Lawsuit centers on SWAT gun safety in Eugene Oregon

[nogods]

[h=2]Link Removed[/h]

Three Eugene police officers testified in federal court Monday that they believe former colleague Brian Hagen was removed from the police department’s K-9 unit in 2008 in retaliation for raising safety concerns about working with its SWAT team.


They mentioned several examples beyond previously publicized incidents in which a SWAT team sniper mistakenly shot and seriously wounded fellow officer Jay Shadwick in 2001, and another SWAT officer’s automatic weapon that discharged as he climbed a suspected drug dealer’s fence, striking fellow officer Matt Lowen’s foot in 2007.


They also described two instances in the 1990s in which a SWAT officer shot himself in the foot with a machine gun and a sniper’s weapon discharged through the floor of an armored police vehicle, as well as a 2007 incident in which a SWAT officer’s weapon discharged into the ground as he was putting it away in his vehicle.


Hagen testified that he was so close to that discharge that his ears rang for several hours afterward. He also described an incident in which he watched another SWAT team member stumble and fall while running with a semiautomatic weapon, spilling ammunition magazines “everywhere.” Another time, he testified, he heard SWAT team members joking about a sergeant’s gun accidentally discharging when he was trying to fire off a flash grenade.


Schulke refused to call the unintended weapon firings accidents, saying some SWAT team members showed less proficiency at gun safety “than a teenager coming out of a hunter’s safety class.”

 

[fnsmoak]

I'll have to agree with the last sentence. Though I've never been through any formal weapons training personally, I've shot alongside numerous LE & military lifers. Usually, it is embarrassing how even the "trainers" handle their weapons & amazing that many of them get a qualification in proficiency.

At one qualification I endured, I was the only total citizen enrolled of 12 attending. Everyone in the class had either just retired from, or still were active Handgun Instructor/Trainers for LE department or military squad, or returning from some sort of special ops, trying to get civilian certs to teach. The qualification phase was a joke. I fired the required 36 rounds w/in a minute, then had to stand there while the other 11 shooters had to aim every shot, some missing the 9" pie plates at 5 steps.

A SWAT trainer standing next to me had the Instructor get more ammo out of her bag so she could put enough holes in the targets to qualify. Since I was to her right, I spent ten minutes catching, swatting, dodging expelled brass since I could not move from the firing line. SWAT Trainer? Really? So who is protecting US from the officers she's trained?

It is very worrisome to know that these unskilled, immature, untrained safety hazards are patrolling our streets and taught to approach every situation with the idea that they have superior authority in any situation they walk into (create), and that ANY disagreement is a reason to escalate to whatever overwhelming force is necessary.

Oooops. Sorry for the rant. But truth is truth.

GUNSMOAK