Boren: Hundreds of thousands of reasons to stick with Smith & Wesson

Why is the Columbus Police Department sticking with Smith & Wesson instead of “buying local” and switching over to Heckler & Koch as it transitions from .45 caliber to 9 mm?

That question has been batted about in social media since the Ledger-Enquirer reported the plan to switch last week.

Police Chief Ricky Boren says he has hundreds of thousands of good reasons to stay with Smith & Wesson, because the company has agreed to take the existing .45s in a one-for-one trade and provide 9 mm models, at no cost to the department.

In addition to getting new pistols at no charge, there will also be no need to replace holsters and other leather accessories, because the 9mm and the .45 share the same “platform.”

Buying new pistols, whether it be from H&K or Glock or any other manufacturer would cost a minimum of about $300,000, and replacing all the leather could add another $100,000 to the tab, Boren said.

“This is a business. I run this as a business,” Boren said. “It’s my job to save the city, through the equipment we carry, as much money we can save them.”

The police department has been carrying Smith & Wesson pistols since 1991, when it switched from .357 magnum revolvers to the .45 caliber pistol. The department initially used an all-steel model, which was rugged but very heavy, Boren said.

They upgraded to a lighter polymer model in 2008, also at no cost to the taxpayers, Boren said. The polymer model also had the advantage of being able to adjust the size of the grip to fit the size and strength of the officers’ hands.

In that process, the city did consider three manufacturers: S&W, H&K and Glock, Boren said. The department put together a team of officers to test the pistols and evaluate them.

“We put them on the range and let them fire different courses,” Boren said. “The recommendation at the time was to go with the Smith & Wesson M&P (military and police) .45s.”

Once the recommendation was made to go with S&W, the department negotiated with the company and worked out a deal where the city got a one-for-one exchange for the new guns at no cost to the city. S&W also agreed to buy all of the leather needed for the switch-over, Boren said.

Glock agreed to a one-for-one swap, but would not provide the leather, which Boren said would cost more than $100,000 for the department. H&K would have been “a straight-out buy,” Boren said.

“I could not afford the guns at the time — to put that money out at the time — to buy the H&K weapons,” Boren said.

S&W also built into the weapon a safety feature that neither Glock nor H&K offered, Boren said. He declined to further describe the safety feature, citing officer safety.

The switch from the larger caliber .45s to 9mm makes it easier for female and smaller male officers to handle the recoil.

“We knew that the military as well as some federal agencies were going to the 9mm, as opposed to the .45s,” Boren said. “We did a test and evaluation of all the ammunition available and found that the 9 is just as effective as the .45 in the gelatin molds, in the testing that we did.”

Blocks of gelatin are used to gauge the depth of penetration different caliber bullets produce.

Another advantage of the smaller 9mm round is that an officer will have 16 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, as opposed to 10 in the magazine and one in the chamber with the .45s, Boren said. Each officer carries two additional magazines on his or her belt, giving each officer 32 spare 9mm rounds instead of 20 spare .45 rounds.

Again because the platform of the S&W 9mm and .45 is near identical, the extra training needed for the switch will be much less than if the department had opted for a different brand, Boren said.

Boren said he will take a proposal to Columbus Council soon to get approval to go through with the deal with S&W.

This story was originally published February 20, 2017 at 1:20 PM with the headline "Boren: Hundreds of thousands of reasons to stick with Smith & Wesson."