Police union boss urges CPD to stop using service weapon alleged to misfire
CHICAGO (WGN) — The president of Chicago's Fraternal Order of Police said Friday that more than 1,000 officers are using a service weapon that could accidentally discharge, putting themselves and others at risk and opening the city up to legal action.
The Sig Sauer P320 is popular with local and federal law enforcement and personal gun owners but in the past few years has become the focus of dozens of complaints nationwide over claims it can accidentally misfire.
'I believe all of our members carrying this gun should ask for administrative duty, effective immediately,' FOP Lodge 7 president John Catanzara told WGN. 'If I'm on the street, is it going to go off and hurt me, hurt my partner, hurt a citizen? What about my kid at home while I'm getting ready to go to work? It's just so many concerns.'
In 2023 WGN's Nexstar partners at NewsNation obtained videos of the weapon allegedly misfiring. Juries last year sided with gun owners in Pennsylvania and Georgia in their lawsuits against the manufacturer.
NewsNation: Gun owners sue Sig Sauer over misfiring pistol
Catanzara said the Chicago Police Department's arsenal committee voted weeks ago to ban the Sig Sauer P320 but it remains in use. In a Friday letter to police Supt. Larry Snelling, Catanzara asked him to cover the costs of the switch for each of the roughly 1,200 officers using the weapon. That's about 10 percent of the force.
'You are personally and morally going to be subjecting yourself to some major traumas should you have one of these incidental misfires because the department was too lazy or too cheap to solve it faster,' the union leader said.
Milwaukee's police department has already ceased use of the weapon. Catanzara said Chicago's force is the largest using the P320 and that once they're pulled, 'it's going to be a snowball down the hill. Everybody's going to have to ban it nationwide.'
Sig Sauer denies the gun has a safety problem.
'The P320 cannot, under any circumstances, discharge without a trigger pull – that is a fact. The allegations against the P320 are nothing more than individuals seeking to profit or avoid personal responsibility,' the company said in a statement last month.
Catanzara acknowledged that there are differences of opinions about the dangers of the gun within the department but said that if the department has already made moves to ban the weapon, it should proceed with urgency due to liability concerns.
WGN's request for comment from the Chicago Police Department and Mayor Brandon Johnson's office about the weapon went unanswered.
Catanzara's full letter to Supt. Snelling:
Catanzara-Letter-to-Snelling-Re-SIGSauer-P320-04182025Download
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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