Many of you are aware that my step-son took his own life a month ago. He used a Taurus PT 1911 .45 that I had given him for his birthday a couple years back. I was reading through the police report last night and came across some disturbing questions that need a satisfactory answer. This bothers me that there is no explanation offered. Cocked and locked is the position where the slide is closed on a chambered round and the manual safety lever is pushed upward to engage a notch that prevents accidental discharge. Cocked and locked means that someone picked up the firearm and manually engaged the safety. Why didn't the investigating detective catch this? It is just about impossible to safe this weapon without picking it up. It can be done but it would require a clear index finger print atop the slide to hold the weapon in place, as the Taurus PT 1911 has an ambidextrous safety and the weight of the firearm resting atop would prevent simply pushing the lever up to engage the notch. I spent all night last night trying to do this with the mate to this weapon. It just cannot be done without picking up the firearm. Who picked it up and engaged the safety? Why wasn't this noted in the police report? Which side was the weapon lying on? The left side would indicate a right-handed person laid it down, opposite for a left-hander.
Cocked and locked indicates the safety was manually engaged, perhaps the officer used incorrect nomenclature out of ignorance, meaning the weapon was cocked and in battery, in which case, it should have been picked up and safed before allowing anyone in the immediate area. but if it were "cocked and locked" someone picked the weapon up and safed it prior to the officer's arrival, as it is not reasonable to assume that someone that just put a 230 grain slug through their brainpan would safe his weapon before dropping it, I would like to know who did?
Officer observed that the slide lock was in the downward position. That tells me it was cocked but NOT locked unless the Taurus is different from any other 1911 I've had the opportunity to handle. Sounds to me, with what is told, that the officer erred.
Either he erred in his language/description of what he initially observed... or when the weapon fell it could have caught the safety lever on something, causing it to slide into the locked position. By virtue of the weight of the falling weapon and the lever hanging up, say on the edge of the couch, it is possible for the lever to move on it's own accord.... just a thought. Though I agree with Ghrit that he mostly likely erred in his report...
The slide lock has nothing to do with being cocked and locked on any 1911 grit, if you don't know the difference, look at the picture, the slide-lock is the lever above the trigger housing. You know the difference between a slide lock amd a safety lever and the slide-lock has nothing to do with any function except to disassemble the weapon or to lock the slide open when the last round is fired.
I dropped an identical PT1911 Taurus for three hours last night , trying to get the safety to engage without a single happening. While I'll admit there is a small chance this could happen , after attempting to make it happen most of my sleepless night last evening, I inclined to doubt it was an accident. I cannot believe any trained LEO would leave a loaded weapon, in battery, cocked and ready to fire lying around while EMS folks worked. I am inclined to believe his assessment that the weapon was safed: Cocked and Locked".
That type of error during a homicide investigation is unacceptable. There are lives involved. I do not believe the officer was in error in his judgement. I hope the investigating Detective had enough sense to recognize this small but significant event. BS platitudes and such mean nothing here, I want just facts. Has anyone ever had a 1911 drop and engage the safety? Has anyone ever even heard of it happening? While I recognize the minute chance that an involuntary reflex or a one in a million drop could have engaged the safety, I find the likelihood too small to ponder. Ocam's razor.
Just so, Sea.... The Lead Detective should be asked to account for the issue, preferably in Writing.... Is there ANY Possibility that this was a Setup, of your Step-Son? Inquiring Minds would like to know..... Also wondering....
That the slide lock was apparently visible tells me the weaponwas laying on the right side as the slide lock is on the left of the pistol. This would indicate a southpaw engaged the safety.
Oops. Of course, you are right. Slipped up, and was looking at your test piece and had my brain disengaged when I typed that. Apologies. That said, it does not make sense to me for the officer to record the slide lock position unless there was no mag in it which might point to a single cartridge being loaded initially. Agree that if the slide lock was exposed to be seen initially, it was on its right side if the observation was correctly made. However, if dropped, it could have landed either way. Also, a southpaw would lay it down left side up under normal circumstances whether or not the safety was engaged. (Nor do I remember using the slide lock during disassembly, doing so does not line the disassembly lever up with the notch. It's been at least 6 months since I took mine down, so could well be a mile off base.) I still strongly suspect the officer's statement is erroneous, maybe in more than one way. How the safety came to be engaged is an open question in my mind.
