This is a somewhat sad article about a police officer putting down a cat.

I do not want any comment about what the officer should or should not have done.

Police officer shoots cat | WWOR

What's interesting to me is that the office is reported as using his "Department issued .38 service revolver"

Are there still many departments issuing .38 revolvers?

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Population 2,846 I suspect the issue pistol is one they bought in 1960 and are still giving it to officers.

Yea, I know the interesting part is whether or not he's issued a .38. Probably some opining on the part of the writer when they didn't know what they don't know.

As for the rest of the story, OMG! people in this country are really amazingly stupid. "Newhart and his attorney are considering attempting civil recourse"
Fer cryin outloud, nothing to see here, move along.

Nope
That was part of the Statement from the D.A.

"Officer Purcell made a decision to -- in his judgment -- humanely end the cat's life and suffering," announced Northampton DA John Morganelli, at a news conference. "Officer Purcell fired a single shot from his department-issued .38 caliber service revolver, instantly killing the cat."

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That doesn't mean anything around here. These are not towns that are spread apart from each other. It's not like driving on a w lane road for half hour to the next town. Here it's just borders. Otherwise you wouldn't know if you drove from one town to another. You cross an intersection and you're technically in a different town. Whitehall right across the steel from that town has 26k residents and Allentown has 119k residents and the metro area, which North Catasauqua is a part of has almost 1 million residents. Chances are they either allow revolvers, allow officers to purchase their own or its an older cop in a town with a small enough police force that doesn't require a change.

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Could be a backup gun. Or it could be an issued gun that he was allowed to keep or buy after the dept. switched to something else. Still technically "department-issued". Sounds like the quote was taken right out of the police report.

It was an attempt at humor. geez, no intention of disparaging any certain town.

Oh that's not how I ment it. It was ment to be more as informative. It's easy to see how a small town may still issue revolvers but the idea of a small town is quite different from it actually is

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Why were the police called for this?
Not sure, but injuries to back legs say the cat was run over. If people were so concerned, take it to a vet.

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This^.
What's the point of calling the cops? People seem to think 911 is just a catch all service. An injured domesticated animal? Call the police. A branch fell? Call the police. Flat tire? Police. Drywall needs redone? Police.

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I remember reading an article where a person called 911 because McDonalds messed up their order. (the person who called got the fine).

Heard about that.

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They probably got a good deal on barney's old Model 10 when Mayberry RFD went off the air.

Pretty much the only police revolvers still out there are J-frame backup guns. It's not uncommon to have some reporter throw in ".38 revolver" or some other such term simply as they couldn't tell a Glock from a bag of dog toys.

Funny you should bring this up now, just last night my local officers were involved in a shooting, and yep, the local paper reported this morning that the "officer pulled his service revolver" and subsequently shot the miscreant in the leg.
This particular department has not carried revolvers for a very long time, mid 80's at least, except as noted, in a backup capacity and that is getting quite rare as the force gets older.
I suspect it is just uninformed standard reporter verbiage in many cases.