The NYPD Stakeout Squad

A New York Magazine article from 1972 about the astounding success of NYPD’s “stakeout squad.” At the time, NYC was experiencing a rash of corner store robberies where store clerks were killed by the robbers. NYPD responded by pulling all of the firearms instructors off the range and setting them up in these stores to ambush the robbers. They were very successful and killed a lot of bad guys.

If you are unfamiliar with this period of history, you owe it to yourself to read the article. If you want even more information, check out the book Tales of the Stakeout Squad. It describes all the gunfights that legendary supercop Jim Cirillo found himself in while doing this work. Quite a bit of the lineage of certain modern day firearms techniques comes directly from Cirillo and his gang of cops in the stakeout squad.