Posted on 05/13/2013 7:09:16 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Before the call that changed Sergeant Timothy Gramins’ life forever, he typically carried 47 rounds of handgun ammunition on his person while on duty.
Today, he carries 145, “every day, without fail.”
He detailed the gunfight that caused the difference in a gripping presentation at the annual conference of the Assn. of SWAT Personnel-Wisconsin.
At the core of his desperate firefight was a murderous attacker who simply would not go down, even though he was shot 14 times with .45-cal. ammunition — six of those hits in supposedly fatal locations.
The most threatening encounter in Gramins’ nearly two-decade career with the Skokie (Ill.) PD north of Chicago came on a lazy August afternoon prior to his promotion to sergeant, on his first day back from a family vacation. He was about to take a quick break from his patrol circuit to buy a Star Wars game at a shopping center for his son’s eighth birthday.
An alert flashed out that a male black driving a two-door white car had robbed a bank at gunpoint in another suburb 11 miles north and had fled in an unknown direction. Gramins was only six blocks from a major expressway that was the most logical escape route into the city.
Unknown at the time, the suspect, a 37-year-old alleged Gangster Disciple, had vowed that he would kill a police officer if he got stopped.
“I’ve got a horseshoe up my ass when it comes to catching suspects,” Gramins laughs. He radioed that he was joining other officers on the busy expressway lanes to scout traffic.
He was scarcely up to highway speed when he spotted a lone male black driver in a white Pontiac Bonneville and pulled alongside him. “He gave me ‘the Look,’ that oh-crap-there’s-the-police look, and I knew he was the guy,” Gramins said.
Gramins dropped behind him. Then in a sudden, last-minute move the suspect accelerated sharply and swerved across three lanes of traffic to roar up an exit ramp. “I’ve got one running!” Gramins radioed.
The next thing he knew, bullets were flying. “That was four years ago,” Gramins said. “Yet it could be ten seconds ago.”
With Gramins following close behind, siren blaring and lights flashing, the Bonneville zigzagged through traffic and around corners into a quite pocket of single-family homes a few blocks from the exit. Then a few yards from where a 10-year-old boy was skateboarding on a driveway, the suspect abruptly squealed to a stop.
“He bailed out and ran headlong at me with a 9 mm Smith in his hand while I was still in my car,” Gramins said.
The gunman sank four rounds into the Crown Vic’s hood while Gramins was drawing his .45-cal. Glock 21.
“I didn’t have time to think of backing up or even ramming him,” Gramins said. “I see the gun and I engage.”
Gramins fired back through his windshield, sending a total of 13 rounds tearing through just three holes.
A master firearms instructor and a sniper on his department’s Tactical Intervention Unit, “I was confident at least some of them were hitting him, but he wasn’t even close to slowing down,” Gramins said.
The gunman shot his pistol dry trying to hit Gramins with rounds through his driver-side window, but except for spraying the officer’s face with glass, he narrowly missed and headed back to his car.
Gramins, also empty, escaped his squad — “a coffin,” he calls it — and reloaded on his run to cover behind the passenger-side rear of the Bonneville.
Now the robber, a lanky six-footer, was back in the fight with a .380 Bersa pistol he’d grabbed off his front seat. Rounds flew between the two as the gunman dashed toward the squad car.
Again, Gamins shot dry and reloaded.
“I thought I was hitting him, but with shots going through his clothing it was hard to tell for sure. This much was certain: he kept moving and kept shooting, trying his damnedest to kill me.”
In this free-for-all, the assailant had, in fact, been struck 14 times. Any one of six of these wounds — in the heart, right lung, left lung, liver, diaphragm, and right kidney — could have produced fatal consequences…“in time,” Gramins emphasizes.
But time for Gramins, like the stack of bullets in his third magazine, was fast running out.
In his trunk was an AR-15; in an overhead rack inside the squad, a Remington 870.
But reaching either was impractical. Gramins did manage to get himself to a grassy spot near a tree on the curb side of his vehicle where he could prone out for a solid shooting platform.
The suspect was in the street on the other side of the car. “I could see him by looking under the chassis,” Gramins recalls. “I tried a couple of ricochet rounds that didn’t connect. Then I told myself, ‘Hey, I need to slow down and aim better.’ ”
When the suspect bent down to peer under the car, Gramins carefully established a sight picture, and squeezed off three controlled bursts in rapid succession.
Each round slammed into the suspect’s head — one through each side of his mouth and one through the top of his skull into his brain. At long last the would-be cop killer crumpled to the pavement.
The whole shootout had lasted 56 seconds, Gramins said. The assailant had fired 21 rounds from his two handguns. Inexplicably — but fortunately — he had not attempted to employ an SKS semi-automatic rifle that was lying on his front seat ready to go.
Gramins had discharged 33 rounds. Four remained in his magazine.
Two houses and a parked Mercedes in the vicinity had been struck by bullets, but with no casualties. The young skateboarder had run inside yelling at his dad to call 911 as soon as the battle started and also escaped injury. Despite the fusillade of lead sent his way, Gramins’ only damage besides glass cuts was a wound to his left shin. His dominant emotion throughout his brush with death, he recalls, was “feeling very alone, with no one to help me but myself.”
Remarkably, the gunman was still showing vital signs when EMS arrived. Sheer determination, it seemed, kept him going, for no evidence of drugs or alcohol was found in his system.
He was transported to a trauma center where Gramins also was taken. They shared an ER bay with only a curtain between them as medical personnel fought unsuccessfully to save the robber’s life.
At one point Gramins heard a doctor exclaim, “We may as well stop. Every bag of blood we give him ends up on the floor. This guy’s like Swiss cheese. Why’d that cop have to shoot him so many times!”
