Police Seek To Replace Pistols With New Sidearms 

By Andrew Gorosko

As part of the police department’s proposed budget for the 2005-06 fiscal year, the Police Commission is seeking town approval to trade-in the town-owned pistols used by police officers and replace them with new, more potent sidearms.

Police currently use .40-caliber Smith & Wesson semiautomatic Sigma pistols as their standard sidearm. Under the budget proposal, those handguns would be traded-in and be replaced by .45-caliber Glock semiautomatic Model 21 black-finish pistols, according to Police Chief Michael Kehoe. The Glock weapon is widely used by law enforcement agencies.

A .45-caliber round of ammunition would have more “stopping power” than a .40-caliber round because it is a bigger, heavier piece of ammunition.

On November 23, Police Commission members endorsed a $3.35 million spending proposal for fiscal 2005-06, as well as a $210,000 proposal for various police-related spending.

That budget proposal includes a plan to increase the roster of sworn police officers from the current 43 to 44 people.

Chief Kehoe said this week that the Glock sidearm contains a similar firing mechanism to the Smith & Wesson handgun, which police have been using since April 1996, so it should be fairly simple for police to make the transition from a Smith & Wesson to a Glock weapon.

Most town police officers had an opportunity to test-fire the Glock handgun in October during the police’s annual certification in weapons usage, Chief Kehoe said.

Detective Joseph Joudy is the police department’s senior firearms instructor.

Smith & Wesson has not manufactured the Sigma model handgun for several years and it has become increasingly difficult to find spare parts for the weapon, he said. New copies of the weapon are not available, he added.

Smith & Wesson is based in Springfield, Mass. Glock is an Austrian company, which has a factory in Smyrna, Ga.

Det Joudy estimated that some of the current stock of police handguns have been fired approximately 5,000 times, when considering their use at the police academy and at the police’s firing range.

Each new Glock weapon would cost less than $500, he said. Each Smith & Wesson handgun would have a trade-in value of approximately $165, he added. Police would acquire 46 copies of the Glock weapon.

The Glock handgun would be slightly heavier than the Smith & Wesson model it replaces, Det Joudy said. The handgun’s magazine holds 13 rounds of ammunition.

In the past, police had replaced their .38-caliber pistols with 9-millimeter handguns. The 9-millimeter guns were later replaced with the .40-caliber Smith & Wesson model.

Police are required to keep their sidearms clean. The weapons are subject to periodic inspections.

If the police proposal to acquire new sidearms is approved by the town, the police could have new weapons by September 2005, Det Joudy said. He termed the Glock .45-caliber semiautomatic “a reliable, good gun.”