Me too. Texas was a tight knit community. We all knew that could have been any one of us. Two of the three major drug highways in Texas ran through my patrol district…
When my uncle started, you were “that guy” if you were carrying an auto that wasn’t a 1911 (basically a Hi Power or early Smith auto) - if it was a 1911, you were some salty, grizzled 'Nam vet or something. -snip-
It’s good to remember what it was like in the 80’s and 90’s - I’m not trying to cheapen the deaths of officers killed by gunfire today, but if you compare it to the 80’s and 90’s, it’s like Pleasantville vs. The Wild West. Auto accidents, too.
Yes… There were two types of 1911 carriers back then. Remember the 1911 was originally designed for ball ammo. With that said… As LEOs were carrying HPs, the two types of officers were the group that bought series 70s and just carried them “as is”, and the group that went out and spent a months pay on a good gunsmith re-work… So, the ones that paid the original the gun price again to make the them run better did OK. Sadly, this was a small group. The majority just kept them as is, stock out of the box… So at qualification time, the stock ones were notorious for malfunctioning. Mainly stove piping. NOW add that back then, if you had a malfunction on the range, the process was to raise your hand so the instructor could come help you diagnose and clear it… Cant make that up. At least that changed with the incorporation of malfunction drills in a year or two later. With that said, by “modern” standards, the average 1911 was notoriously unreliable back then unless you had them smithed. At least 1/4 of the 1911 guys in my department would have a malfunction at the range every time we went… Then there was the group that did their own work and made them worse… I just wasn’t going to go that route.
With the firepower the crackheads in my A/O had, I wanted a reliable semi-auto with a lot of bullets available. Looking back, that P226 was the best decision I ever made.
Funny, in perspective, it WAS the wild west at least until the early 90’s. When I went on patrol in 1987, “most” officers still carried wheel guns and just had a pump shotgun in the car and carried a full sized Mag-Lite or Streamlight flashlight. Handheld radios and reliable body armor were a luxury still not mainstream. Most departments were still using non-trunking VHF radios with whip “CB style” antennas on their cars. Seeing a MDT (computer in car) was like witnessing a shuttle launch… It really wasn’t that much different than it was in the 50s, 60s and 70s… It was finally around 1990 or 91 when things really started taking off and morphing into where it is now. Sadly, it took the deaths of many officers to make officer training, safety and proper equipment a main priority.
You guys be careful out there.