I'll throw in one more thought....
Threat, Tactics and Training.
Who is the target/threat, one home boy with an assault rifle hiding in his mother's house, two bank robbers in a robbery gone bad or 4-6 nut cases who want to take over the city and who have a little training?
The average street cop is not ready for a shoot out with a few half trained nuts involving fire and maneuver. Auto or semi auto.
If the agencies feel the need to issue auto weapons for a larger threat then they need to run basic fire and maneuver courses involving 6-8 street cops and change how they feed reinforcements into the engagement. A car at a time until it's contained and wait for the SRT?
I find a good burst of automatic fire into a window as your buddy moves to his next position a good use of that type of fire.
Pete
I must say the Riverside, CA guys did get the drop on me once. A very quiet "Freeze
, don't move" coming from the dark about 4 feet away. I told them I didn't hear them coming and they said that was the way they responded to all "Officer needs assistance" calls in the barrio. They didn't like to get ambushed when they responded to the call.
OK, that's it for me and I'm going back up on the porch.