Anti-Police Bill Working It's Way Through Legislature

Many of our members have reached out to us over the last few days asking about the Anti-Police bill that was approved by the State House of Representatives the other day. People have asked what we're doing related to it, what they can do, and how or if, they should be doing their jobs, so we'll briefly try to respond here directly and honestly.

First and foremost, this bill is not yet law. It has only been approved by the House, it must still go to the Senate where they can approve or reject it as is, or they can pass it with provisions added or removed and then send their version back to the House for approval. Once a final version is passed it goes to the Governor for approval or veto. While I assume some version of this bill will pass, we're not going to offer any guidance or make any decisions until we see what the actual final language that gets passed is and what it means for us. Unfortunately the Legislature seems to be fast walking this bill without giving it the debate it deserves so they can go on vacation sooner. You can click this link to read the text of the bill and see how each Legislator voted.

As for what we've been doing, our attorney has been in contact with the Legislature on behalf of us and other Police Unions he represents, check your work email for more information. Additionally our Union Vice President wrote letters to several State Representatives on our behalf. Unfortunately there's not much more that we can do. As a labor Union, the only thing of value we have to offer to politicians are endorsements and campaign contributions, and right now the Democrats who are pushing this bill see us as the enemy and want nothing to do with our endorsements or our money. In fact they'd probably prefer we endorsed their opponents so they can show the mob driving them how anti-Police they are. So we just don't have much, if any political sway in this situation.

As for what you can do, you can click this link to find your State Legislators for your home district and East Hartford and write them an email or call their office to express your feelings on this bill. My only advice is if you're contacting a Democrat, it's probably best not to identify yourself as a Police Officer and rather present yourself as a concerned citizen, otherwise they may write you off immediately.

We don't have a crystal ball to look into to tell you what effect of the final bill will be until it's passed and we have time to analyze it. But if it goes through in it's current form it's highly destructive to our profession and we'll probably never be able to hire a qualified person again unless our salary is doubled. But for the time being, keep your cool, go to work, and let's see what happens. But just to be safe if you have 15 or more years on and you're still on the street you should probably take a look at your numbers and start thinking about heading for the exit IF we get the worst case scenario. Similarly if you have less than 5-7 years on you may want to start seriously looking at what your out-of-state options are if you wish to continue in Law Enforcement. We're not sounding the alarm just yet, and I'm hopeful the Senate will fix this mess of a bill before it passes, but I think people should start having these discussions with your families now so you have a plan if you need to go that route.

We'll post further updates on this as needed.

EHPD Glocks Not Shooting Straight

Over the last few months since our last Department wide firearms training session in the fall of 2019, word has gotten out that a large number of the Gen 4 Glock 17 models that our Officers are currently carrying have a serious flaw. The flaw is that when the trigger is pulled the bullets don't go where the gun is pointing, instead they tend to go a bit to the left. From what we've learned the problem seems to get worse with more use, and a quick internet search shows that this has been a known issue with these guns for at least the last 10 years and Glock still hasn't fixed it. Our firearms staff has run this issue up their chain of command and has been in touch with representatives at Glock and the only solutions they have offered is to tell them to instruct our members to compensate by aiming to the right of the target, and moving the sights on some of the guns so far to one side that they're hanging off the slide. They also suggested that our Officers just don't know how to shoot Glocks and were simply holding the guns wrong.

This isn't the first time we've had issues with Glocks, when I first started working here we had the older Gen 3 Glock 22 that we had to get rid of because the firing pins were falling out of the guns. Granted these guns were older and had a decent number of rounds through them before they started falling apart, but it's still not what you expect from a brand that markets it's guns as having "unsurpassed reliability." When we were going to replace those guns our Department considered the then new Gen 4 Glocks. But during testing they noticed several of the guns had jamming and lock back issues which Glock at first denied, but later admitted to and instructed our armorers to use a dremel tool to modify the guns to make them work, voiding the warranty in the process. Due to that issue, our Department instead went with the Smith & Wesson M&P 45, which we carrier for several years.

