Lake County Sheriff's Deputy Accidentally Shoots Self, Officer

[Drizzt]

Lake County Sheriff's Deputy Accidentally Shoots Self, Officer

POSTED: 5:53 pm EST March 28, 2005
UPDATED: 6:05 pm EST March 28, 2005

Two sheriff's deputies in Lake County, Fla., were shot and injured when an officer's gun accidentally discharged while training, according to a Lake County Sheriff's Office release.

The report said Deputy Jason Williams accidentally discharged a department issued Glock handgun at the Lake Tech Institute of Public Safety Driving & Firearms Range.

The discharged bullet struck deputy Williams in the hand and then struck Deputy Sheriff Richard Light in the lower leg, the report said.

The injuries are not life-threating and both officers were transported to Florida Hospital Waterman for treatment.

An investigation into the incident is ongoing, according to the report.

http://www.local6.com/news/4324561/detail.html

Man, them Glocks are dangerous.....

 

[Logistics]

>>>Man, them Glocks are dangerous..... <<<

Ugh......considering a Glock is COMPLETELY harmless and uncocked until the trigger is pulled.

 

[thorn726]

just becasue i love paranoia-

LE is getting together to make it Glock's fault the DEA guy shot himself.

take it even further, the above story, and the more to come in the next few weeks are FAke!.

heheh

 

[medmo]

Stupid Glock... designing guns that go "bang" when you pull the trigger!!

So many guns get bad rep's from LE accidents. Look, the overwheming majority of LE Folks are hard charging professionals committed to excellence. Unfortunately, with every group of individuals you will always have your 10%. I'm just glad that nobody is disabled or dead from the incident.

 

[mbs357]

Glocks are completely safe assuming the user isn't an idiot.
But then again, so are all guns.

 

[peacefuljeffrey]

Back in the '90s on Long Island, there was an incident at the Smithaven Mall (out in Smithtown). A Suffolk County PD officer arrested a college student from Stony Brook U. at the mall, after the police were called about credit card fraud. The kid -- a medical student from another country, if I recall -- had used a stolen credit card in a store and they called police. Anyway, the cop had him face-down on the pavement in the parking lot, dept. issue Glock against the back of his neck. It, um... it went off.

First thing that happened? "The gun went off!" was shrieked. A huge inquest over the Glocks ensued! "These guns are defective!"

Well, the gun was determined to have not possibly "just gone off," which means the frickin' trigger had been pulled, as you and I both knew before they spent thousands on some "expert" to tell them. (If I were such an "expert," I too would be happy to take the wasted money of the idiot police department.)

When it was all said and done, no one knew anything different from what they knew already. The dumbass cop was forced to admit (though I don't know if he did) that he had indeed shot the kid, however unintendedly. But look at the egg on the face of someone like that, who could have simply said, "Yeah, I think I might have pulled the trigger in the stress... It's possible, at least."

:banghead:

-Jeffrey

 

[Parallax]

Did the kid die?

 

[Fred Fuller]

Yup, you know how those Glocks are- they just LOOK for a chance to go off. They load their own magazines, insert them, chamber a round all by themselves, and just WAIT for a chance to go off. Why, no one even has to point the muzzle at someone and pull the trigger, THEY JUST GO OFF.

Yup...

lpl/nc (PLEASE let me be on a jury that handles one of these...)

 

[Joejojoba111]

mbs357

"Glocks are completely safe assuming the user isn't an idiot.
But then again, so are all guns."

I think that there was an aspect of the Ingram designs that made them more difficult to handle without negligently dischanging, I heard that in Florida in the 1980's there were so many MACs (or whatever they were called when MAC folded) at so many crime scenes being ND'd so often that the police issued a special bag to put them in.

 

[Gunpacker]

Glock safety

Well, yes the Glocks are completely safe unless the trigger is pulled. Problem with them is that there is no effective safety on them to prevent discharge when the trigger is accidentally hit. That seems to be the cause, accidentally pressing the trigger. Now, I know all the rules, when properly observed by everyone would preclude accidentally touching the trigger. Fact is that there are frequent accidental or negligent discharges with Glocks that an effective safety would preclude. You can defend Glocks all you want, but a "safety" that is disabled by simply pulling the trigger is not a safety. Anybody that thinks they are as safe as other firearms are not correct IMO. We know that these accidents are happening, and Glock lovers that have not experienced an AD simply shrug off the idiotic handling of the gun. Bet the guys that had the ADs said that prior to their AD too. I fully expect Glock to come up against an angry jury someday, and lose their shorts.

