Back in the 70s I was with something called GSA FPS which was a uniformed security police force. I worked in the DC area. I went to FLETC in the mid 70s and met the Treasury load there for the first time. I also met some of the folks who developed it.
My issued revolver back then was a Colt Police Positive Special. GSA FPS was a strange animal as each region had it's own Director and he had broad discretionary powers over equipment and policies. This was obvious at FLETC as some of us had different uniforms. While my own Region was exclusively issuing Colts, other Regions had S&Ws and at least one had a mix of both and also a few Taurus. In some Regions the guys (we had very few females in FPS back then and in at least one Region back then FPS had no African Americans at all. FPS was fairly large back then and Washington DC had well over 1,000 in those years. I believe nationally we had about 5,100 uniformed officer with arrest authority.
In my Region, 3 which then included Washington, DC, we probably had the most sexual and ethnic diversity of all of the Regions, although Region 2 (NY) had a lot. In some Regions there was good training, in others not very much. About the only thing we had in common beyond our badge was our pistol caliber, .38 Special. There was a national Director, but his orders and policies could (at that time) be over ruled by the Regional Administrators and Regional Directors. They often were. In some Regions the FPS Officers were sworn in locally (in addition to the Federal arrest authority) and went to local police academy and were on the local law enforcement radio nets, but in other Regions they just attended a six hour class of instruction and were then deputized, or not as their Regional director (who changed every few years) decided.
So whatever Congressional or Administrative Caveat started getting us to go to FLETC so we would all be on the same page and all have similar knowledge of what the Constitution and Title 18 actually said, well, it was a big thing and totally new ground.
Back home our issued ammunition was mostly US military FMJ ammunition (pictured). We had both types. The WWII developed steel jacketed 158 grain round used by the Army and the Navy, and the 130 grain 1956 USAF Ball M41 round. The ballistics were similar enough so as to not affect target scores. Back home, in my Region, we qualified on Bullseye once a year using mostly wadcutter ammunition. After qualification we fired our issued 12 rounds of FMJ ammunition (an occasional misfire was noted, but this may have been because Regional policy back then was to use the cheaper WD-40, rather than Hoppes or even LSA, for cleaning rather than being a statement about the ammunition. Then we were each counted out 12 new rounds of FMJ ammo and sent on our way.
FMJ head stamps (yes, I still have 'most' of my 12 rounds, but did plink some away after the eventual issuance of Treasury loads).
FLETC was a totally different environment. At FLETC I fired the Winchester load. A 110 gr. +P+ JHP. The headstamp was in the military format. WCC and the year, or WRA and the year. Although some brought firearms to FLETC, those guns were locked up upon arrival and the only handgun weapons fired there were FLETC owned S&W M-19s. Many of us were gun buffs and spent a lot of free time with the Range Instructors who had come up with the Treasury load (and were still monitoring it's performance.
Regarding some of the comments, yes the DOJ was part of the FLETC operation, however DOJ considered FLETC and most Federal Law Enforcement to be totally separate from the FBI and DEA. The FBI had their own Academy and had made their own weapons decisions long ago and were back then powerful to ignore FLETC. DEA had it's own Academy as DEA did not then want it's Agents identities known to other Federal Law Enforcement. So initially DEA attended separate classes at Quantico, and later a special FLETC academy was created for them in another Western state in what was then a very remote location, but they also had other training facilities. FBI used whatever ammunition their Director mandated. LoL, back then inside the FBI it pretty much depended on who you were and who you knew. Some, privileged, FBI Agents had and were authorized 45s, and there was even one gentleman assigned to trains who wore a Colt SAA.
[Funny story about that person (a lot of them actually). One day, back in the late Hoover years, he walked into an FBI District Office at the command of their new Special Agent In Charge (SAIC) who proceeded to bawl him out upon learning he was carrying a Peacemaker and not the model 19s everyone else was. He then ordered the older Agent to surrender the Peacemaker and begin carrying the same gun as everyone else. The Senior Agent said, okay, but may I borrow your phone first? Puzzled the SAIC agreed. The older Agent then dialed a Washington DC number. He said, 'John, hi. How are you? Listen, I just wanted you to know, I can no longer carry that 45 revolver you gave me on my birthday. Why? Well, I don't know. That young kid you sent out here to be the new SAIC says so. Would you like to speak with him? Sure, hold on.' Then the older Agent handed the young SAIC the phone and said, please explain your policy to the Director. Needless to say he continued to carry the .45 Peacemaker until he retired years later. ]
So things were not (and probably still are not uniform throughout the Federal Government. ATF, Secret Service, US Border Patrol, US Customs, US Marshals, FPS, BIA Police, US Park Police, IG Agents with organic arrest and firearms authority (not all of them had such back then) and probably 50 other agencies went through FLETC and slowly one by one began to use Treasury ammunition purchased under a FLETC contract.
