Lots of folks have a pretty distorted concept of how most agencies actually work (understatement). In a career with a small sized department (100 sworn) that would have been considered to be quite well equipped by local standards (south Florida) all we ever purchased for shotgun ammo (and this was before the rise of "patrol rifles" and the slow phasing out of shotguns) was either Remington or Winchester buck or slug (basic 2 3/4" rounds) in whatever came cheapest for bulk purchases.... Anyone thinking that law enforcement in general would be up for purchasing very expensive "special purpose" rounds for general use is just kidding themselves -and so is that manufacturer if they're aiming for big sales to various agencies...
For most agencies, just keeping on hand sufficient ammo for training purposes was something that required a bit of effort since weapons related stuff was such a minor part of all the other annual items that had to be fought for (and often, needed gear went by the wayside since it all had to have the approval of the city council -chiefs spend a lot of their time just trying to have the basics on hand, along with a full complement of personnel year to year...). Here's a pretty good yardstick for what it costs to put just one additional officer on the street - take the annual salary, then add twice that much in real dollars to get the true cost of one additional officer - so if the salary is in the $50k range it will actually cost the city $150k -and that's a recurring cost - not a one time proposition.. Any wonder why just being able to do training can be a struggle?
I actually ran training for my outfit for a period of about three years (actually it was personnel and training - on small agencies you get to wear more than one hat as you move up in rank away from the street...) so I do have a pretty good idea of what's involved on the training side of things - both for basic department wide annual qualifications as well as what was needed to train up specialty units - like our SRT.
