, the department has used Glocks exclusively since 2006, and has had one unintentional firing that occurred when an officer cleaning the weapon forgot to check the chamber before pulling the trigger to release the slide. No one was injured.
But Campbell said that single accident compares to about 500 hours annually that the department’s officers spend at the gun range training. “It’s a reliable, dependable weapon if you follow the four rules of firearm safety.”