The first thing that must be recognized is the Winchester +P+ ammunition of the mid to late 1970s is NOT the same load as is sold by them as +P+ ammunition today. The intent of the then new Treasury ammunition was indeed to deliver .357 Magnum hollow point ammunition performance in a .38 Special package.
GSA Region 3 took years to make the transition to Treasury ammunition as the Colt Police Positive weapons did indeed on occasion split their cylinders with the Treasury ammunition. So too did the Detective Specials and the Official Police revolvers. The problem was the Regional GSA Administrator simply refused money to replace the Colts with S&W Model 19s. So back home for many years (or until 1980 in my case) the FPS Officers were stuck with Colts that could not handle the Treasury load. A concession was made in that the FMJ stocks were retired and 158 grain lead ball ammunition became our new standard for some time. We did however ban SQC (Single Action firing) and adapt the PPC course and also upped qualification to twice a year with shooting a passing score now mandatory to keep the job. Also the official range was opened for practice for those wishing to.
Meanwhile FLETC was monitoring the performance of the new ammunition and some reports of burst Colts (in other agencies) came in. Also some reports of less than stellar bullet performance relating to actual shootings. Sometimes the bullet fragmented rather than penetrating either because bullet was too light, or the jacket was too thin. The bullet weight was increased to 125 grains and Winchester backed out of the contract. The pressures with the powder they used were too high. Federal agreed to make the load in a 125 grain loading using some other powder. I was sent back to FLETC several times as I kept changing agencies or getting advanced specialty training, so I was able to follow developments with the guys involved. The Federal loading also followed the military head stamp format for a long time. FCC and the last two digits of the year.
Eventually FPS NCR (which had split off from Region 3) both downsized (through delegation to the various agencies they had formerly policed) found some money, bought S&Ws and cut all of their Colts (literally thousands of them) into pieces with a welding torch and issued the T load.
Here are some headstamps of the Federal 125 grain load. These are all 125 grain, not 110. Note that in 1990 as other cartridge makers were also selling +P ammunition a decision was made to change the headstamps to +P+ in order to provide a last warning that this stuff was hotter than ordinary +P.
Sometime around the time most Federal agencies were hopping on the 9mm bandwagon the load formula for the Treasury bullet was changed again. I believe (but am not sure) that FLETC totally ceased buying their .38 Special bullet in 1992 and I have zero knowledge as to information regarding today's +P+ ammunition, but I am fairly confident it has much lower pressure peaks than the earlier stuff did.
My issued revolver back then was a Colt Police Positive Special. GSA FPS was a strange animal as each region had it's own Director and he had broad discretionary powers over equipment and policies. This was obvious at FLETC as some of us had different uniforms. While my own Region was exclusively issuing Colts, other Regions had S&Ws and at least one had a mix of both and also a few Taurus. In some Regions the guys (we had very few females in FPS back then and in at least one Region back then FPS had no African Americans at all. FPS was fairly large back then and Washington DC had well over 1,000 in those years. I believe nationally we had about 5,100 uniformed officer with arrest authority.
In my Region, 3 which then included Washington, DC, we probably had the most sexual and ethnic diversity of all of the Regions, although Region 2 (NY) had a lot. In some Regions there was good training, in others not very much. About the only thing we had in common beyond our badge was our pistol caliber, .38 Special. There was a national Director, but his orders and policies could (at that time) be over ruled by the Regional Administrators and Regional Directors. They often were. In some Regions the FPS Officers were sworn in locally (in addition to the Federal arrest authority) and went to local police academy and were on the local law enforcement radio nets, but in other Regions they just attended a six hour class of instruction and were then deputized, or not as their Regional director (who changed every few years) decided.
So whatever Congressional or Administrative Caveat started getting us to go to FLETC so we would all be on the same page and all have similar knowledge of what the Constitution and Title 18 actually said, well, it was a big thing and totally new ground.
Back home our issued ammunition was mostly US military FMJ ammunition (pictured). We had both types. The WWII developed steel jacketed 158 grain round used by the Army and the Navy, and the 130 grain 1956 USAF Ball M41 round. The ballistics were similar enough so as to not affect target scores. Back home, in my Region, we qualified on Bullseye once a year using mostly wadcutter ammunition. After qualification we fired our issued 12 rounds of FMJ ammunition (an occasional misfire was noted, but this may have been because Regional policy back then was to use the cheaper WD-40, rather than Hoppes or even LSA, for cleaning rather than being a statement about the ammunition. Then we were each counted out 12 new rounds of FMJ ammo and sent on our way.
FMJ head stamps (yes, I still have 'most' of my 12 rounds, but did plink some away after the eventual issuance of Treasury loads).
