Meet the man in "The Mustang" -- LMPD's most feared traffic officer

Well put. Simple standardization that makes training better and cheaper. The Glock is perfect for combat shooting and police style shooting events. Basically, it is simple and idiot proof. I think back to that idiot Goldberg who cried like a little girl about having to use a Remington shotgun over a Mossberg. He actually threw his shotgun down because he had trouble taking it apart. Operator error only. Nothing wrong with the weapon. He also thought it was ok to shoot suppressing fire in a critical incident. Uh, no.

I do agree that there are some benefits of having just one common sidearm for everyone, especially in terms of training. It probably makes it much easier for the firearms training staff. If this was the army or marines, I would totally agree with very strict standardization, because of both the very high number of personnel (tens of thousands) which need to be quickly trained, and also the much greater chance of being in a heavy firefight that would last much longer than a typical police shooting (thus making weapons/magazines/ammo sharing more likely to occur). However, on a relatively small civilian police force, it would make much more sense to allow an officer to choose a sidearm which they're more comfortable with and fits their hand better (grip width/grip angle/location of magazine release button for example). This would probably result in the individual becoming a more accurate shooter. Even though we've had our share of police shootings, I can't recall one yet in which officers were pinned down by enemy fire and had to resort to sharing spare magazines with one another. A situation like that would give total credence to the idea of every officer having the same identical weapon, but it's very unlikely to happen in a gunfight that may last less than one minute.

If you're a police officer and are unable to safely clear a pistol, then you will not be able to do your job when you recover a loaded weapon on the street. It's not rocket science. The chances of you having to fire another officer's weapon are smaller than your chances of having to run into a nearby gun store to borrow an AR-15 because some maniac is firing a rifle somewhere like they had to do in California once. Too bad many officers don't have any idea how to shoot a rifle.

17 and 18 year old Army privates who barely finished high school are trained how to use the M-16, M-4, M-203 grenade launcher, M-249 squad automatic weapon and M-9 pistol. Troops in field units know how to operate dozens of different types of weapons. If you can't even figure out how to operate one of 5 or 6 pistols available to officers, then you have no business being a police officer. I hear Glock is hiring.