His statement may well be erroneous but that is unacceptable to a grieving parent, especially one that strongly suspects that much of the truth has been obfuscated deliberately. I carry a 1911 daily, cocked and locked. It only has one meaning; release safety, shoot. I am just trying to get all the facts straight. If someone presents an equation where 7 + 4 = 19, I can reasonable assume there are some integers missing. Whether it is a single 8 or 4+4 or 2+2+2+2 may be academic to some but it is unacceptable to me.
Then call the investigating officer. You are not accusing anything, you are just questioning which is your right and understandable.
As noted by Sea... If the Officer had noted there was No Magazine in the weapon when discovered, and a the Single Round Theory in place, the weapon would have been in the Locked Open mode, when Dropped. I wonder if you could test that hypothesis, and see if it makes sense. Or alternatively, if the Magazine was in the weapon, and only one round was loaded, why wouldn't the slide be in the Locked Back condition, when it left the shooter's hand, and could it then be made to move into the cocked, but Unlocked, by dropping it on the surface, where it was first spotted? Question, Was the weapon Loaded, upon inspection with a round in the chamber, and any subsequent Rounds, still in the Magazine. This should be in the Initial WriteUp by the Officer first on the scene, and verified by the Supervising Detective, on the case, in his Report. .....
Not so much, BT. A 1911 requires an empty magazine to lock open on the last round fired. The weapon had an eight round Chip McCormick stainless magazine loaded with 200 grain jacketed hollow-points. He always kept my hand-loads in his weapon. I have called several times to speak to the investigating detective but so far, only voice-mail and no return calls.
Just a simple question: how do you expect these questions to be resolved. I don't mean what the outcome will be, merely how can your supposition be proven one way or the other absent photographs or an admission of error by the investigating officer which I think is highly unlikely.
Freedom of Information Request to the Department of the Supervisory Detective, should bring you all the Officer Generated Reports, Detective Reports and ME Reports... They are ALL Public Records, and subject to those Statutes.....
My point being that absent an admission or a photograph, can the officer's official report be refuted? I don't know, thus the question
Cocked and locked does in fact mean in battery with a chambered round and the safety engaged, sorry Techsar, but that is the "Locked" part of the equation and I have carried a 1911 in that manner for more years than most people have lived. Jeff Cooper coined the term for condition 1 carry of a 1911 and it has become the standard. The normal mode of carrying an SA semi-automatic pistol is Condition 1, popularly known as cocked and locked (see photo of Taurus PT1911 above). Condition 1 (a term popularized by Colonel Jeff Cooper) refers to having the magazine full, a round chambered, the hammer fully cocked, and the thumb safety engaged or on, As to what I want, I just want the numbers to all ad up. If the gun was safed, then I want to know who did it, that the weapon was handled after the fact and prior to the police arrival, and that the investigators are aware that it was handled and by who. This may well be in the Detectives notes, I do not know, they haven't returned my calls. All I have seen is an incident report that stated the gun was Cocked and Locked, a term that is a model 1911 Standard for a condition of readiness, and that the responding officer just moved it over to allow room for the EMS folks to work. I cannot imagine a trained policeman allowing a likely loaded single-action semi-automatic weapon in full battery to lay there with people working around it, but if he did, I want to know that too. Just imagine for a moment, that it is one of your children lying there dead, imagine hearing over 21 discrepancies in the telling of what happened to a someone that you had just spoken with the day before and couldn't begin to imagine a scenario where they would take their own life, then just bout the time you are ready to accept it for what it is, seeing a police report that would seem to say that he was considerate enough to put the safety on before dropping his loaded weapon after shooting himself in the brainpan with a 200 grain jacketed hollow-point? If, in fact, the officer was correct and the weapon was cocked and locked and the slide release was visible, then it is reasonable to assume someone left-handed, engaged the safety and lay the weapon down. That is a fucking question that I believe deserves a correct answer, whatever the answer is.
If the safety was in fact engaged, there is foul play IMHO IMHO, I feel that there is an attention to detail deficit, which is absolutely bullshit
