Deputies Will Switch to Semi-Automatic Pistols

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which two years ago dismissed the notion of arming deputies with semi-automatic pistols, plans to do just that beginning next month, Sheriff Sherman Block said Wednesday.

Block said the department intends to purchase about 10,000 semi-automatic handguns--the same make and model used by U.S. soldiers--over the next four years.

The cost of the 9-millimeter pistols has been projected at $3.6 million. Another $550,000 will be spent for holsters, ammunition pouches and other equipment.

The .38-caliber revolvers now in use will be phased out unit by unit, sheriff’s officials said. Deputies will spend two days on the shooting range before being armed with the new handguns, 750 of which have already been delivered.

“We’re just waiting for holsters and ammunition pouches, and then we’ll start issuing them,” said Undersheriff Robert A. Edmonds. The holsters and pouches are due to arrive in September.

Edmonds said the department next year will likely cut back some non-essential operations to fund all of the guns. Those operations have not yet been identified.

The semi-automatic pistols, which are made in Maryland by the Italian-based company, Beretta, carry 16 bullets compared to six in the Smith & Wesson revolvers now in use. Block, however, said it was not additional firepower that persuaded him to upgrade his deputies’ weaponry.

“In all of the presentations made to me, no one was ever able to come up with empirical data that showed that the kind of weapon carried by an officer was a factor in being outgunned,” the sheriff said. “But in the demonstration I saw, its efficiency and officer safety implications . . . was so impressive that that is what really convinced me.”

It was the concern for safety that sheriff’s officials cited in May, 1986, in explaining their continued preference for revolvers. The Los Angeles Police Commission in that month authorized the LAPD to begin using semi-automatic pistols on a trial basis.

LAPD officers had insisted that they needed semi-automatics to counter increasingly well-armed criminals. The Police Commission agreed to their request--so long as the officers paid for their own weapons.

But sheriff’s officials who were interviewed at the time said they nonetheless favored the revolver because its relatively simple design made it less likely to jam or misfire.

Edmonds said Wednesday that sheriff’s experts remained dubious of the semi-automatic’s reliability until they fired about 20,000 rounds through a Beretta, never cleaning it, and found that the gun did not misfire.

With a revolver, bullets are loaded individually in a six-chambered cylinder, which revolves manually each time the gun’s trigger is squeezed. A semi-automatic pistol is armed by sliding a pre-loaded clip of bullets into the handle. Each time its trigger is squeezed, a bullet is fired and the semi-automatic’s internal workings force another round into the firing chamber until the clip is expended.

Opponents of semi-automatic pistols have argued that officers armed with such weapons are inclined to fire more bullets in shooting situations.

An officer assigned to the LAPD shooting range said Wednesday that there have not been enough gunfights by officers armed with semi-automatic pistols to accurately determine whether the average number of shots they fired is higher than the average involving officers with revolvers.