A request for $570,000 to replace police department pistols and rifles brought different reactions from the public and city councillors Monday. Most of the speakers who commented on the proposal questioned the need for armed police and said the money would be better spent on social services, while most councillors questioned the extra expense – it was not budgeted – at a time city finances are tight.
The result: Councillors voted to table the request and refer it to their Finance Committee, at which they can find out more about why the department needs the replacements now and whether there are financial alternatives. Because the measure was tabled, it can return to the council next week. Two councillors – Public Safety Committee co-chair Paul Toner and mayor E. Denise Simmons – voted against the delay, with Toner saying he had received enough information at the Monday meeting.
Many speakers who opposed the gun funding request noted that the city wanted to spend money on weapons while it is closing its 58-bed homeless shelter at Spaulding Hospital in June because the federal funding for the facility has run out. “Funding new firearms for CPD while allowing a shelter to close is hypocritical and reflects very troubling priorities for the city’s budget,” said one speaker, Catherine Sylvester, referring to the Cambridge Police Department.
Councillor Ayesha Wilson, co-chair of the council’s Public Safety Committee, also recognized the jarring contrast. “We can’t afford to do family services and social services, but yet we’re equipping our police department with newer firearms,” she said.”I believe in our safety department, I believe in the work that you all do. I’m also understanding the optics and how this looks within our community.”
Police commissioner Christine Elow said replacing police guns is urgent because the company that makes the pistols, New Hampshire-based Sig Sauer, has discontinued manufacturing the model that Cambridge police use, a line that arrived to the department in 2018 and was ended in 2022, leading to a process to decide what came next – in a request in 2025. The department now has only 38 guns that aren’t assigned to an officer who needs one, she said.
“We have eight officers coming out of the academy, which brings us down to 30,” Elow said. And if something happens to a gun now in use, “we can’t get parts for the [model] that we have now, because, as I said, it is no longer being made.”
There are other reasons to replace the current firearms, said Elow and city manager Yi-An Huang. The order comes with new holsters that have technology to activate an officer’s body camera automatically if he or she pulls out the gun. Huang said in his request for the money that the new weapons will be “a more modern firearm” with “updated technology” to give officers “a broader field of vision and situational awareness, as well as supporting improved vision in low-light settings.”
Officers’ use of body-worn cameras begins next month. “We fought for a long time” for them, vice mayor Marc McGovern said. “You hear concerns about officers who don’t start their body cameras when they have to voluntarily … So having technology where the cameras automatically start when a gun is unholstered, it’s probably a good thing.”
Timing and training
Elow acknowledged that usually the department buys weapons as a capital budget expense. But the timing of adopting the city’s budget and the need to train every officer to use a new gun means that unless the city acts now to buy replacements and does it using “free cash” – essentially unappropriated money held as a sort of reserve – the department wouldn’t be able to use the guns until next year, Elow said.
Councillors still had questions. Councillor Cathie Zusy wondered why the department needs more than 330 guns when there are only 288 officers. She wasn’t satisfied with an explanation that there occasionally are “special sworn officers” who need firearms; no number was given.
McGovern remarked that this year’s budget for the police department is $81 million. “We’re spending all of that this year?” he asked. Manisha Tibrewal, the department’s director of planning, budget and personnel, said 94 percent of the budget goes to staffing. Assuming there are no changes in staffing, that would leave $4.8 million. Tibrewal didn’t say whether all of that will be spent.
Model canceled, or not
Another question, not pursued by councillors, arose from a member of the public, who said she had called Sig Sauer, which makes the guns now used by Cambridge police, and was told that the Sig Sauer “carry” model used by most officers, is still being made. According to police, the department has 330 carry models and 25 “subcompact” models. The speaker said she was told the subcompacts are no longer manufactured.
Email and phone messages left with the spokesperson for the New Hampshire-based company weren’t immediately answered. City spokesperson Jeremy Warnick said: “Officers have been issued the P320 Carry, which is no longer available. While there are other versions that may appear similar, those have several different features than what officers are equipped with.”
He declined to comment further “due to the ongoing litigation.”
Police lieutenant’s lawsuit
Now-retired Cambridge police Lt. Thomas Ahern sued the city and Sig Sauer in 2021 alleging that his pistol fired without his pulling the trigger in May 2019 while he was on a Swat team assignment in a van with other officers. His suit said the bullet grazed his leg, leaving a bruise and interfering with his walking. No one else was hurt.
Cambridge delayed buying the P320 Carry in 2018 until Sig Sauer modified the gun to deal with reports that it could fire when dropped, Warnick said in 2023.
The decision to replace the department’s Sig Sauer guns has nothing to do with the lawsuit, Warnick said Tuesday. “As commissioner Elow and Cambridge police staff indicated last night, the manufacturer has ceased production of the model currently used within the department,” he said in an email. “Existing inventory is limited, which will pose near-term challenges equipping new officers as well as officers in need of a new firearm. Replacing the handgun would ensure sufficient inventory and for department personnel to all be trained on the same firearm to ensure increased safety and interoperability.”
Allegations by Ahern
In the lawsuit, Ahern also said he was told he would not be eligible for promotion unless he admitted he broke department rules by firing the gun.
And Ahern said in the suit he had warned the department repeatedly before it bought the Sig Sauer guns in 2018 that the weapons were unsafe because they could fire without a trigger pull.
The city and Sig Sauer denied the allegations; Sig Sauer has said that safety mechanisms on the pistol make triggerless firing impossible, so if a user claims the gun fired unintentionally the user was at fault. There have been numerous suits filed against the gunmaker over alleged incidents when the gun fired without a trigger pull; Sig Sauer has won and lost suits. Some law enforcement agencies have stopped using firearms from the manufacturer.
Headed to trial
Sig Sauer upgraded the P320 in 2018 for some customers after reports that the gun would fire if dropped a certain way. It’s not known whether the changes that Cambridge got were different than those given to other customers – the company still offers “voluntary upgrades” to customers and has never recalled the model – or whether the discontinued model that Warnick and police referred to in explaining why the department needs new guns is one provided only to customers who got a modified design.
The incident involving Ahern occurred when department had the upgraded guns, and it happened when Ahern was holding his gun after withdrawing it from the holster, according to the suit.
The case has been scheduled for trial Nov. 3. Earlier, a federal court judge denied motions by the city and by Sig Sauer to decide the suit in their favor before trial.
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