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Interesting story:  Alaska Resident With Rifle Aids Unarmed Police  

 

 

 

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A 19-year-old Alaska man is facing attempted murder charges after breaking into a public safety building and firing on an unarmed village police officer, authorities said....  

Troopers arrested Bryan Nicolai after a member of the Kwethluk community with a rifle arrived on scene and talked Nicolai into surrendering, the station reported.

 

Kwethluk’s Public Safety Administrative Chief Nicolai Joseph said the village’s 10 police officers don’t carry weapons.

 

Officers told the station they don’t carry firearms due to a lack of funding.

 

 

 

Dang!  Small place, but wouldn't ya think they'd at least buy their own...?  :huh:

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5 hours ago, Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967 said:

Interesting story:  Alaska Resident With Rifle Aids Unarmed Police  

 

 

 

 

Dang!  Small place, but wouldn't ya think they'd at least buy their own...?  :huh:


Yes, I agree.  It is foolish and dangerous that a “police department“ even exists within a community that employs “people,” not real law enforcement officers, and then refuses to arm them, claiming budget restrictions.  The “officers” are probably nothing more than “tax collectors,” ambushing citizens and writing “tickets” for real or imagined violations to fill the city’s coffers.   And, these “officers” won’t even buy their own defensive weapons?  I won’t waste time worrying about them; they’re just parasites.  Makes you wonder if they’re even trained.  They’re probably ex store clerks with low-level government jobs.

 

 

4 hours ago, Fence Cutter said:

 Years ago in Northwest Colorado, I won't name the town, we had a deputy who was too young to buy ammo.


Ditto.....I lived in Dallas appro. 1967(?), when the Dallas PD began hiring 18-year old kids as real police officers driving the streets.  They couldn’t buy ammunition for their weapons, because you had to be 21 to buy ammo.  One of these 18yo officers stopped me one day for a brake light violation.  I opened my trunk and found the lamp assembly had fallen back out of the tail-light housing.  I plugged it back and twist-locked it in place, fixing the problem.  I started quizzing this cop and he admitted his revolver wasn’t loaded.  The PD wouldn’t furnish them ammo.  I had a 21yo coworker in the car and we convinced the young cop to follow us up the street to a gun shop so we could buy him a box of bullets.  He didn’t even have any money!  His mom had made him a sack lunch as if he were still in school and it was on his car seat.  He was like a child (to me, anyway) and he was a year older than me.


The gun shop owner was astounded and refused to take our money.  Instead, he gave this young officer a box of the proper police ammo.  It was so astounding, we didn’t even find it funny, and we were of an age that almost anything was funny.  Heck, I had 3 guns and a lot of ammunition in my trunk!  The gun shop owner, my friend and I told the young officer to keep his weapon loaded at all times, regardless of what the PD told him.  Unbelievable!  Can you imagine that BS?  In The City if Dallas?   We were late getting back to work from lunch, and when we told that story, everyone was dumbfounded.  I don’t know how long that nonsense went on at The Dallas PD, because I went back to El Paso a week later to return to school.  Who knows?  Maybe that kid eventually retired from Dallas PD.  I haven’t thought about that in a long time.  I often wondered at the time, why his mamma let him take a job like that.

 

Cat Brules

 

 

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47 minutes ago, Cat Brules said:


Ditto.....I lived in Dallas appro. 1967(?)

 

 

My family left Dallas in '67 to return to California.  

 

My sophomore year of high school - I went from an academically challenging North Dallas High to a school in Oakland that's too horrible to even mention.  From pep rallies to race riots.  :huh:

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I started my career in Law Enforcement at age 19.  I had to get my mother to buy my ammo for me, but she made me pay for it myself.  The only thing our Sheriff's department furnished was a uniform and badge.   The officer was responsible for his own gun, and duty belt.  There was no such thing as firearm qualifications or department training.  I did have to be 21 before I could go to the 6 week police academy.  The money was controlled by the commissioners and there wasn't money in the budget for anything.  Those people were the definition of backwoods cheap, get by with what you got. 

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I had discussions with a pilot in my department who was being recruited by the Alaska State Police. They wined and dined him for two weeks. Things are very different in the native villages of Alaska. It’s difficult to judge by the standards of the lower 48. Full time law enforcement officers are spread incredibly thin. The village police are there mainly as community service officers and to assist the State Police when they are called in.
My friend didn’t take the job.

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1 hour ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

If the department never provided the officers with ammo, it likely did not have them practice either.

 

Sadly, several decades ago, here in Canada, that was not unusual.

When I became a municipal purchasing agent for the national capital city, the municipal police service allotment to officer's was 6 rounds issued per year. 

And no practice issue ammo other than the departmental, on-site cadet/rookie familiarization rounds, (50 to 100 mild wad-cutter reloads, made by an interested officer and donated to the course.) 

When a buddy became an officer and was introduced to some of my full loads, in his .38spl. round butt, Police Positive, he had trouble with it.

Revolver was carried in a modified hip pocket holster, under the tunic flap.

Oh yeah, and the Senior "expert" one rank below Deputy Chief only authorized loading of 5 rounds because the firing pin might set off the cartridge under it. 

Yes, he read a lot of cowboy books.

Most officers carried the sixth annually issued round in their pants pocket.