FLETC was a totally different environment. At FLETC I fired the Winchester load. A 110 gr. +P+ JHP. The headstamp was in the military format. WCC and the year, or WRA and the year. Although some brought firearms to FLETC, those guns were locked up upon arrival and the only handgun weapons fired there were FLETC owned S&W M-19s. Many of us were gun buffs and spent a lot of free time with the Range Instructors who had come up with the Treasury load (and were still monitoring it's performance.
Regarding some of the comments, yes the DOJ was part of the FLETC operation, however DOJ considered FLETC and most Federal Law Enforcement to be totally separate from the FBI and DEA. The FBI had their own Academy and had made their own weapons decisions long ago and were back then powerful to ignore FLETC. DEA had it's own Academy as DEA did not then want it's Agents identities known to other Federal Law Enforcement. So initially DEA attended separate classes at Quantico, and later a special FLETC academy was created for them in another Western state in what was then a very remote location, but they also had other training facilities. FBI used whatever ammunition their Director mandated. LoL, back then inside the FBI it pretty much depended on who you were and who you knew. Some, privileged, FBI Agents had and were authorized 45s, and there was even one gentleman assigned to trains who wore a Colt SAA.
[Funny story about that person (a lot of them actually). One day, back in the late Hoover years, he walked into an FBI District Office at the command of their new Special Agent In Charge (SAIC) who proceeded to bawl him out upon learning he was carrying a Peacemaker and not the model 19s everyone else was. He then ordered the older Agent to surrender the Peacemaker and begin carrying the same gun as everyone else. The Senior Agent said, okay, but may I borrow your phone first? Puzzled the SAIC agreed. The older Agent then dialed a Washington DC number. He said, 'John, hi. How are you? Listen, I just wanted you to know, I can no longer carry that 45 revolver you gave me on my birthday. Why? Well, I don't know. That young kid you sent out here to be the new SAIC says so. Would you like to speak with him? Sure, hold on.' Then the older Agent handed the young SAIC the phone and said, please explain your policy to the Director. Needless to say he continued to carry the .45 Peacemaker until he retired years later. ]
So things were not (and probably still are not uniform throughout the Federal Government. ATF, Secret Service, US Border Patrol, US Customs, US Marshals, FPS, BIA Police, US Park Police, IG Agents with organic arrest and firearms authority (not all of them had such back then) and probably 50 other agencies went through FLETC and slowly one by one began to use Treasury ammunition purchased under a FLETC contract.
The first thing that must be recognized is the Winchester +P+ ammunition of the mid to late 1970s is NOT the same load as is sold by them as +P+ ammunition today. The intent of the then new Treasury ammunition was indeed to deliver .357 Magnum hollow point ammunition performance in a .38 Special package.
GSA Region 3 took years to make the transition to Treasury ammunition as the Colt Police Positive weapons did indeed on occasion split their cylinders with the Treasury ammunition. So too did the Detective Specials and the Official Police revolvers. The problem was the Regional GSA Administrator simply refused money to replace the Colts with S&W Model 19s. So back home for many years (or until 1980 in my case) the FPS Officers were stuck with Colts that could not handle the Treasury load. A concession was made in that the FMJ stocks were retired and 158 grain lead ball ammunition became our new standard for some time. We did however ban SQC (Single Action firing) and adapt the PPC course and also upped qualification to twice a year with shooting a passing score now mandatory to keep the job. Also the official range was opened for practice for those wishing to.
Meanwhile FLETC was monitoring the performance of the new ammunition and some reports of burst Colts (in other agencies) came in. Also some reports of less than stellar bullet performance relating to actual shootings. Sometimes the bullet fragmented rather than penetrating either because bullet was too light, or the jacket was too thin. The bullet weight was increased to 125 grains and Winchester backed out of the contract. The pressures with the powder they used were too high. Federal agreed to make the load in a 125 grain loading using some other powder. I was sent back to FLETC several times as I kept changing agencies or getting advanced specialty training, so I was able to follow developments with the guys involved. The Federal loading also followed the military head stamp format for a long time. FCC and the last two digits of the year.
Eventually FPS NCR (which had split off from Region 3) both downsized (through delegation to the various agencies they had formerly policed) found some money, bought S&Ws and cut all of their Colts (literally thousands of them) into pieces with a welding torch and issued the T load.
Here are some headstamps of the Federal 125 grain load. These are all 125 grain, not 110. Note that in 1990 as other cartridge makers were also selling +P ammunition a decision was made to change the headstamps to +P+ in order to provide a last warning that this stuff was hotter than ordinary +P.
Sometime around the time most Federal agencies were hopping on the 9mm bandwagon the load formula for the Treasury bullet was changed again. I believe (but am not sure) that FLETC totally ceased buying their .38 Special bullet in 1992 and I have zero knowledge as to information regarding today's +P+ ammunition, but I am fairly confident it has much lower pressure peaks than the earlier stuff did.