Gramins thought, “He just tried to kill me! Where’s that part of it?”
When Gramins was released from the hospital, “I walked out of there a different person,” he said.
“Being in a shooting changes you. Killing someone changes you even more.” As a devout Catholic, some of his changes involved a deepening spirituality and philosophical reflections, he said without elaborating.
At least one alteration was emphatically practical.
Before the shooting, Gramins routinely carried 47 rounds of handgun ammo on his person, including two extra magazines for his Glock 21 and 10 rounds loaded in a backup gun attached to his vest, a 9 mm Glock 26.
Now unfailingly he goes to work carrying 145 handgun rounds, all 9 mm. These include three extra 17-round magazines for his primary sidearm (currently a Glock 17), plus two 33-round mags tucked in his vest, as well as the backup gun. Besides all that, he’s got 90 rounds for the AR-15 that now rides in a rack up front.
Paranoia?
Gramins shook his head and said “Preparation.”
Expert Analysis
Lessons learned from facing an “invincible” assailant
By Charles Remsberg
Sgt. Timothy Gramins who fired 17 .45-cal. rounds into a hell-bent suspect before putting him down offers these lessons learned from his extraordinary fight for his life:
1.) Beef up your ammo reserves. “A lot more rounds are being exchanged in today’s gunfights than in the past. With offenders carrying heavier weapons, going on patrol with just a handgun and two extra magazines no longer cuts it. Carry more ammo. Always have a backup gun. Carry a loaded rifle where you can reach it. I can’t express how quickly your firearm will go empty when you’re shooting for real. There’s no worse feeling than pulling the trigger and hearing it go ‘click’.”
2.) Practice head shots. “When you fire multiple ‘lethal’ rounds into an attacker and he keeps going, you don’t have the luxury of waiting 20 or 40 more seconds for him to die while he can still shoot at you. Don’t waste time arguing the relative merits of various calibers. No handgun rounds have reliable stopping power with body shots. Pick the round you can shoot best and practice shooting at the suspect’s head.”
Answer: Because he knows how long it will take the cops to respond even if it is one of their own and who knows how many savages will be attacking at once.
Facsinating that he put away his .45 and exclusively carries 9mm. I’m guessing this decision is primarily based upon ammo volume and the ability to pop in 33 rd mags.
“I was impressed with the “13 rounds through three holes””
Unless police cruisers don’t have safety glass that shatters into tiny pieces, I don’t see how this could be possible to determine.
So.... people who live near Chicago (especially police) need to carry much more ammo than people who live elsewhere.
If the cops need 145 rounds, then ordinary citizens need at least one gun and 45 rounds.
The officer in this shootout was A master firearms instructor and a sniper on his department’s Tactical Intervention Unit...
Additionally, he did hit the guy 14 times with three head shots. I think the point was with many multiple body shots of .45 the criminal was still standing and shooting!
“Because he couldn’t hit his a$$ with both hands.”
Have you ever been in a small arms fight?
“Unless police cruisers don’t have safety glass that shatters into tiny pieces, I don’t see how this could be possible to determine.”
Windshield glass has a plastic layer in the middle that keeps it from shattering all over and it stays intact. Side window glass is tempered to break into tiny chunks.
Could be his decision to go from center of mass hits to head shots, and he believes he's more accurate with the nine.
No arguing the additional rounds a double-stack can carry, and his attitude now seems to be a 9mm hollow point to the head beats a .45 hollow point to the chest.
Maybe I should reconsider my CHL loadout of 17 .45 DRT rounds... but a cop is much more likely to get into a shootout than I am.
Pick the round you can shoot best and practice shooting at the suspect’s head.”
He probably practiced with seeing how many rounds he could fire in five seconds and how many hit the target. If you have arthritis or a weak grip that's why a .22 can be an effective defensive round. Ten hits to the head in five seconds and your attacker is done for.
I don't understand that either.
2.) Practice head shots. “When you fire multiple ‘lethal’ rounds into an attacker and he keeps going, you don’t have the luxury of waiting 20 or 40 more seconds for him to die while he can still shoot at you. Don’t waste time arguing the relative merits of various calibers. No handgun rounds have reliable stopping power with body shots. Pick the round you can shoot best and practice shooting at the suspect’s head.”
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Best advice in the article - “stopping power” in a handgun is a myth, unless you’re taking head shots.
You must not have read the last sentence.
"Don’t waste time arguing the relative merits of various calibers. No handgun rounds have reliable stopping power with body shots. Pick the round you can shoot best and practice shooting at the suspect’s head.”
At one point Gramins heard a doctor exclaim, “We may as well stop. Every bag of blood we give him ends up on the floor. This guy’s like Swiss cheese. Why’d that cop have to shoot him so many times!”
He should have gotten up and throat punched that stupid doctor.
How many firefights you been in?
In my LEO days I carried 4 extra mags on the belt (4 speed loaders before we went semi auto), back up pistol between door and seat. My AR was in the back seat while on duty. I had 6 30 rounders for it. The shotgun was in the gun lock.
Did you read the article? He hit the suspect 17 times while taking fire.
We also don’t know why he switched. Most LEOs don’t get to pick either their model or caliber. It is selected by the department.
No, however even the most detailed studies show the 45 ACP is the big boy on the block.
Yea I read the whole article. In this situation I believe you and your 22 would of been in real trouble. Shooting through a windshield with a 22 is problamatic at best. If you can hit a guy five times in the head at 15 yards when he is laying down, in a few seconds, you are one hell of a gunslinger.
"Time enough for countin' after the dealin's done."
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