Law Enforcement and shotguns

[Slater]

I was watching some old 1970's cop show re-runs and every police cruiser seemed to have a shotgun. Have patrol carbines totally replaced the shotgun in LE use or is there still a role for this weapon other than breaching?

[TomMcC]

I was watching some old 1970's cop show re-runs and every police cruiser seemed to have a shotgun. Have patrol carbines totally replaced the shotgun in LE use or is there still a role for this weapon other than breaching?

Here in Orange Co. Calif I still see many motorcycle cops with shotguns. Some have carbines. Don't know about the cruisers, I, generally don't ever approach them.

[BoringGuy45]

At my old PD, we had them in our cruisers alongside patrol rifles. The patrol rifles came out on numerous occasions, but I don't think we ever touched the shotguns.

[El Vaquero]

A few years ago the shotguns appeared to dip popularity wise. The patrol rifle was the new, cool kid. But lately, at least at my agency they’ve come back around. We have both in our cars. Vast majority of the officers deploy with the patrol rifle but some grab the shotgun.

[ZGXtreme]

Each officer in our small/medium sized agency is initially issued a pistol, SBR carbine, and a shotgun. Most have turned their shotguns in rather than maintain qualification and cleaning them.

Hoping, once production of bean bag rounds catch up, that we can convert most of them to less lethal use. I’d gladly take it back then!

[Tony617]

My BIL was a police officer in Sacramento and they all had shotgun most the years he was in the force. He only an AR within the last 5 or 6 years. They still had the shotguns but they only used non-lethal rounds which I believe was bean bags. He had to buy his own AR and magazines but he is LE so they can use 30 round magazines. He is now retired.

[ST911]

I was watching some old 1970's cop show re-runs and every police cruiser seemed to have a shotgun. Have patrol carbines totally replaced the shotgun in LE use or is there still a role for this weapon other than breaching?

Largely replaced by the carbines, where still found they're mostly less lethal. This can be very regional/local however.

Some armories have had the same shotgun ammo on the shelves for more than 10+ years.

[Averageman]

Until fairly recently many people called these "Riot Guns", think about that for a minute. To me the implication is that this gun is used to quell riots.
Although to my knowledge "Duck Bills" were never used by Law Enforcement, they were used in Vietnam and the purpose was to spread the shot horizontally 3 x for every inch vertically.
I think shotguns are pretty much relegated to the history books, I think semi auto shotguns, with the "Duck Bill" could be very useful when taking on a riot.

If we ever get the fortitude to actually fire on them...

[diving dave]

My old agency still uses 870's as primaries in the cruisers, loaded with low recoil slugs. Some Officers do have AR's but its not the norm. This is in Northern Cali

[Circle_10]

At my place of employment we ditched the 590 shotguns completely in favor of Colt 6920s last year. This is corporate security, not LE however. I don’t have a lot to do with that side of things as I do something different in the department but it was a good move my opinion. It was prompted by concerns over the department’s ability to effectively respond to an Active Shooter incident. What isn’t a great move in my opinion is choosing to run the Colts with just the Magpul MBUS sights that came with them as the only sighting system, and not having any lights on the guns. In conversation I kind of mentioned there’s some things they could do with the Colts to set them up a bit better. But I’m just some nerd, what do I know? But hey, that’s none of my business, it won’t be me going into a cubicle-filled office building where the active shooter has turned off all the lights.