The Glendale Heights Police Department, which serves and protects roughly 34,000 people in that western suburb of Chicago, has adopted the Beretta APX as its new duty pistol. The handgun is chambered in 9 mm, striker fired and the firearm features a modular design that has a removable serialized chassis frame to allow easy modification with replaceable grip frame housings.
“The transition to the APX has been greatly appreciated by the entire department, with scores improving dramatically across the board,” said Stefano Itri, Vice President of Beretta Defense Technology Sales. “The ergonomics of the APX, coupled with its replaceable backstraps, ensures that the APX pistol can be tailored to fit every hand size in the department.”
The APX was the company’s submission when the U.S. military announced it was searching for a sidearm to replace its aging fleet of venerable Beretta M9s—a martial version of the commercially available Beretta Model 92—that served the U.S. military well for decades. The development of the APX was far from singularly focused on creating a replacement, however. The handgun was “…on the drawing board before that process began, but make no mistake: The APX was designed with the law enforcement and military communities in mind,” Jay Grazio wrote when he reviewed the pistol for Shooting Illustrated.
After the SIG Sauer P320 was announced as the winning entry in the competition—early in 2017—Beretta made the APX available for civilian enthusiasts. It’s currently available in Full (4.25-inch barrel), Centurion(3.7-inch) and Compact (3-inch) sizes in a variety of configurations. Each comes with three different size interchangeable backstraps and the entire line features a trigger safety, striker block safety, and a striker deactivation button that allows for disassembly without having to pull the trigger.