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The three state universities in Iowa (Iowa State U., U. of Iowa, and U. of Northern Iowa) are all governed by an elected Board of Regents.  Each of them has a certified police department -- *NOT* security; they are academy trained and certified, fully sworn police officers with powers of arrest, etc.  The state of Iowa uses a centralized police academy, where all cops attend regardless of who their employer is (except the state patrol, which has their own).  The university cops attend the same academy as everyone else.  

 

For years, the Board of Regents refused to allow them to be armed.  They did everything a regular police department does, but they did it without guns.  The most frustrating of all this is, state POST standards require a certain amount of firearms training and range qualification to maintain certification, SO THEY HAD AN ARMS ROOM FULL OF GUNS!  They would take the guns to the range, qualify, send the paperwork into the POST board for certification record-keeping, and put the guns back into the arms room.  

 

Decades of lobbying didn't work until there was a shooting involving one of the cops, who happened to be a mentor to me.  I was a student employee of one of the said departments -- not a cop -- but simultaneously a part-time Sheriff's Deputy for our County Sheriff.  Wildly enough, as a barely trained part-time cop I had a gun and he didn't.

 

He came out ok and the suspect was arrested.  He just retired from policing a few years ago, but his incident convinced the Board of Regents that these guys needed to be armed like every other cop in the country.  At first they balked at the "initial costs of training and purchasing guns and related equipment," until the chief brought them in and showed them the arms room they had been maintaining for decades.  Cost = $0 above what they were already doing.

 

They're armed now.  

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12 minutes ago, Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474 said:

 

Sadly, several decades ago, here in Canada, that was not unusual.

When I became a municipal purchasing agent for the national capital city, the municipal police service allotment to officer's was 6 rounds issued per year. 

And no practice issue ammo other than the departmental, on-site cadet/rookie familiarization rounds, (50 to 100 mild wad-cutter reloads, made by an interested officer and donated to the course.) 

When a buddy became an officer and was introduced to some of my full loads, in his .38spl. round butt, Police Positive, he had trouble with it.

Revolver was carried in a modified hip pocket holster, under the tunic flap.

Oh yeah, and the Senior "expert" one rank below Deputy Chief only authorized loading of 5 rounds because the firing pin might set off the cartridge under it. 

Yes, he read a lot of cowboy books.

Most officers carried the sixth annually issued round in their pants pocket.

 

Back in the 50's Calgary Police carried the wobbly Webleys with one chamber empty, they called it "safety of the public"  whatever that meant.

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Ridiculous! Who in their right mind would not carry a gun as an LEO! I don't care if they have to buy it themselves or not! No excuse for being stupid!

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13 hours ago, Fence Cutter said:

 Years ago in Northwest Colorado, I won't name the town, we had a deputy who was too young to buy ammo.

I remember this being in the American Rifleman. It was right after they had lowered the voting age to 18 and lowered the drinking age to 18 and basically said that eighteen-year-olds for WERE grown up and could do grown up stuff.

 

This 19 year old kid got a job with a police department in South Florida, and you had to supply your own gun. He had to have his mother buy his pistol because he was too young.

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10 minutes ago, Alpo said:

I remember this being in the American Rifleman. It was right after they had lowered the voting age to 18 and lowered the drinking age to 18 and basically said that eighteen-year-olds for WERE grown up and could do grown up stuff.

 

This 19 year old kid got a job with a police department in South Florida, and you had to supply your own gun. He had to have his mother buy his pistol because he was too young.

 

I remember that too.  I became a part-time Sheriff's Deputy when I was 21, which was the minimum age in Iowa, where I was raised.  I went to the active duty army after that, then switched to the Army Reserve to become a full-time cop.  I was 28 when I entered law enforcement full-time, and looking back, I don't think I was mature enough even then!

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23 minutes ago, Buffalo Creek Law Dog said:

 

Back in the 50's Calgary Police carried the wobbly Webleys with one chamber empty, they called it "safety of the public"  whatever that meant.

 

You reminded me: Our force had a large inventory of Webleys as well in .38 S&W, .455s and even .32 Colts 

I recall one of my friends telling me of shift change inspections when cylinders fell from the revolvers, barrels plugged with lint etc.

It was a struggle getting the Detectives to give up their small frame .32s and replace them with a Colt Detective Special in .38spl. "It's too heavy on my belt!" was one complaint.

By default, I became an "advisor" on the matter of ammunition and arms etc.

Heated "discussions" about:

Why the 870 was as good a shotgun as the Winchester for police use;

Why a switch from 148 grain round nose to 158 grain semi-wadcutter in .38 spl. was a better choice as a duty round; (Finally mandated by the Province after the RCMP stepped in)

Why the Hague Convention forbidding the use of hollow point ammunition did not forbid it for civilian or police use; 

Why the use of total metal jacket 9 mm; .30-06 or .308 was not a good idea; 

Why Tactical Teams really didn't need Real Tree Woodland Camo for use in the city;

Then the fight to use S&W Model 10s as an issue revolver as well; "The cylinders turn in different directions, The men will be confused!" (Each officer took his gun home and always carried the same one on duty.) 

Bullet/stab resistant vest were actually a good idea and likely would not give officers a "False Sense Of Security.)

and so on.

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