Chicago Police Using Military Style Semi-Auto M4 Rifles

Chicago Police Using Military Style Rifles

The Chicago Police Department continues to move forward with
a plan to equip rank-and-file officers with rifles that were
originally designed for military use. Chicago, like other
big cities and some smaller towns, has made such weapons
available to tactical officers. Now they'd go to cops on the
beat. Superintendent Jody Weis says around 500 officers have
gone through the training that allows them to use the semi-
automatic gun on duty. One group of young people has
continually opposed giving Chicago cops the increased
firepower, but they've not had much luck changing Weis'
mind. WBEZ's Robert Wildeboer reports on the stalemate and
the powerful weapon that's behind it.

Since the end of last year a group of kids has been going to
monthly meetings held at Chicago Police Headquarters. They
showed up again last week, about 30 kids in all.

CARNEY: I'm gonna call the meeting to order, Good evening
I'm Demetrius Carney, president of the police board. We have
a number of students here from the Southwest community youth
collaborative. I'll call each one of them first. Christopher
Hightower.

The young people put their questions about the semi-
automatic M-4 rifle to Superintendent Weis. The department
has purchased 375 of the guns but Weis is also allowing all
rank and file officers to buy and carry the weapon while on
duty, provided they pass a 40 hour training session.

The students think that's a bad idea and they try to grill
Weis on it but they're are not terribly articulate and they
struggle with the two minute time limit on public comments,
and the board, which sits through unintelligible tirades
every month rigorously enforces the time limit.

ambi: That is beyond what... Time is up.

The discussion over the guns never really gets anywhere. It
devolves into the students ranting against the police
department while board members sits passively watching the
clock. It's another month in an ongoing stalemate. As the
meeting ends I catch up with the Superintendent.

WEIS: Almost everyday we're taking an assault weapon off the
street.

Weis defends making the M-4 rifle available to all officers
because he says they need weapons that can compete with the
increased firepower of gang members. He says an officer
armed with a handgun doesn't stand a chance against someone
with an assault rifle.

WEIS: If the offender has an assault rifle, you know, he can
just sit there and pick officers off left and right. And you
can say, well how often does that happen? The fact that were
taking almost an assault rifle a day off the streets of
Chicago, I think the propensity for that happening to our
officers could happen on any given day of the week, any hour
of the day.

Weis has been making that argument to the kids but they're
not buying it, and they're not the only ones. Police
watchdog groups worry the widespread use of the M-4 rifle is
one more symbol of the department looking like an occupying
military force rather than a partner in community safety.

And there are more measurable concerns. Opponents are
worried that these guns are just plain dangerous, no matter
who's got them, especially in crowded urban neighborhoods.
They're worried that the bullets from M-4s can travel up to
two miles, and penetrate walls and even cars. To get some
answers about exactly what this gun is and isn't, I turned
to someone who knows a whole lot about guns, John Nixon.

NIXON: I went to the Royal Military College of Science in
England and studied weaponry there, weaponry design, the
science of ballistics etcetera.

Nixon, an engineer and scientist, used to do reverse
engineering for the British Military. That means he'd take
foreign weapons and study them and figure out how they were
made and what their weaknesses are and how they could be
beaten. Now he often works on shooting cases and offers
expert testimony. We talk in a garage behind his house in
rural Indiana. Sitting between us on '60s era metal desks
are two M-4 rifles that he shows off.

NIXON: So we have this 30-round magazine here and that fits
into the magazine well.

It's an intimidating looking rifle, something you'd see in
an episode of 24, or a Bruce Willis action movie. And you
can attach lots of stuff to the barrel like a bi-pod to
steady it, and a flashlight, and a scope.

NIXON: You just flip the lens covers down and when you look
through here you see a red dot. You put the red dot on what
you want to hit and just pull the trigger.

That scope, the longer barrel, the fact that you hold the M-
4 rifle with two hands, Nixon says all of that leads to one
thing: greatly increased accuracy.

NIXON: Despite what you see in the movies, shooting with a
handgun it's extremely difficult to hit anything and I've
worked on cases where people have shot at each other across
the hood of a car and they've emptied a pistol magazine and
not hit each other.

To prove the point Nixon grabs a handgun and an M-4 and
leads me outside. We set up a target and he hands me a SIG
226, a 9 mm handgun. He tells me to fire 10 shots at a piece
of regular office paper about 20 feet away.

ambi: Shots fired

NIXON: You can see there that out of your ten shots, you
managed to get seven on the paper which is pretty good for a
novice. They're spread all over the paper and the other
three shots are off the paper. And this is only seven yards
with a stationery target, stationery shooter and good
daylight so if you're in a house where it's dark in there,
or a back alley that's dark, the perpetrator's moving and
you're moving, there's a lot happening, you're in distress,
they're shooting back at you, your chances of hitting that
paper drop quite dramatically.

We then do the same exercise with the M-4 rifle.

ambi: Shots fired

With the handgun, the bullet holes were all over the sheet.
With the rifle they're all within a couple inches of each
other. Nixon says the increased accuracy will mean fewer
stray bullets to hit unintended targets. That's weapons-
speak for innocent bystanders. But if there is a stray
bullet?

NIXON: This particular military round of ammunition was
designed to go through both sides of a military helmet at
600 meters, but in reality the bullet may well go a couple
of miles.

With the potential to travel that kind of distance it's very
likely, in the city of Chicago, the bullet would hit
something. And Nixon says the ammunition from and M-4 has
the added danger of being designed to penetrate walls, and
even cars. But the real danger, and this may seem obvious,
the real danger is for those who are in shoot outs with
police armed with M-4 rifles.

NIXON: With a handgun you're...lethal area.

Every year, 40 to 50 people are shot by police. Typically
about one third of them die from their wounds. But if John
Nixon's predictions are correct, that number will go up as
more and more cops use the accurate and powerful M-4 rifle.

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=33037

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