After more than a century carrying handguns with a ridiculously heavy trigger, the NYPD will be revising it's trigger pull specification from 12 pounds to 5 pounds pull, though only for it's new recruits.


NYPD will issue easier-to-shoot guns to new recruits - New York Daily News

Stupid. The vast vast vast majority of NYC cops will never fire their weapon. Less than 1/10 of 1% a year. There will be a lawsuit for every shooting with one of these guns from now on, and NYC never goes to court, they always settle, so the lawsuits will just keep coming. Even if it’s a 100% cut and dried righteous shooting, they’ll sue since they’ll claim the cop fired more than he needed to. The scores in the article even support it. Going from an 89% to a 94% when passing is 70%, and shooting at paper means nothing in a real shooting. And absolutely no evidence will ever support the reason for missing or more shots fired is because of a heavier trigger. You don’t know if you’re missing in a real gunfight and handgun rounds aren’t instant man dropping events.

For what it’s worth I scored expert every time I qualified, and never felt burdened by the 12 pound trigger.

Five pounds is a ridiculously low trigger pull for a duty or off-duty handgun. They will have problems.

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Ret. LE, FA Instr, S&W Armorer

Yep. Who knows how many negligent discharges were prevented by the heavier trigger. Look up the Peter Liang shooting. Rookie cop doing a vertical patrol in a housing project stairwell. Had his gun out (as I did many times in that very project). Killed a guy y letting a shot go when he was startled by a door opening. Stated the gun went off accidentally. At his trial, the jury was able to handle his Glock and pull the trigger. They stated there was no way the gun went off without a deliberate pull. No reason at all for a duty weapon to have that light a pull. They could have compromised and went to an 8 or 9 pound trigger if they really felt the need.

When we went to the 9MM, the anti-cop people went nuts, so the mayor compromised with 10 round mags. Next mayor immediately rectified that and went to 15 round mags. We were supposed to qualify 4 times a year. Within three months it was 3 times, and within another 3 months it was the same twice a year we did with the revolver. They skimp on training as much as they can. We went from a 15 round mag of the simunition paintball ammo for one training cycle. Used to be called InTac, for In Service Tactical training. Within 3 months it was 5 rounds. Three months later it was 3 rounds, and the new scenarios had fewer and fewer times shooting was even necessary. The actors would give up at the first command or drop their gun altogether when the cops walked up.

PSA2 or 75?

Some of you LEO's educate me...don't Glocks come standard with a 5.5-6# trigger pull? Are law enforcement pistols set higher?

The NYPD has been issuing semi automatics since August 1993 which is a lot less than a century. As we know there is a bit of a difference between a revolvers trigger pull and Glocks “Safe action”.

The departments service revolver DA/DAO Trigger pull spec was a minimum of 10lbs.

The NYC Transit Police started issuing Glocks in 1991 with the 8lb Olive NY1 trigger.

On my first trip to Rodman’s Neck after the hostile takeover in 1995 my NY1 trigger was replaced with the Orange NY2.

I like KBM6893 also never felt burdened by the 12lb trigger but always felt the NY1 was the better compromise of the two.

The NYPD only started issuing Gen 4 Glocks over the last 3 years when the G17 became authorized with the NY1/2 triggers still being a compatible drop in part.

Keep in mind the NYPD purchases all service weapons direct from the manufacturer and Glock has said they are ending production of Gen 4 weapons and that the NY1/2 triggers are not compatible with Gen 5 Glocks.

77 and 75. Housing never available (not their fault. They were spread thin) so I spent a good portion of my tours in the projects. We had a Lieutenant who was fanatical about doing vertical patrols. I never even knew the radio code 75 Vertical until he showed up. We would take the elevator to the top, clear the roof, and then split up and go down one stairwell each and meet at the bottom, shining out lights and raising the volume up of the radios so anybody who might be there would clear out before we even got close. A PSA 2 cop named Neri shot a kid on the roof when he busted through the door on the roof. Neri was a good cop and it could have happened to any of us. Those projects were crazy in the early 90’s. Can’t imagine what they were like in the 60’s-80’s.

Some do, some don’t.

By the way, when the LASD went from Beretta 92’s to M&P’s with 5.5 pound triggers, they had a 500% increase in ND’s, and those are only the ones that get reported. Many don’t. If nobody is bleeding and there are no civilian witnesses, it didn’t happen. I know I’ve covered for a few locker room mishaps.

I agree, a 5 pound trigger is asking for trouble. NYPD would be far better off with 8 pound triggers.

