On one occasion I saw a State Trooper on the off ramp point his sidearm at a driver and make him get out and lie on the ground. I was driving by on the highway and it was still rather dramatic.

How often in a career will an LEO get the long gun out?

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Sliding scale, impossible to answer fairly. Some start out that way every shift, others don't have one in the car . . .

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Bank alarms, Possible robbery in progress, Man with a gun, Bad dog calls, etc. most any time where a firearm might be employed and there is reason to consider that a hand gun might not be sufficient. This is from an over the hill, old fashion cop.

All calls involving a weapon and some search warrants depending on the type of SW, history of suspects and type of structure we make entry on.

You ever watch "Alaskan State Troopers"??

I don't have a television

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I get mine out a couple times a year, max. I work a more rural area of a big city

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Mike C

We were one of the first departments to allow officers to purchase long guns and later the department issued Colt AR15 carbines to each officer. A few years later the department purchased Vang customized 14 inch Remington 870s for each vehicle.

I retired in 2005 but from the late 70s on I averaged deploying the long gun 2 to 3 times per month. It varied greatly due to various oil spills and busy summers. Gang bangers contacts usually required an officer covering with a long gun.

As an aside, do police still carry shotguns, or have AR-15s replaced them in most squad car?

I personally carried my privately owned 870 in the gun rack and a department AR-15 in the trunk of my patrol car. During the crack epidemic of the 80's we used to do what we called, "Ninja Runs" after the sun would go down. That was where we would let dispatch know by phone that we were out on foot in the projects in a stealth mode. Park the cars on the next block and sneak into the area on foot. Street corner, apartment complexes, abandoned homes etc would be active places and we would sneak in and take control of several subjects at a time. Got dope and guns very frequently and never got seriously hurt because of the element of surprise and also because I would have my Remington 870 in hand. So in that time period which went on for several years, my 870 came out almost daily. But long guns on patrol are basically more of a tactical weapon.

From my experience, yes, much of the time, but it varies from department to department. An AR gives the officer range and precision that a shotgun can't. My department got rid of their issue shotguns about 15 years ago with the exception of a few for the SWAT team for special purpose munitions. We used to issue a shotgun to everybody in patrol and to any plainclothes officer who wanted one. Now the department issues every new officer an M-4gery when they go to FTO after the academy. Most of our officers add an optic when they can afford to buy one.

Depends entirely on location and the local "society". I'm safe in saying at least once a week. Rifles are outpacing shotguns now at 9 to 1.

We carried both in all our rigs. Some critters require more than a 5.56 SP, and a one ounce lead slug will usually suffice for those occassions.

Every time I went outside the wire.

Each Patrol vehicle's inventory included a Mossberg Model 590-1 12 gauge with 14" barrel and ghost ring sights, speed feed stock, and a shell side saddle, 25 rounds #4 Buckshot, 25 rounds rifled slugs, Also 100 rounds .40 caliber Speer 180 grain JHP. As a shift supervisor I was issued a Colt M-16 .223 Rifle with 200 rounds 223 ammo. HOWEVER usually one of my young officers I would re-issue the Colt M-16 too. My shotgun I sighted in with slugs to POA at 25 yards.

At the time I was hired in 1981, each marked patrol car had a 12 ga. Remington 870 onboard, locked in a vertical rack attached to the dashboard on the front seat passengers side. They were mostly sporting guns that had been confiscated after being used in crime, duck guns mostly. The armorer cut them to 18 inches and added a bead front sight. They were loaded with 4 rounds of number 4 buckshot. We had not killed anybody with the Number 4s, a man standing 25 yards away was generally pretty safe especially if they had a good coat on.

A couple of years later I asked for permission to carry a rifle in the car when I was on duty and the sheriff said no. I took a police rifle class through POST taught by Chuck Taylor and Dennis Tueller. I was then certified by the state to carry and use a rifle but the department wouldn't allow it. After that, I began carrying my AR-15, keeping it wrapped up in a uniform coat and being discrete about it.

