Indianapolis Star, IN
Aug 21 2004
Call for greater police firepower grows
Training, public safety are top concerns as officials consider ways
to upgrade weaponry.
By Richard D. Walton
[email protected]
August 21, 2004
To Linda Jackson, news of a fellow Indianapolis police officer killed
with a military-style rifle stirred painful memories of the day she
was wounded with a similar weapon two years ago.
And with the memories came frustration.
Jackson wants to know how many dead police it will take before IPD
arms its officers with the same kind of firepower that Kenneth C.
Anderson used to kill Patrolman Timothy “Jake” Laird early Wednesday.
Anderson also wounded four other officers before being killed by a
SWAT team member who, unlike regular patrol officers, has access to
high-powered weapons.
Jackson, a bullet fragment still lodged in her body from her
encounter with a mentally ill man using a rapid-fire rifle, said IPD
no longer can delay handing out to officers more than 200
high-powered AR-15 rifles the department acquired about a year ago.
Those weapons still are in boxes, awaiting the department’s decision
on where to train police in their use.
“There’s no looking into it,” Jackson said. “This just needs to
happen.”
But protecting officers can’t mean endangering the public, police
officials say. And stray shots from the powerful weapons could do
just that in crowded neighborhoods or if training is conducted in an
unsuitable place.
About two years ago, workers were doing repairs on a Westside gas
station just south of the IPD firing range when they found bullet
fragments on the roof.
If rounds from the handguns fired could escape the range, ones from
the high-powered AR-15s certainly would, too, said IPD Sgt. Steve
Staletovich. In considering a training site, he said, “we were afraid
that the bullets would eventually go right through the berm.”
The firepower Anderson had in his Southside rampage was put on
display Friday by IPD. It included an Armenian-built SKS-style rifle.
The brown-stocked weapon is capable of firing up to 1,000 yards. A
round travels at a speed of 2,800 to 3,200 feet per second, almost
three times the velocity of a hollow-point bullet fired from the
standard handgun carried by IPD street officers, the .40-caliber
Glock pistol.
A shot fired from the SKS-style rifle could penetrate a car door or a
board two to three times as thick as a 2-by-4, said David J.
Brundage, a firearms examiner with the Indianapolis-Marion County
Forensic Services Agency.
Vince Huber, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police, has
criticized IPD for not issuing patrol officers heavier weapons after
the September 2001 shooting death of Marion County Sheriff’s Deputy
Jason Baker, killed with the same type of rifle Anderson used.
“It’s not been an isolated incident,” Huber said after Laird’s death.
“We’ve seen a pattern of criminals having a better weapon.”
Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi also believes IPD officers need
more firepower, although he’s careful not to suggest it would have
made any difference in this week’s shooting spree.
“I don’t know and no one knows whether . . . any life could have been
saved.” But Brizzi said more weaponry might save someone next time.
“Because there will be a next time,” he said.
In some communities, however, the call has been for less firepower,
not more.
In Cincinnati, for example, officers carry just a handgun, a
semi-automatic 9 mm Smith & Wesson pistol. Each squad car has a
12-gauge shotgun. But only SWAT team members have the powerful
rifles.
Unlike the emotion-charged demands for more heavy weaponry being made
here, in the Ohio city there have been concerns that police had too
much firepower. Some citizens complained when, in the past, officers
carried .357 Magnums, said Lt. Kurt Byrd of the Cincinnati Police
Department.
Police agencies across Indiana and the nation reassessed their
firepower after a bank robbery and shootout in 1997 in California.
Los Angeles police, armed with pistols and shotguns, traded gunfire
with two men clad in body armor and firing automatic weapons.
Overmatched police ran into a nearby gun store for rifles. Now Los
Angeles police have more powerful rifles.
That incident “opened a lot of eyes” about the mismatch with the
criminals, said Maj. Randy Werden, chief of the enforcement division
of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department. So much so that the
department, which had been issuing shotguns to its street officers,
began equipping them with Ruger rifles.
Each officer is issued at least 25 rounds with the rapid-fire weapon.
Basically “as fast as you can pull the trigger, it will discharge a
round,” Werden said.
A possible training site for IPD officers would be Camp Atterbury in
Johnson County, but Staletovich said the cost of getting more than
200 officers to that site must be considered.
But IPD could get a cost break from the Indiana Law Enforcement
Academy. Not only would the range on the 300-acre site in Plainfield
safely accommodate training with high-powered weapons, Indianapolis
police also could take training as in-kind compensation for training
IPD has provided the academy, said Scott Mellinger, the academy’s
executive director.
Officer Jackson, who survived her confrontation with a high-powered
rifle, says it’s only right that the department get the extra guns
out on the street.
Do it in memory of Officer Laird, she said. “It’s the very least they
can do.”