Wednesday, July 15, 2020

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.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chiefs only care about themselves and their 5%’s.

Lt. 0fer said...

I told you my aim was fine, I keep missing because the guns are fucked up! Fuck all you assholes.

Anonymous said...

This blog sucks and is as much of a joke as the loser who runs it. When the hell is the next election so we can get these malcontents out of here?????

Anonymous said...

look like Frodo has nothing better to do than stir the pot again to keep himself relevant and stay puft marshmallow man egging him on by his side.

Anonymous said...

How is trying to fix the situation of (the admin knows that the guns don’t work but do nothing about it) stirring the pot?

That’s kind of a major problem that is being neglected

I mean seriously. Our guns don’t work. What boss wouldn’t try and fix that.

Anonymous said...

So as union leaders it’s better to write about it in a blog than have a meeting with them about it? No need to argue as your intentions from day one has been to cause chaos. Doesn’t matter because all you guys are gone next time

East Hartford Police Officer's Association said...

Do you really think the Administration is so clueless that they are unaware of this problem and need the Union to tell them about it? It's been nearly a year since we first found out about this, if we just wanted to cause chaos we could've posted about it back then, but instead we waited to see what the resolution would be. Firearms staff has discussed it with DC Hawkins and others in the Admin several times since, they are aware. We are posting this information here now because there has been no progress in resolving the issue and the safety of our members is on the line and we're looking out for them, that is our job and we take it very seriously. The Administration should share that desire and not need threats from us to publicize the issue to take action.

Anonymous said...

I think the union has a point. Whoever the nay sayer is/are, why does that make you so upset? What he said above makes sense. Admin does have habit of being aware of serious issues and doing nothing, repeatedly. This is a good example. 333 is another big one. Gets written up what? 7 times? Including for lying. Nothing happens.

Anonymous said...

Where is the union response to the new Chief's directives and the Police Accountability bill passed in the house....?

East Hartford Police Officer's Association said...

We sent out an email about the bill, so check your work email. I'm not sure which directive you're referring to, there have been several lately.

Anonymous said...

Can the union clarify on what direction we go now as how to do our jobs or are they still going to pick fights about shit that nobody cares about?? Great leadership guys, you rock!

East Hartford Police Officer's Association said...

Hello, in case you're unaware of how our State Government works Connecticut has a bicameral legislature, so this House bill you're referring to still has to go through the Senate where it may be altered further before passage. So we will wait to see what the final bill looks like once it's passed both chambers, if it passes, before we offer any guidance to our members. But I assure you we will confer with our legal counsel to come up with the best guidance possible when the time comes.

Sorry to hear that you don't care about your gun possibly being defective, but we think it's a critical safety and liability issue for our members, especially at a time where we may be losing liability protections.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for putting this out there maybe itll finally light a fire in the chief to advocate for us and get it fixed

Anonymous said...

The police officers deserve the best, maybe they , the administration should invite the Sig Sauer officials in and test fire their new sigs, since the Feds and the Military just switched over to sigs it's well worth looking at it before you loose a officer
.

Anonymous said...

Bold choice to to put it out there that your officers aren't well trained with their guns. You found people complaining about this on forums? Maybe keep reading to find the solution; shooting more. Everyone knows Glocks will shoot low left if you're unfamiliar with them. They're anticipating recoil an flinching. The guns are mechanically fine.

Try shooting them more than twice a year. They'll get more practice and Glock triggers get better with use. Maybe switch to Gen 5s, they have better triggers.

East Hartford Police Officer's Association said...

You should research the topic yourself, you'll find that many people posted that they also owned Gen 3 Glocks that were totally accurate, but only their Gen 4s shoot left. We've also shot these guns from a bench rest so it's pretty apparent that there's something wrong with the Gen 4 guns and not anyone's technique.

We also previously had Smith and Wessons and Gen 3 Glocks (Which were 40 caliber, known for much harsher recoil than the current 9mms) and nobody experienced these issues with those guns. You do see Glock fan boys making your claims that people just "don't know how to shoot a Glock," But wouldn't you agree that if a particular handgun actually does require some sort of special technique that no other handgun needs to make it work properly, that maybe it's just not a very good gun? A good shooter ought to be able to pick up any gun and be reasonably accurate with it so the idea that Glocks require special technique to shoot straight seems like a terrible excuse.