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NJSP Sues Sig Sauer for $2.5 Million

3K views 34 replies 22 participants last post by  KiloBravo 
#1 · (Edited)
The New Jersey State Police has filed a $2.5 million lawsuit against Sig Sauer alleging the 3,000 guns it purchased from the company, the P229 Legacy, frequently jammed, making them "life-threatening" for troopers and virtually "inoperable."

"… the weapons failed to eject the spent shell casing from the barrel after being fired, causing the next cartridge to become jammed behind the casing, and resulting in an inability to continue firing the weapon."

See links.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/20...turer_over_jammed_guns.html#incart_most-read_

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3726840/NJ-State-Police-Sig-Sauer-lawsuit.pdf

NJSP has purchased Glock 19s to replace the Sigs.
 
#6 ·
We had 228s before we switched to Glock 10 years ago. They were @1988 vintage and we had very few issues in my field office (NJ). The issues I saw with jams had to do with lack of proper maintainence by the shooter (specifically, carbon buildup on the feed ramp). Occasionally, we would also see pins start to work themselves out of the frame on higher use guns.

I can't see proper cleaning being neglected by the NJSP, at least based on the Troopers I know. I guess it's possible that they received a batch with some manufacturing flaw.
 
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#7 · (Edited)
I remember talking with a former (East) state cop who was on his agency's equivalent to swat many years ago, back then the P229's were first available. He said they were decent service pistols, once the company was able to send them a couple hundred new trigger bars for the first shipment of guns. He said the first batch of guns decocked themselves instead of firing in DA, and the problem was eventually traced to improperly machined trigger bars. He said it took longer than expected for the company to get them replacement trigger bars, but otherwise the problem was eventually resolved and the subsequent weapon shipments were good to go.

I once discussed some problems with the rangemaster for a large agency (more than a thousand sworn), regarding some erratic accuracy issues being experienced with another company's .40 service weapon. (No name, but it's owned offshore.) He said the gun company blamed the ammo company, and the ammo company said there was nothing found wrong with the ammo, but the guns were still experiencing wildly erratic accuracy. The rangemaster believed his armorers had traced the problem to something about barrel manufacture, as the "problem" followed specific barrels when moved among different frames/slides. He also said the gun company's engineers stopped returning his calls. The agency got rid of the problematic guns and changed to P229's (and were satisfied with them for at least the few years I kept in touch).

I've heard of other large and small agencies reporting "problems" with one or another of the gun companies, and changing makes/models ... and then other agencies going the opposite direction, claiming problems of their own with brands other agencies saw as the "solution" to their "problems". Go figure.

Sometimes "parts is parts" duty pistols may experience a problem with one or more of the parts (and assemblies) used in the guns. Sometimes it may be able to be solved at the filed armorer level, and sometimes it may require the gun company's field armorers ... and sometimes it may require replacement of the guns, or even going to another company's guns. The world spins round ...

BTW, I remember the NJSP "issue" with the SW99NJ (that was the specific model name S&W made for the state agency, due to a modification demanded by the agency, over the objection of the engineers).

One of my SW99 armorer manuals is from that time, and lists the SW99NJ variant in the manual. I remember being told by the armorer instructor of that time that S&W had sent the SW99NJ's reported to be problematic to H.P. White Laboratory, for outside testing, along with some ten's of thousands of typical duty loads. We were told that the lab was not only unable to duplicate or observe any feeding/functioning issues, but the observed “Mean Rounds Between Failure” (MRBF) was considered excellent. Subsequent factory in-house testing also revealed an outstanding MRBF for the model. The company took back the SW99NJ's, though. There was some mention of some possible political and union concerns. The world spins round ...
 
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#8 · (Edited by Moderator)
Quoted post removed
Thanks for contributing *nothing* to this thread.

I have first hand knowledge of two NJSP OIS where they worked fine. Sample of two, but whatever.

In 1985 (I was 13), there was a NJSP OIS where a P7M8 malfunctioned. The unfortunate outcome of that incident wouldn't have changed, but it played a factor in my dad (chief of the town where this happened, my hometown and my first department) in delaying going to the P226 from the S&W model 66 for a few years after that...
 
#9 ·
I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt, and believe that in a political rant kind've way, he was saying if you give non-gun people guns stuff will happen.

Guns that are in LEO holsters 24/7/365 don't live an easy life. Failing to maintain those guns will effect reliability.

The same people that have issues cleaning and oiling their guns. are the same people that will have an expectation that a gun should be 100% reliable. Probably the same people that can't/won't clear failure to extract, feed, go into battery, stove pipe etc.

I get so tired of putting the "dummy round" in the handgun and rifle during range exercises. But I also see some co-workers getting dominated by those dummy rounds.
 