 

[Standing Wolf]

...an officer's gun accidentally discharged while training...

Those plastic guns are apparently awfully hard to train. Well, heck, so's my cat.

 

[Control Group]

Glocks aren't any more unsafe than any other tool that does what you tell it. Glock designed a gun that fires when you pull the trigger. That's it. Just like countless DA revolvers out there: pull the trigger on a chambered round, and the gun fires. The only purpose of the safety on the trigger is to ensure that it only goes off when the trigger is pulled, not to prevent it from firing when someone does pull the trigger.

The Glock, admittedly, does not include a device that prevents it from functioning as a gun, unlike many other autoloaders. To me, the description of these devices as "safeties" is questionable in the first place, since they don't make the gun "safe," they just make it harder to fire the first round.

This case is a perfect example of that. If the cops were engaged in pistol training with a non-Glock, odds are pretty good that the safety would have been off, anyway. In which case the much "safer" non-Glock would - strangely - have gone off when the trigger was pulled. Just like in peacefuljeffrey's account - if the perp was on the ground with a pistol to the back of his neck, I certainly hope the officer with the pistol would have had the safety off (not much good to hold a guy at gunpoint if your gun won't shoot). In which case, any non-Glock would - again, strangely - have gone off when the trigger was pulled.

I wish I could see some statistics on how often a safety actually prevented an ND, or some numbers on number of NDs with Glocks as opposed to other pistols (normalized for number of them in the field, of course). I suspect the safety really doesn't accomplish much, but I can't back that up. Because if you think about it, the safety will only prevent a ND if someone accidentally pulls the trigger. I've got a sneaking suspicion that accidentally pulling the trigger (as opposed to pulling the trigger on a gun which is believed, wrongly, to be unloaded) is a fairly small percentage of all NDs. Again, though, I can't back that up.

 

[juggler]

Problem with them is that there is no effective safety on them to prevent discharge when the trigger is accidentally hit.

Except the trigger itself. Of all the Glocks I've owned/fired, my 34 has the smoothest/easiest pull of them all.....and it STILL is nowhere near my 1911.

Negligent yes, accident uh uh..........no more than any other firearm, safety or not.

 

[mbs357]

I'm no way a Glock fan, so I'm not really defending it. I dislike the lack of manual safeties, and they're ugly. >_> But short of mechanical failure, guns don't go off by themselves...as for the MAC...I guess they were designed to be mechanical failures. ^.^

 

[akviper]

Watch your muzzle, watch your muzzle. Guns can and have "gone off' by themselves. I agree it is usually misuse by the shooter but I know of several discharges where the trigger was not touched. My cousin had a new 7 mag big three brand name rifle. He was deciding which mountain ram to take when the rifle fired. His finger was outside the trigger guard and the safety was on. He sent it to the manufacturer and they admitted a faulty sear. The rifle would fire without even a bump. Chuck Taylor relates the story of a student's commander style pistol firing as a round was chambered. He recovered the spent case expecting to see a firing pin mark but there was none. He theorized an ultra sensitive primer that ignited when the round was chambered. If you check the lightfighter forum you will find references to near misses due to rounds cooking off in hot rifle chambers. There are not many details on the story at the beginning of this thread. It's unlikely but not impossible that the pistol just fired

 

[Greg L]

It's unlikely but not impossible that the pistol just fired

When one hears hoofbeats one expects horses not zebras :shrug: .

 

[Vernal45]

REMEMBER, only LEO's should have guns.

 

[SMLE]

"Glocks are completely safe assuming the user isn't an idiot.
But then again, so are all guns."

Amen!

Problem with them is that there is no effective safety on them to prevent discharge when the trigger is accidentally hit.

I've seen people get complacent with 1911s just because they HAVE manual safeties. If you think a gun is safer just because it has an manual safety, you might want to rethink your paradigms.

 

[Dionysusigma]

Parallax: Did the kid die?

peacefuljeffrey: Anyway, the cop had him face-down on the pavement in the parking lot, dept. issue Glock against the back of his neck. It, um... it went off.

Show me someone who lived through that, especially without paralysis (which is just as good as dying for a medical student), and I'll show you either a Terminator, or Jesus himself.

 

[g56]

When I was a Deputy one of the guys got charged by his own bull that got out, he tried to shoot it while keeping out of the way, he shot his dog, he shot his pick up, but he completely missed the bull that was after him.

Maybe he's gone to work for Lake County!

 

[Rockstar]

Nah, what's the point?