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VCDL, GOA, NRA

My Glock model 36's trigger pull started out at around 6.0 pounds. To make it feel more like the model 19 I had used for years, I had one of the Glock armorers install one of the heavy New York trigger springs, which brought the pull up to around 11 pounds. Freaked everyone out, including the firearms training administrator. Didn't affect my scores at all.

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Ret. LE, FA Instr, S&W Armorer

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

For every NYPD guy there are ten other LEO's Glock/Smith or other plastic striker fired gun with a 5 pound trigger and you don't hear about a wave of negligent discharges.

Just because you never knew any different doesn't necessarily make it right.

This is mostly a training problem Most of the people NYPD (and a lot of other places) hire have no exposure to firearms before starting there other than TV. When I started, there were a few agencies at which being serious about firearms meant never getting hired; now that seems to be the majority.

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NHI, 10-8.

If you need a 10+lb trigger to prevent NDs, you're doing it wrong.

Any and everything NYPD does is politically charged . I'll throw out two equally true thoughts that could seem contradictory :

The majority of non NYPD agencies that use striker fired pistols as a class , use the respective " standard " trigger set ups , with nominal 5.5 to 7 lb triggers , and for most of them it's not an issue .


12 lb triggers aren't particularly onerous . For close to 100 years DA Revolvers were the norm , with +/- 12lb DA triggers .


* For Me * , with a background in Revolvers , I prefer the NY-1 over the Standard .

Comparing big city agencies to smaller ones doesn't really make sense. It's not like NYPD cops are having ND's every day. With 35,000 cops, there are going to be more.

Either way, the trigger pull is irrelevant. It's mostly training, and the NYPD training, like probably most police departments, is pretty basic. I said mostly training because a lighter trigger pull is going to have a higher likelihood of being a factor in an ND. In a perfect world, nobody would ever make a mistake, but we don't live in a perfect world, and a lighter trigger increases the likelihood of an ND. Ask the LASD when they switched from Beretta 92's to M&P's. 500% increase in ND's.

My New Orleans PD kid was issued a Glock 17 with the standard 5.5 pound trigger.

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Rule of law, not a man.

5lbs is fine. Caried that my entire career.

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GOA FL Dir. & Nat. Spokesman

Over the last 20 years or so the NYPD's trigger pull was regulated to 12.5-13 pounds. After shooting several of my friends duty guns they are ridiculously heavy and very hard for the average Office to manage and master.

As I understand it, they did just go back to the standard Glock pull weight which is usually 5.5 -6 pounds.

The REAL ISSUE with the NYPD is their lack of training! Not only do they get a rush through course on shooting and firearms (IMHO) but the average Officer there does not discipline themselves to practice enough. It's not just my opinion, it's fairly obvious if you look at the shooting history they have had over 30 years. Pathetic!

Training & constant practice is the key to preventing accidents - not making trigger pull weights ridiculously heavy. Kind of like making an accelerator pedal in a car very hard to push to reduce speeding.

There's the truth! It does take training and then practice to be proficient and safe with any firearm.

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VCDL, GOA, NRA

Just a footnote, Glock is ending production of Gen 4s that will have a Gen 5 variant, not total production of Gen 4s across the board.

If you keep your finger off of the trigger until you're ready to shoot, you won't have any ADs.

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John 3:16
WAR EAGLE!

Gen 4 for civilian sales and so far only in. 40 S&W and 9mm models. There is no Gen 5 G21 or G20 for example. Same with the G31 or G33.

The Gen 4s are still available for LE sales due to contracts. The UK MoD for example adopted the Gen 4 G17 as their duty pistol recently. Same with a number of agencies across the globe. Hell, my last agency recently adopted the Gen 4 to replace out aging Gen 3s that we've had since the late 90s.

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GOA FL Dir. & Nat. Spokesman

Training sucks... but the trigger pull stems from when the NYPD and agencies across the country were ditching wheel guns.

The NYPD 1 trigger pull is to replicate the DA Wheel Gun trigger pull of a Model 64 from S&W. The first and second generation Sigmas had the same trigger pull. As did the FN Forty-Nine and of course all the DAO automatics like the SIG P226 DAO, Beretta 92D, S&W 5946, Ruger P89DAO, and even one of their variants of the HK USP prior to the LEM trigger being invented.

The fact that the NYPD kept such a need on the books this long is a sign of institutional inertia and non-gun folks running things.

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GOA FL Dir. & Nat. Spokesman

I was a Glock armorer back in the day. The standard Glock trigger is used by most Departments. The NYPD trigger was, we were told, was developed for NYPD as a retrofit assembly that slightly complicated the action. I fitted a few in training, think they were orange in color. I’m not a Glock fanboy but the standard trigger is easier to shoot well.