If faced with an “active shooter” like Adam Lanza, New Haven cops will soon be able to reach into the trunk of their patrol cars and pull out a gun bigger than the Glock on their hip — the Colt Law Enforcement AR-15 M4 semi-automatic carbine.
Specially trained cops will soon carry the long-awaited patrol rifles in their cruisers, now that the required equipment and policies are finally in place.
Police Chief Dean Esserman shared that information at a meeting of the Board of Aldermen’s Public Safety Committee Tuesday night in City Hall. Cops will start carrying the rifles sometime in the next 30 to 60 days, Esserman said.
Thomas MacMIllan Photo
The occasion for his remarks was a review of the police department’s community policing efforts in 2012. After aldermen peppered Chief Esserman with questions about walking beats and recruitment, committee chair Brian Wingate (pictured) Beaver Hills asked about readiness for shootings like Lanza’s massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown last month.
Wingate asked about the rifles that the city purchased several years ago.
In 2008, then-Police Chief James Lewis determined the department was under-armed. He ordered Colt M4s for officers on patrol to carry in their cars. Three years later, they had been purchased but not deployed, under then-police Chief Frank Limon.
Current Chief Esserman told aldermen Tuesday night that while the rifles were on hand for some time, the necessary rules and equipment to accommodate them had not been updated. They now are. “You’ve got to finish it. I finished it.”
Esserman (pictured) said the policies and procedures needed to be rewritten to address the use of the new rifles. Specifically, Order No. 300 had to be revised to cover situations in which police should not go through the normal escalating levels of force, but jump right to addressing that fact that a man is actively killing people.
“Order No. 300 did not take into account an active shooter,” Esserman said.
“The language that changes is from a force continuum to a threat matrix,” said police spokesman Officer Dave Hartman. The force continuum starts with the simple presence of a police officer at the first level. That’s followed by a verbal command, then use of various “force tools” available to cops: handcuffs, pepper spray, baton, taser, gun, Hartman said.
“Nothing has really changed except the newer concept of an active shooter situation,” Hartman said. “You don’t have to start with the least amount of force and work your way up.”
The department also needed to obtain proper equipment to safely store the guns in patrol cars. Hartman said the police department does not want to report where the guns will be stored in the cruisers.
Several dozen police officers are trained to use the rifles, Esserman said. The rifles offer a couple of advantages over a regular police sidearm: greater firepower and better accuracy at a distance.
The police department currently has two rifles in patrol cars each shift. Now that the rules and equipment are in place, more cruisers will have the guns within two months.
“I think it’s the right thing to do, to be prepared,” Wingate said.