The Smiths ended up having defective magazine springs shortly after we got them, but unlike Glock, Smith admitted to the problem and replaced the defective magazine springs free of charge like you'd expect from any reputable company. So when we switched back to Glock a few years ago I was personally surprised that we were doing business again with a company that we had several quality issues with in the past.

We did some testing with my gun, which was one of the defective ones a few months ago. My gun was shot from a fixed position on a bench from about 5 to 7 yards. This gun only had about 300-400 rounds through it at the time as I'd never shot it outside of a Department sponsored training session. You can see on the photo below the top red dot was the target we were shooting at and the entire grouping is 1 to 2 inches to the left. This isn't a huge deviation, but this is also a relatively close range, as you get farther away the shot will be farther and farther off target. I've also been informed that members who have put a lot more rounds through their guns are seeing much larger deviations since the problem seems to get worse with use.

The lower red dot in the photo is a brand new gun right out of the box shot in the exact same way by the same person. As you can see that gun is dead on target, the shooter even managed to put multiple rounds through the same hole. This pretty much blows their excuse of our Officers holding the guns wrong right out of the water.

This problem isn't limited to us or just to Police, if you do a Google search you'll find a plethora of posts on gun forums from private owners complaining of the same issue with these guns.

As I stated earlier, we've known about this issue for a few months but we've kept quiet on it because I wanted to give Glock and our Administration time to remedy the problem. But it seems at this point that there is no remedy coming, Glock has no interest in making it right and our Administration has no interested in forcing their hand or replacing the guns. As of right now these guns are still on the street being carried by our Officers. If one of our members were to be involved in a shooting tonight where something or someone gets hit that wasn't supposed to and the Department was aware that the guns weren't shooting straight and did nothing about it, who's going to take the fall? My members have guns with sights cocked to the side and are being told to aim to the right of what they want to hit, this is completely unsafe and unacceptable and should've never been allowed to happen.

Chief Sansom and DC Hawkins have been aware of this issue for months and could have used their leverage as a members of the State and National Chiefs of Police Associations to pressure Glock into making the situation right. Or brought the issue before Town Council to get funding to replace the guns with something else that works. Instead they've done nothing and left the defective guns in our holsters. Our Officers deserve to have a weapon that's reliable and works properly, we've been failed in this case by both the manufacturer and our own Administration.

In Policing, most of us will never have to fire our weapons outside of training throughout our entire careers. But when we do it's because we're in a high stress situation and lives are on the line. Shooting in these circumstances is instinctual, it needs to be point and shoot, we can't be worrying about trying to aim to the right or any other bullshit "fixes" to compensate for defective equipment.

I'm not personally a big "gun guy," I'm not a fan of one brand over another, so I don't care what we change to. But I'm calling on our Chief to dump Glock and their defective guns and find us something else that's reliable, easy to use, and most importantly, hits what we're aiming at. Also consider whether or not it's backed up by a company who stands behind their products and takes responsibility for it's errors. It isn't just our safety on the line here, but also that of the citizens we're sworn to protect. Let's avoid a needless tragedy and get this problem fixed NOW.

EHPOA Contract Extension Passed

Back in January our Contract Negotiating Committee opened negotiations with the Town on a successor agreement to our Labor Contract expiring June 30th, 2020. We held several productive meetings with the Town's committee and had put together a few tentative agreements. Unfortunately when the meeting size restrictions went into effect it became extremely difficult for us to hold further meetings. We tried waiting it out for a bit but eventually it became clear that it would be an excessively long time before we could hold a meeting, and should arbitration be required with the delays and backlog at the Labor Board, we wouldn't have a settled contract for quite some time.

As a result our committee proposed to the Town's committee a one year extension to our current contract with no changes other than a 2% general wage increase, which should serve to keep us in line with inflation. Our membership ratified the extension and the Town's committee agreed to the deal and brought it to the Town Council with their recommendation of passage. Today the Town Council passed the extension.

This extension will get us to January when we will have to re-open negotiations, hopefully by then we will be able to hold in person meetings without restriction and we can pick up where we left off. For this reason we will probably keep the same committee so we won't have to start from scratch.

Thanks to the Town Negotiations Committee and the Town Council for helping get this agreement done.