#10 ·
I agree 100%. I've been with this (my 2nd) agency since 1998. I'm on my 4th Glock 23 (we issue 22's, a handful of 23's for a select few, and even few 35's). They live a hard life.

My last agency issued P226's, which were by that time 10+years old, then P229's, and finally, they now have Glock 22's.

NJSP is a squared-away agency, but they're still cops. Cops can destroy a bowling ball in a carpeted room with no tools in minutes and complain what a POS it is.
 
#11 ·
... but they're still cops. Cops can destroy a bowling ball in a carpeted room with no tools in minutes and complain what a POS it is.
I like. I'm going to borrow it. :)

The other old saying I've heard repeated in armorer classes is that if you give a cop a pair of large steel ball bearings, in 5 minutes one will be broken and the other one will have gone missing.

Funny how most of the experienced armorers in the rooms always start nodding their heads. ;)
 
#18 ·
I was less than thrilled to see the new style extractor. Take a proven design and then take a critical component and change it to speed and reduce production costs. Hard to get behind that on our end.

Experience with our 125 pistols with the new extractor have shown it to be a non issue.
 
#22 ·
Interesting that they went with the G19 instead of the G17 or G34. I am guessing one choice for uniform and in plain clothes.
 
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#23 ·
Yikes.

NJSP is a pretty squared away agency , so I am sure they had their ducks in a row before filing suit.... I hope Sig makes this right......

4949Shooter, you have any inside scoop?
Sorry Brother, like WT stated, I can't talk about it.

What I can say is that we are extremely happy with our Gen 4 G19's. They digest all the ammo we had been using previously without any issue whatsoever.
 
#28 · (Edited)
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2017/05/foghorn/sig-sauer-nj-state-police-blame-cheap-ammo-not-us/
Last week we reported that the NJ State Police are suing SIG SAUER because, according to the NJSP, the P229 handguns that SIG SAUER sold them were jam-o-matics. SIG SAUER has since responded and, according to their diagnosis, the problem here is exactly what we expected: NJ is too cheap to buy their troopers decent range ammo.

According to the lawsuit filed by the NJSP, SIG SAUER’s P229 handguns would fail to extract spent cartridges. After sending replacement extractors, extractor parts, and even barrels, the problem persisted. The NJSP then demanded that SIG SAUER provide the older P229 with a less robust extraction system, And those (predictably) failed as well.

We know that SIG SAUER function checks every firearm before it ships. And there is a conspicuous lack of widespread reports in the gun community of the P229 being an unreliable firearm (no matter what gunsmiths and armorers at The Trace would have you believe).

So it looked to us like the ammunition might be the root cause of this problem. Sufficiently crappy budget-priced ammo can cause these exact malfunctions no matter how well your handgun is designed. SIG SAUER, it seems, agrees.

[SNIP

Sig Sauer’s investigation of the failure mode indicates a contributing factor may be a compatibility issue between this unique NJSP P229 and the specific training ammunition used by the NJSP. Importantly, these failures were limited to the training ammunition used by the NJSP, and the P229s functioned when using their duty ammunition.

What’s important to note here is that, according to SIG SAUER, the firearms functioned perfectly with the New Jersey officers’ duty ammunition. It was only the range training ammunition where the problems occurred. You’d think that would have been enough for the brass in the Garden State to diagnose the problem before making this a federal case. [SNIP]
What does NJSP use for duty / training ammunition?

I carried the P229 DAK for six years. We used Federal XM40HC for both duty and training ammo.
I never had an issue with failure to extract/eject a round. In fact I never had a malfunction that I didn't intentionally set up in training (double feed, etc).

Rezdawg, I think you'll be OK.
 
#29 · (Edited)
Paragraph 17 of the complaint noted above says ...

"17. The P229 Legacies exhibited FTE malfunctions, both when NJSP practice ammunition and when NJSP duty ammunition was used."

Purchase orders indicate that they use Speer Gold Dot 124 gr. JHP standard pressure ammo for duty use.

I haven't been able to find out what specific practice ammo they use. However, the state also purchases CCI, Federal, Hornady, Remington and Winchester ammo.
 
#35 ·
We had reported issues with our issued 4th Gen G21s a couple of years ago. My large agency went the other direction. After about 10 years of carrying a G37/G21, they dumped Glock and went to the Sig P227 which I now carry. And for what it is worth, I think most of the reported issues with the G21 was blown out of proportion. I had many more rounds through mine than the average Trooper as both a Firearms Instructor and avid shooter. Mine never missed a beat. I have grown quite fond of my P227 however.

My agency issues 230 grain Gold Dots for duty and 230 grain Speer Lawman for training.

I hope the NJSP is happy with the new G19s.
 
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