The December massacre of 20 students and six staff members at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school led the chief of the Metro Nashville Police Department to decide patrol officers could start bringing their own AR-15 rifles to work.
It's the same type of high-powered weapon used by the shooter in Newtown, and at some other mass murders. The chief said he wanted to ensure that officers were adequately armed to confront criminals who use high-powered weapons.
Nashville is joining a trend that saw the Shelby County Sheriff's Office allow patrol deputies to carry the rifles in 2003 and the Memphis Police Department to begin arming officers on patrol with them in 2006.
In West Memphis, Ark., after two police officers were killed -- outgunned by a 16-year-old armed with an AK-47 assault-type rifle in May 2010 -- the department purchased 32 Bushmaster AR-15s, the same brand of rifle the Memphis department issues. West Memphis officers also can bring their own rifles to work, said Police Chief Donald Oakes.
"I fully believe that every police department should have them," Oakes said Wednesday.
Metro Nashville Chief Steve Anderson pointed to shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., last July and at a restaurant in Carson City, Nev., in September 2011 as examples of mass murders committed with assault-style rifles.
The issue of adequate arms is not a new one for law enforcement.
Use of Thompson submachine guns by Prohibition-era gangsters caused some law enforcement agencies to adopt the Tommy guns, according to a 2007 paper on patrol rifles issued by an International Association of Chiefs of Police policy center.
The potency of officers' handguns and shotguns were issues again when a gunman used several rifles in 1966 to kill 15 people at the University of Texas, and in 1997 with a televised shootout in North Hollywood, Calif., between police and two bank robbers with fully automatic weapons and body armor.
Civilian versions of AR-15 rifles, downsized from the military's Colt M16, are semi-automatic; the trigger must be pulled for each bullet fired. Fully automatic weapons can spray bullets until the trigger is released. Oakes said police have no need for automatic weapons and use the semi-automatic versions for patrol.
The trend to equip patrol officers with the rifles, and not just special police units such as SWAT teams, also was fueled by a lesson learned from the 1999 massacre of a dozen students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado. There, regular officers followed protocol and waited for reinforcements to confront the gunmen.
In the West Memphis shootings of 2010, Joe Kane killed Sgt. Brandon Paudert and officer Bill Evans with an AK-47 during a traffic stop on Interstate 40. A state wildlife officer and two SWAT team members armed with rifles were present when police confronted Kane and his father, Jerry Kane, in a van outside a Walmart. If they hadn't been there, the Kanes could have escaped the parking lot and the gun battle in which the two were killed would have taken place inside the store, Oakes said.
"Absent those weapons being there, the Kanes would have fought us inside Walmart and it would have been a bloodbath," Oakes said.
That said, the West Memphis chief said no patrol officer has used an AR-15, yet.
"Ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine percent of the time you don't need it, but that one-tenth of 1 percent when you do, nothing else will do," Oakes said.
The Shelby County Sheriff's Office purchased patrol rifles after a bank robber using a rifle in a rural area struck twice, but the weapons are issued to the best handgun shooters who are then picked for strenuous rifle training, said Asst. Chief Larry Young.
"Not every one can carry one," Young said.
Nashville is requiring a three-day academy course for officers with the proper rifles. One-third of 1,400 officers on the force own them, officials said. At a cost of $800 to $1,200 each, the department has no plans for a mass purchase to equip its officers.
Copyright 2013 - The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
