St. Louis -- "The pistol in every St. Louis police officer's duty holster is a 9 mm Beretta 92F semiautomatic. It will dispense 16 slugs the diameter of a good-sized pen with as many pulls on the trigger.
Those bullets fly with the power to punch through eight sheets of drywall. But in today's tough crime environment, is it enough wallop to overpower an armed threat?
The St. Louis Police Officers Association is raising the question with a suggestion that the department switch to .40-caliber pistols, which experts say have more stopping power plus less tendency to pass through the target and on to unintended consequences.
It is a transition already made by many other large departments in the region, although city officers clearly find themselves most often under fire. That fire, some of them say, is increasingly heavy-caliber.
"We want to be able to compete with what's out on the street," said Sgt. Gary Wiegert, the association president. "Right now we can't. There's so much violence going on out on the street right now. ... How do you contain someone if you're outgunned?"
But Sgt. William Kiphart, who heads the department's firearms training, said the issue is not as simple as it might sound. He insisted police most often face criminals with common-caliber handguns, meaning officers are rarely outgunned.
Kiphart said the department will run exhaustive tests in about three years on what the next generation of weapons should be. "We're not closing our mind to anything," he said. "It's a big puzzle, and I objectively compare each piece."
The city has used 9 mm Berettas for about 16 years, with each weapon in use about 10 years.
The 9 mm versus .40-caliber debate is "like splitting hairs," Kiphart said. "It comes down to accuracy, reliability of the equipment ... and the skills of the person using the weapon."
He said the 9 mm Berettas have less recoil than .40-caliber weapons, and the smaller 9 mm projectile is more accurate.
The concept of stopping power is a myth -- "There is no such thing," he said. The issue is where an officer places shots and the degree they penetrate.
Officers "want a magic bullet," Kiphart said. "There is no magic bullet."
Wiegert's concern is about how many hits it takes to incapacitate an adversary. Police studies show that some people can withstand grievous injuries and keep firing.
David Klinger, a professor of criminology at University of Missouri-St. Louis and former police officer, said, "All else equal, most people want to have a bigger round."
Caliber is a decimal of an inch; a .40-caliber bullet is four-tenths of an inch in diameter, about one-ninth larger than a 9 mm. While the hole sizes are close, the energy delivered by the larger bullet is significantly greater. Specifications from one ammunition maker, Winchester, show a 27.5 percent difference (408 foot-pounds, a standard measurement of force, compared with 320).
Wiegert also expressed concern that city police issued 9 mm rifles, which use the same ammunition as the pistols, when shotguns were phased out of patrol cars about 3 1/2 years ago. He said that's not enough, either.
Kiphart said the Beretta CX4 Storm Carbines, equipped with holographic scopes, allow for a high level of accuracy from a long distance.
Many other area departments still carry 12-gauge shotguns, often the Remington Model 870 pump-action. Some, like Maryland Heights, Florissant and St. Peters, equip at least some cars with military-style rifles, which they say offer long-range punch with less chance of collateral damage than a shotgun.
In the city, police can call for the Hostage Response Team to get heavier firepower.
Long guns aside, police rely most heavily on their sidearms. For the Missouri Highway Patrol, Illinois State Police, St. Louis County police, Madison County Sheriff's Department, FBI and others, that means one brand or another of .40-caliber. Some, like University City and Creve Coeur, use 9 mm.
"It's going to depend a lot on who you talk to and what experience they have in the field," said Officer John Bozarth, armorer for the St. Louis County Police Department, which has used .40-calibers since 1991.
"With the .40-caliber, ... most officers feel more comfortable with their ability to stop an assailant because of the bigger caliber, the bigger bullet," Bozarth said.
But it doesn't end with that, he noted. He prefers the feel and accuracy of the Beretta to the widely used .40-caliber Glock, noting that a 9 mm shot that hits its target is more valuable than a .40-caliber that doesn't. The county uses Sig Sauer brand .40-caliber pistols.
In testing with standard ammunition two years ago, Bozarth found that the 9 mm round had more penetrating power in building materials; it got through eight sheets of drywall, while the .40-caliber did not.
Too much penetration is a concern in police work, with fears that a slug may pass through a criminal or a wall and hit bystanders.
"The 9 mm goes through a whole lot more things that you don't want it to go through than the .40," Bozarth said.
At Maryland Heights, Officer Kevin Stewart said that was a consideration in his department's recent switch from 9 mm. He explained, "The .40-caliber is going to knock them down but not go through and hit somebody else."
Officer Kephart is mostly correct, and also quite in error at the same time. Stopping-Power is the colloquial reference to how long it takes for a target to give it up, and from the time of round balls scooting out flintlocks there was a reason those in the know preferred larger munitions. If a 9mm is but 1/9th smaller than a .40, then, say a .32 is pretty close to 9, so why not drop down for even less recoil? And 9mm's are NOT more inherently accurate than .40's, but where he gets it right is in offering that there really is no magic bullet.
It is in the terminal ballistics where the larger rounds shine. Fully expanded .40's, or 10 mm's, can be close to an inch in diameter, where the 9mm rarely opens much past .7 of an inch. And there's a good reason the top sporting marksmen don't use Beretta's but that's for another time.
And with regards to testing "standard ammunition", without naming names such anecdotal evidence is less than useless. Terminal ballistics is almost an art form unto itself, and the bottom line invariable is defined by those who have used firearms to shoot and kill people, not poke little holes in targets. Departments like the 9 for one good reason and one only.
It's cheaper than any of the other service rounds. Also, LE can refer to "firepower" as the weight of the round, the platform, the caliber, the capacity, and cyclic rate of fire, so its no wonder they are so confused most of the time.
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