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Knimrod
12-20-2005, 01:22 AM
Sheriff looks into pistol switch
12/19/2005
Steve Horrell
Edwardsville Intelligencer

It could have been worse. The Smith & Wesson service pistols that the Madison County Sheriff's Department says have misfired, misfed, or simply broken down from time to time in recent months, might have happened in the line of duty.

"We were able to narrow it down to training when the guns would break," Madison County Sheriff Capt. Eric Decker said recently, adding, "Having a gun break down is not a good thing."

Several incidents have been reported recently in which, "We've had internal parts break while at the firing range," Decker said.

The failures have caused alarm such that the Sheriff's Department is seeking to replace all 97 Smith & Wesson .40 calibre Sigma pistols that deputies now carry with Glock .40 calibre pistols.

The most recent failures happened in October and were documented in a Nov. 12 memo to sheriff administrators from the department's firearm instructor, although the department has had some problems with the guns before that.

Deputies have carried the current Smith & Wesson pistols for the past six years. Next week Decker will ask the Madison County Board for permission to spend $36,783 from the sheriff department's 2005 budget to buy the Glocks as well as gun holsters and ammunition carriers.

The Smith & Wessons will be traded in, Decker said.

The misfirings didn't reach the threshold of a serious problem until after the sheriff's department had made an 2005 appropriations request to the Madison County Board in July. On Wednesday, the county's Finance and Government Operations Committee approved Decker's request and recommended that the Madison County Board approve it at its monthly meeting on Dec. 21. If it's approved, the department will quickly go out for bids.

"We feel that it's necessary at this time for officer safety," Decker told committee members. "We can't have some of the mechanical malfunctions and breakages that we've had being a factor for street performance."

Several area police departments have switched to Glocks in recent years. Tom Hoechst, a Democrat who represents residents from Alton's County Board District 10, said that the Alton police department made the switch recently and now uses Glocks exclusively.

The Alton police department obtained a grant to purchase them, and Michael "Doc" Holliday, from Alton District 8, asked Decker why the Sheriff's Department hasn't sought a grant to cover the expense rather than spending county money. But Decker said that with such short notice, no grants were available between Nov. 12 and mid-December. He also said that most Department of Justice grants prohibit departments from spending grant money on weapons. "They're very restrictive," he said.

The decision to switch was prompted by concerns about reliability as well as safety. The Illinois State Police conducted a broad study of gun reliability about three years ago that prompted them to switch to Glocks, Decker said.

Smith & Wesson is the largest manufacturer of handguns in the U.S. It introduced the Sigma series in 1994, but today Glock has cornered about 70 percent of the law enforcement market, Decker said.

Link to story (http://www.goedwardsville.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15780909)

Divegeek
12-20-2005, 09:19 AM
A friend of mine had a S&W Sigma. He and I both thought the thing was junk. He had failures to feed and failures to fire, frequently before he sold the thing. The biggest problem we saw was that the striker was getting jammed by build up of brass shavings from the shell casings.

An interesting side note Glock sued S&W for patent infringement and won because of the take down system on the Sigma is an exact duplicate of the Glock take down system. Glock didn't make them redesign the gun but S&W does have to pay a licensing fee now for every one they sell.