NYPD equipping cops to fight rampaging gunmen
Recent mass shootings have prompted the nation's largest police department to accelerate a $7.5 million program to distribute heavy-duty body armor to uniformed patrol officers who might have to respond.
Some 20,000 helmets are set to be distributed by the end of the year. And the department's 3,000 patrol cars will begin carrying pairs of heavy-duty vests.
Here's a closer look at the arming of NYPD officers and some of its implications:
The tougher helmets are comparable to one depicted in a photo distributed by Orlando, Fla., police following the massacre at a gay nightclub in June. There was a large pockmark on it caused by the killer's gunfire — evidence, the department said, that the helmet probably saved a SWAT officer's life.
NYPD patrol officers are armed with 9 mm semi-automatic handguns with 15-round clips. By comparison, the NYPD's counterterrorism officers and others with the Emergency Service Unit — the NYPD's equivalent of SWAT officers — have semi-automatic assault weapons, typically M4 rifles, to go along with their sidearms.
The response comes amid concerns from civil libertarians and others that ordinary beat cops are becoming too militarized. But police officials see the measures as necessary to protect their officers and save lives in deadly encounters that unfold quickly and demand a swift response.
That position is open to debate. In a letter to the Daily News, a retired coordinator of the department's Tactical Training Unit, Daniel Modell, wrote that long guns would make sense in departments where officers patrol alone in cars in areas where the response time of SWAT units can be lengthy. But officers in New York, he said, usually work in pairs and can get armored support promptly.