At the time, we were having trouble with fundamentalist polygamists living in several compounds in the county. A couple of the factions were trying to dominate all of the factions together under one leader, and they all regarded their faction's leader to be a prophet and would receive revelations from God telling the leader what to do. A guy named Ervil Lebaron and some of his followers managed to murder the head of a rival clan, a guy named Rulon Allred, killing him in his doctors office.

There was a lot of talk about a possible religious war breaking out, one group invading the compound of another and have a good, old fashion stabfest. I had two of the compounds in the area I was assigned to patrol and back-up was usually 10-20 minutes away.

I worked for two very good sergeants at the time, and the division commander was also a good man. One of the sergeants told me that if I got caught with an unauthorized weapon like a rifle, it would be my arse, because the sergeant didn't know anything about it. He said, just keep it out of sight. Which I did. I never needed to shoot anything with it.

A couple of years later, the Highway Patrol acquired 200 M-14's from a U.S. Army program and taught 3 day classes to instruct and qualify the troopers. POST opened the class to other officers from cities and counties when the classes had unfilled slots. I took the class with my FAL (actually the British equivalent to the M-14 called the L1A1 or the SLR.

A while later, we elected a new sheriff and organized an F.O.P. lodge. I was the first vice president and then the lodge secretary for number of years. As such I was on the lodge's executive board and we had a monthly meeting with the new sheriff, to gather concerns and ideas from the deputies, present them to the sheriff and take the feedback out to the troops. I requested that the department approve a patrol rifle for use. The sheriff told me to do some research into what other departments were doing and bring him a written proposal/suggested policy change. He made it clear that the department had no money to spend on rifles but could probably provide ammunition for training and qualification, and he didn't want any .30 caliber rifles due to much of our area being urban and suburban..

I investigated what local and regional departments were doing, obtained their written policies and wrote up one for our department. I suggested the apartment allow Colt and other mil-spec AR-15's and Ruger Mini-14's in .223, pointing out that probably a third of the department's deputies already had one. The proposal went to the Captains Board, where the department's armorer/firearms instructor got it narrowed down to just the Colts and then only the 9mm versions!

This greatly upset the troops. I think less than 10 (out of about 400 sworn) bought one and only about half of those took the mandatory carbine class. After about a year of complaints, the sheriff overruled the armorer/firearms instructor and authorized Colts in .223 as well. I took the class and now the AR-15 in my banjo case in the trunk was authorized.

After the North Hollywood bank robbery and shoot-out, the Sheriff wanted more deputies to have rifles. The solution came in the form of a U.S. military policy of loaning unused military equipment to local police departments. It was the same program by which the Highway Patrol got their M-14's. We got about 250 used M-16's from the Army's stockpile. The armorer and his minions converted them from selective fire to semiautomatic. A good friend and fellow shooting team member was assigned to the range staff as another minion and he picked one out for me that was practically new. I put it in my banjo case in the trunk and put my own AR-15 back in my gun safe.

The department eventually bought new shorty Colt AR-15's and began to issue one to every new deputy. As the department bought more, they began trading them out to get the Army guns back to the Army. They put key-locking gun racks in the cars, one mounted on the inside of the roof of the car or one in the trunk.

The Canyon Patrol guys have been issued .308 rifles in addition to their AR-15's as they often have to euthanize large moose and elk, struck by traffic.

I believe that probably 90% or more of the law enforcement agencies in my state either issue a rifle to each officer or allow them to provide their own.

I never fired mine except for training, qualification and plinking. We have had at least 4 or 5 incidents have had to use them.

A shoulder weapon, shotgun or rifle, can be a great thing, and then there are times it might become a hindrance.
If a situation changes to a physical encounter it can become problematic real fast.
Each situation is different and, evolves rapidly.

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LEX ET ORDO