Portland Police Get Big Guns Mayor Approves Addition Of Semiautomatic Rifles
Mayor Vera Katz has approved a police report recommending that officers be armed with semiautomatic assault rifles.
Her approval came after a police officer was killed by semiautomatic rifle fire during a Jan. 27 marijuana raid. A meeting on the final report had been scheduled just minutes before the shooting.
Special tactical units such as SWAT teams have used semiautomatic weapons for years. Police departments only recently have been shifting to arming patrol officers and others, such as drug units, with the high-powered rifles.
The Portland Police Bureau declined comment and declined a Public Records Act request to see the report, citing safety reasons.
Chief Charles Moose would confirm only that the study recommends the city spend $310,000 during two years to buy 166 Colt AR15s, a semiautomatic rifle with a shortened barrel, also called a carbine.
The cost also includes .223-caliber ammunition. The new rifles would replace the 12-gauge shotguns street officers now have mounted in their patrol cars and would be in addition to the Glock 9mm handguns most Portland officers carry.
The bureau has been discussing alternatives to the shotguns for years, said Lt. Dave Benson of the bureau’s training division.
Portland police began to study new weapons in August, six months after a highly publicized shootout between Los Angeles police and two heavily armed bank robbers.
Firearms experts say semiautomatic rifles are highly accurate, easier to use and safer than shotguns and can be fired from a much safer distance. A handgun is reliable up to only about 25 yards. In contrast, an AR-15 rifle can hit a dinner plate five blocks away.
Officers have long had to face semiautomatic rifle fire, especially from gang members, police say.
A 1995 U.S. Department of Justice report shows that semiautomatic rifles are most popular with juvenile offenders. Some state surveys of juvenile inmates indicated that 20 percent to 35 percent of them had owned semiautomatic rifles.
“They penetrate the front facade of a house. They go through cars, go through vests,” said Detective Stu Winn, a gang officer in Portland’s Northeast Precinct.
Critics fear the trend of police officers with high-powered rifles could encourage an arms race with criminals. They also worry that stray bullets could hit innocent bystanders.
One gun-control advocacy group, the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., likens the firepower difference between a handgun and the AR-15 to “the difference between a Stinger missile and a nuclear weapon.”
Even some police departments are wary of the powerful M-16 and AR-15 rifles shooting .223-caliber ammunition.
“No way am I putting them in those guys’ hands,” said Sgt. Robert Rambo, in charge of firearms for the Miami Police Department.
Miami recently approved the optional use of semiautomatic rifles that fire less powerful 9mm and .45-caliber bullets used in handguns. The officers must buy the rifles themselves, but only about 50 of 1,050 officers have done so.
“You have to weigh citizens’ safety, especially in an urban city like Miami,” Rambo said, adding that police shootings such as Portland’s happen “once in a blue moon.”
“Do you want to have police officers out there with these types of rifles, and then they start blasting, and the bad guys start blasting?”
Tom Potter, former Portland police chief, said he struggles between wanting police fully protected and not wanting unnecessary weapons.
“I’m kind of torn,” Potter said. “I don’t want officers to think that (rifle) somehow’s going to be their salvation. I don’t want that kind of siege mentality in the police department.”
xxxx NEW WEAPONS The Portland police report recommends the city spend $310,000 to buy 166 Colt AR-15s, a semiautomatic rifle with a shortened barrel. The cost also includes .223-caliber ammunition. The new rifles would be in addition to the Glock 9mm handguns most Portland officers carry.