Interesting things in the NYPD Annual Firearms Discharge Report
Another shooting incident resource that I have added is the NYPD Annual Firearms Discharge Report. The 2012 Report, which is the latest, provided some interesting information. The thing about any of the big reports is that you have to actually read them to see what’s in them rather than just skimming. Nancy Pelosi research methods don’t work well here. Some nuggets are small and easily missed. Sometimes, you have to do a little number crunching on your own.
Distance
The distances that officers shot it out was interesting. 0-5 yards – 18 (41%), 6-15 yards – 15 (34%), 16-25 yards – 5 (11%), 26+ yards – 6 (14%). page 21
Contrary to popular opinion, over half (59%) of NYPD gunfights took place at six yards or more.
Unintentional Discharge
There were 21 unintentional discharges in 2012. This was a large increase from 2011. The increase was due to unintentional discharges during ‘adversarial conflict.’
Of the 21 firearms that were unintentionally discharged in 2012, 13 (62%) were the officers’ service weapons. Of the 13 service weapons involved, 4 (31%) were Glock 19s, 6 (46%) were Smith & Wesson 5946s, and 3 (23%) were Sig Sauer P226s. p 37 Current NYPD service pistols are all “double action only.” The NYPD uses 124 grain hollow-point bullets. p 49
IOW, there were more NDs with DAO pistols than with Glocks. Unfortunately, I have no way to quantify the percentage of Glocks v. DAO guns owned by NYPD officers. I’m willing to bet the preponderance is toward Glocks, though.
Rounds Fired
Another thing I found interesting was the difference in number of rounds fired in relation to the subject’s injury. p 55-56
The mode (most common) number of rounds fired per Fatality was one. For Injury, it was two. The median (middle point of the dataset) for Fatality was 1.5. For Injury, it was six. And the average rounds per Fatality was three, but for Injury, it was nine. Another counter-intuitive result; death of the subject resulted, generally, from less rounds being fired, rather than more. I wonder if that might have something to do with marksmanship.
Incident summaries
NYPD only gives incident summaries when the ‘Subject’ is killed. Unlike LAPD, NYPD does not appear to discourage enforcement action when an officer is off-duty. There was an interesting incident involving an off-duty officer. It just wasn’t a good day for anyone involved. As John Hall, a former head of the FBI Firearms Training Unit, observed years ago, “There is an element of chance in every encounter.”
On October 24, at 1837 hours, in the 46th Precinct, an off-duty officer was sitting in a parked vehicle with a friend, when he saw two men rob another man at gunpoint on the other side of the street. The officer got out of his car and approached the men. As soon as he identified himself as a police officer, the subject, one of the individuals involved in the robbery, turned and fired one round at the officer, striking him in the chest from about ten feet away. The men then fled on foot, while the officer went back to his vehicle, clutching his chest. The officer’s friend tried to drive away, only to get stuck in traffic behind a white Mustang which was stopped in front of them. The Mustang sped off and crashed up the street. Three individuals, including the subject, fled the Mustang. When the officer saw them, he pursued, still clutching his chest. The officer ordered bystanders to get down for their safety, and while taking cover behind a vehicle, fired eight rounds at the perpetrators, striking the subject once in the head and causing his demise. The other individuals who participated in the robbery were apprehended later. The subject had two prior arrests, for Robbery and Criminal Possession of a Weapon. p 54
The officer did not die as a result of his wound.
It’s hard to make that kind of stuff up, which is yet another reason I prefer to read the real reports rather than dreaming up my own scenarios.
Sources of information about deadly force incidents
I’ve been interested in gunfight analysis since I was a teenager. My Dad had a Guns and Blammo magazine with an article about the shootout between the Hamer posse and Bonnie and Clyde. Once I read it, I was hooked.
Many people like to ‘wargame’ situations that could happen to them and I am no different. However, I rarely dream up scenarios for playing ‘what if’ mental games unless I’m asleep and actually dreaming. There are several forums where people think them up but I prefer to look at real incidents. In many cases, truth is stranger than fiction.
There are several websites that aggregate various news reports, such as GunsSaveLives. I read The Armed Citizen column in the NRA Journals every month. Some people have commented that the NRA ‘cherry picks’ the reports they include in The Armed Citizen but, through independent research, I have found it largely representative of the overall activities of Armed Citizens.
The problem with news reports is that they don’t usually go into much depth about the specifics of the incidents. Frequently, the information has gaping holes in it or is wrong. A much better source is the online records of police deadly force incidents. A number of larger departments put all their Officer Involved Shooting (OIS) on their website. The level of detail varies but almost all of them give more than a news article. When looking for information that’s pertinent to me, I focus on the off-duty OIS because off-duty officer incidents have many situational and equipment parallels to an armed citizen.
The oldest source of information is the annual FBI Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted report. The Bureau has been producing the report for many years. Back issues since 1996 of LEOKA are available online. As I pointed out in an article for Personal Defense Network, when using LEOKA, we have to be careful how we interpret the data. The part I find most useful is the Summaries of Officers Feloniously Killed. Instead of data tables, the Summaries provide a narrative about the circumstances of each officer’s death. It’s difficult reading, emotionally, but as I’ve told every Law Enforcement class I’ve taught, “If you haven’t read the Summaries, you haven’t read the report.”
One of my favorite sources is the Los Angeles Police Department Categorical Use Of Force reports. The LAPD Board Of Police Commissioners’ webpage has a detailed summary of every use of deadly force by LAPD officers since 2005. They are meticulously explained and analyzed with the Board’s findings at the end. There are many off duty incidents included in the database. Often, we hear the saying that “data is not the plural of anecdote.” However, when we have access to all the anecdotes, I think that becomes a source for evidence. The BOPC evaluates LAPD officers on three different areas; tactics, drawing/exhibiting, and use of force.
The Chicago Police Department Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) publishes an online summary of all OIS by Chicago Police Officers. The IPRA reports are also very detailed. It issues a finding only regarding the use of deadly force by the officer(s).
Late in 2013, the Philadelphia Police also began publishing summaries on each OIS. These are not as detailed as those from Los Angeles and Chicago but still contain useful information.
Another source of information is the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Office of Internal Oversight. The online reports provided by LVMPD are very detailed. They contain District Attorney Decisions, Force Investigation Team Reports, and Office of Internal Oversight Reviews.
A colleague of mine, John Hearne, coined the term “Ninjas coming from the ceiling.” When I read or hear of what some people are concerned about, that term usually comes to mind. I think it’s much more interesting and useful to think about what really does happen and then wargame that.
tacticalprofessor 
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