AKs among U.S. Police Departments
The AR15 has an extremely large following among U.S. police officers, probably arming the overwhelmingly vast amount of arsenals out there. Of course, with the exception of the Mini 14 armed cops down in San Berdinio during that tragic shooting. However, for those interested, the Kalashnikov platform does have a small following in some departments. This was brought to my attention by the Facebook page of Krebs Custom, which posted some pictures of cops from the North Slope Borough Police Department in the extremely far northern part of Alaska. At first I thought it was a typical fan picture with a bunch of the cops posing with their favorite personal AKs, maybe it was the AK friend group in that department. But upon further investigation, contacting Krebs, and contacting one of the commanding officers in that department, I confirmed that the police officers do indeed use AK rifles in 7.62x39mm as their duty/patrol rifles. They favor them much more over the AR platform due to the ability to operate in the extreme cold climates that they are working in. In addition to the terminal effects on large animals that they need to sometimes deal with. If you need any confirmation of this, simply take a look at some of these guys at their shooting range, it looks like the edge of the earth with the snow in the background! However, much to Krebs credit, not all the rifles are Krebs products:
AK Patrol Rifles and U.S. Police Officers serving in the United State’s most northern city. Awesome!
A nice assortment of Krebs Custom Guns, Destructive Devices Industries, East German, Arsenal, Saiga. Stay safe out there guys and thank you for your support! Good to hear you are loving the AC-15™ Mod2.
After doing some forum reading online, I’ve come across some posts that said the following police departments have AKs in their armories. But I’ve searched for images from the departments and couldn’t find any AKs in use. So if anyone can confirm or deny that these departments use AKs, that’d be an interesting find, in addition to possibly listing other departments that do use them.
Marshal County Police, Alabama
Glacier County Sheriff’s Dept, Montana
Ventura County Sheriff’s Dept, California, as featured in this article.
Infantry Marine, based in the Midwest. Specifically interested in small arms history, development, and usage within the MENA region and Central Asia. To that end, I run Silah Report, a website dedicated to analyzing small arms history and news out of MENA and Central Asia.Please feel free to get in touch with me about something I can add to a post, an error I've made, or if you just want to talk guns. I can be reached at miles@tfb.tv
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To the departments credit they pure fleeted the weapons. You dont see a variety of calibers or weapons type. Everyone uses the same ammo and mags.
Read threw a lot of the comments and had to laugh at all of the concerns about modularity.
I've been to extreme northern Alaska in February when the temp is -50 BEFORE wind chill is added in. You only need modularity if you plan on playing Barbie with your rifle. ARs have to be bone dry of any lubricants in weather like they have to function. The AK has a 75 year history of operating just fine in conditions like this and throw out a slug that is twice the mass of the 5.56. Thats kind of important when dealing with a Polar Bear.