Old police joke: “Why’d you shoot him 44 times?”
Answer: “Ran out of ammo.”
You’ve never heard of suppression fire? As long as one of you is shooting it makes it that much harder for him to get off a good shot. In combat, in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, approximately one round of small arms fire in 10,000 hit a target and four out of five people hit with small arms survived.
The police in New York used to use the .38 Police Special, not for it’s stopping power, but lack of stopping power. The round is unlikely to penetrate walls and ceilings and strike by-standers. It’s a feature, not a bug.
Yea....good LEO practice.....somebody pops a cap off at you and you unload your stash with a couple/three mags worth not hitting what you aimed at....don’t even try to compare this to combat in Korea, Viet Nam or WWII....this was in NYC for cripes sake. Let’s just publish NYPD’s new policy of apparently careless massive SUPPRESSION FIRE in the paper and see what its citizens think.
NYPD uses Glock 17’s now IIRC. They switched from the ubiquitious S&W Model 10 some time ago. Having been used to DA revolvers they had a rash of “foot shots” until they went to a 11 pound trigger in the Glock, called the NY Trigger.
In a civilian community, outside of war conditions like falujia, suppression fire is criminally negligent. Bullets don’t stop after they miss. They could have killed innocent bystanders.
Surpressing fire is cool if you are a infantry platoon trying to take a machinegun nest and want to keep the little buggers heads down so you can move into a good attack position. But in a police situation, it doesnt sound like a good idea to send rounds around willy-nilly. Lots of buildings and innocent bystanders could be sent to the sweet hereafter by a stray.