NEW YORK — The New York Police Department issued a department-wide recall of its 9 mm ammunition this week after it was discovered that a bad batch of bullets was failing to fire properly, the New York Daily News has learned.
The recall was issued on Jan. 5 and all officers who received 9 mm ammo from the department between Dec. 19 and Wednesday were ordered to report to the outdoor range on Rodman’s Neck and return them for a new cache of bullets.
“Bring all affected ammunition to the Outdoor Range on all three platoons with any and all ammunition issued from 12/19/22 through 01/04/23,” the order, sent out by the NYPD Training Bureau, indicated.
The NYPD confirmed the recall that was done after learning that “a very limited quantity was not consistently discharging during training,” a department spokeswoman said.
“While the amount of affected ammunition was extremely limited, this recall was made out of an abundance of caution for the safety of any officer who might be in possession of this ammunition,” the spokeswoman said in a statement. “The affected ammunition is limited to a specific lot number and represents only a small fraction of the NYPD’s supply and will not adversely affect our inventory or ongoing training.”
None of the bad bullets were discharged in public and no one was injured as a result of the faulty ammo, the department said.
A high-ranking NYPD official said the recall was self-initiated after officers at the range realized that some bullets were malfunctioning.
“The shell casings didn’t eject properly or not discharging,” the official said. “There were several of these malfunctions during the training cycle. Normally we have zero. In this batch, it happened five times in one cycle. A couple of days later it happened three times in another cycle, which is odd.”
The malfunctions were experienced by different officers using different weapons, allowing the department to zero in on the bullets, which were purchased from Speer Ammunition in Lewiston, Idaho.
“It was abnormal,” the official said. “It was not something we normally see.”
Speer did not immediately return a request for comment.
