Any gun can and will jam, including revolvers and GLOCKS. . . To say it wouldn't have jammed had it been a GLOCK is unrealistic at best.
It doesn't help when the firearms are old, have been rebuilt numerous times, and likely don't get shot often enough to determine their condition.
After 17 years of wear (regardless of how many rebuilds) it is past time for an upgrade. The sad thing is this officer may still be around if he had received better training or had follwed his training. Backups are a must if you are a LEO.
Troopers more than ready for new weapons
09/11/00
BY BRIAN T. MURRAY
STAFF WRITER
SECOND LOOK REVISITING PEOPLE AND PLACES THAT HAVE MADE NEWS
The State Police are getting new state-of-the-art pistols, nearly three years after a trooper was killed in a shoot-out in which his service weapon jammed.
The Smith & Wesson 9 mm pistols, which have a 15-shot capacity, should be in the hands of all state troopers within the next six months.
"A contract has been signed, a challenge to the contract has been resolved and by October we will get the first shipment of 600 new Smith & Wesson 9 mm handguns, which will go first to the approximately 1,700 troopers on the road," said John Hagerty, a State Police spokesman.
The $1.3 million contract for 3,200 pistols was signed with Ray Sport Shop Inc. of Plainfield. The last hang-up was resolved Aug. 23 when the Treasury Department reviewed and dismissed a challenge by another bidder, said Hagerty.
The Smith & Wesson Model 99 is considered top of the line, as was the Heckler & Koch 9mm when it was first issued to the troopers in 1983.
The State Police dispute the overall significance the malfunction of Trooper Scott Gonzalez's weapon played in his death during the Oct. 24, 1997, shoot-out in Mansfield.
However, the trooper's widow and the union representing the rank and file troopers maintain the failed gun contributed to the officer's death.
"It's still upsetting to her, naturally. There's no question his death is the impetus for these (new) guns," said attorney Dennis Donnelly, who is representing Maureen Gonzalez in a lawsuit she filed against the family of her husband's killer and many others, including Heckler & Koch.
The State Police Fraternal Association wants a guarantee that the pistols for rank and file troopers will be replaced every six to eight years.
"It's unconscionable that any agency thinks a weapon has a shelf life of 17 years. A lot of the guys are holding guns handed off to them when someone retired," said Dave Jones, vice president of the association.
"The Heckler & Koch was a state-of-the-art weapon when we got it in 1983. But it took the Trooper Phil Lamonaco tragedy to get those guns 17 years ago and now it has taken Scott Gonzalez's death to get to where we are now," he added.
When Lamonaco was gunned down on Dec. 21, 1981, on the shoulder of Route 80 in Warren County, he was carrying a six-round service revolver and the two gunmen were armed with 9 mm handguns. Two years after Lamonaco's death, state troopers were issued the Heckler & Koch pistols which are capable of firing 15 rounds.
In Gonzalez's case, a firing-pin spring on his gun malfunctioned during a shoot-out that lasted only 60 seconds.
The trooper had cornered Samuel Shipps Jr., a 29-year-old mental patient he pursued after the suspect grabbed a shotgun from his parents' Knowlton Township trailer and drove off in a truck. The chase ended when Shipps turned down a dirt driveway in Mansfield and then made a U-turn, hitting the trooper's car head-on.
The collision pinned Gonzalez. His car doors jammed and the front-seat airbag discharged. He could not free a shotgun bracketed along the front seat as Shipps jumped out of his truck and fired round after round of birdshot from a shotgun. The trooper was hit in the head, but managed to squeeze off three shots from his service pistol before it jammed.
As Shipps moved over to the driver's side of the trooper's car, Gonzalez cleared a cartridge from the pistol's chamber, ejected the ammunition clip and shoved a new clip into the base of the gun. But he never got to fire again.
The shots that killed him were fired directly into his head from the driver-side window. Shipps then drove off. Shipps died after accidentally shooting himself in the head a short distance away while jumping from his front seat to confront two more troopers.
The tragic deaths of Lamonaco and Gonzalez involved situations much more complicated than simply being out-gunned, said Hagerty and Peter McDonough, a spokesman for Gov. Christie Whitman.
Both also maintain that the Heckler & Koch 9 mm carried by the troopers today are not antiques that are falling apart.
"It's not fair to say they are 17 years old. Virtually every H&K has been rebuilt at some point. Virtually no weapon out there would be the original 17-year-old weapon," Hagerty said.
The service weapons are inspected twice annually, and in 1998, about 2,700 troopers fired their guns 450,000 times in tests, with only 274 malfunctions, said Hagerty. Any problems result in a replacement or repair of the gun, he said. McDonough added that an in-house committee of the State Police regularly reviews the agency's weapons technology to determine if new guns are necessary.
"Weapons should be replaced or upgraded when needed. Saying we should do it every six years is an arbitrary time period. Maybe they have to be changed in two years because of new technology out there," he said.
But the Fraternal Association offers a different scenario.
Other firing tests showed a failure rate of 14 to 20 percent, according to a pending complaint the union filed with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Jones added that it took until late last year for the State Police to ask gun dealers to submit new gun proposals, and it was only this year that 12 types of guns were tested by troopers.
"It takes years to replace these guns. It's three years since Gonzalez died. That's too long. Do we wait until another tragedy the next time?" said Jones.
