My experience in law enforcement has been that those members who are, or become, interested in firearms as more than just a tool, tend to gravitate to higher quality and more complex weapons. In the case of handguns, those who've acquired above-average proficiency will often -- not always, of course -- seek to carry a 1911, even though it typically is a loss in capacity of ten or more rounds.
My last department switched duty pistols from an expensive DA/SA with a frame-mounted safety to a polymer striker-fired pistol, with no manual safety. We anticipated an uptick in NDs, but that didn't transpire. Qual scores went way, way up across the board. With the old pistol, we'd have to have people re-qual who failed the first time or two they shot the qual. Can't remember the last time someone failed handgun with successor pistol. While there were still handgun options for special team members, everyone was pretty happy with the new pistol. As an instructor, not having to teach the de-cocker and safety (and make sure trainees were shooting the first shot DA) made things a lot easier. But then I always remembered having to instruct military guys with no pistol experience on the 1911, which could be painful.
Our training used to be twice a year for line, this consisted of the use of force and use of deadly force, RCW and policy refreshers (classroom), and an eight-hour range session with drills and a qual course for pistol and shotgun, patrol rifle. After several rounds of budget issues through the years, firearms quals went to annually only, though team folks had required quarterly qual courses with additional training days sprinkled in for drills and cool-guy fun stuff. Initial (academy) training is pretty solid, but the fact is, for many (can't speak to all) agencies (in this state), follow-on firearms training for line personnel is more a check-in-the-box shooting a relatively easy qual deal than productive time spent that would develop proficiency. Kinda miss the days of shooting the SMG, but seems like everyone's gone to shorty (10") carbines for entry guns now pretty much.
