Akron police trying to get machine guns — and tiny device that makes them — off streets

The frightened woman turned into GetGo across from Portage Crossing in Cuyahoga Falls at about 3:30 a.m. April 7.

After she parked at the pumps, she slipped inside and called police for help, telling them the passenger riding in her Kia Sportage had a gun and that she was scared of him.

When officers arrived, they found Jemar Jeresse Simmons – an Akron member of the Heartless Felons street gang – in the Kia, court documents said.

Simmons, 33, denied having a gun, but when police tried to pat him down, there was a struggle, and a machine gun tumbled to the ground from Simmons’ waistband or pocket, court records said.

It wasn’t the kind of monster-size machine guns that chew up people in action movies, or the big Tommy guns favored by gangsters like Al Capone during Prohibition.

This was a small Glock 17 Luger, the same kind of service weapon used by many U.S. law enforcement officers, including Akron police .

But Simmons’ Glock was modified with a tiny, illegal device called a “switch” that turns pistols and some AR-style weapons into machine guns, police said.

The gun also had an extended magazine carrying 28 bullets, including the one in the chamber, police said.

If Simmons would have pulled the trigger a single time, he could have fired all 28 bullets in less than two seconds.

Machine guns like this, law enforcement agencies are warning, have returned to American streets.

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The history of machine guns: From gangster Tommy guns to Glock switches

“The big risk, the big concern is for public safety,” said Daryl S. McCormick, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for all of Ohio and southern Indiana.

This was the first time Cuyahoga Falls police have run across such a machine gun, Chief Christopher Norfolk said.

But law enforcement across the country – including police in Akron, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus – have reported a sharp rise in the number of gun switches they've seen over the past three years.

Guns with these switches have been used to kill police in Texas, to attack a federal courthouse in California and to spray bullets during drive-by shootings across the country, including in Cincinnati, where an 11-year-old boy was killed and four other children and a woman were injured in November.

In Akron, police Lt. Matthew Whitmire said gun switches have become a status symbol on the streets.

“We’ve done everything to counteract this with our gun violence response team,” Whitmire said. “They’re constantly trying to figure out where [the switches] come from and deal with the people supplying them.”

But the switches keep coming.

ATF agents in Ohio began finding gun switches occasionally while executing search warrants in 2022, McCormick said.

In 2023, the trend accelerated, and now, in 2024, “it’s very common to run across them” in the state, he said.

How machine guns returned to U.S. streets

A Glock switch, which has become the generic term to refer to all gun switches, is a gadget about the size of a thimble that can be easily plugged into and out of the back of many guns.

None of the switches are made by Glock Inc. Instead, they’re manufactured overseas, often in China, or made in the U.S. using 3D printers.

People can buy them on the black market for as little as $20 in many places. However, Akron police this month said because they're so coveted in the area, the going rate here is much higher, about $400.

Once a switch is plugged into a gun, the switch mostly disappears inside the gun’s firing mechanism so that police can’t see a switch without examining the weapon.

The ATF tells police to look for a different clue: An extended magazine, the device that feeds ammunition into the gun.

With a Glock switch, McCormick said, “you expend so many rounds so fast [that] if you have a standard 15-round magazine, that’s going to be gone in slightly over a second.”

Even a 31-round magazine goes quickly, he said.

“In demonstrations…when you pull the trigger and hold it, [a gun with a Glock switch] expends those 31 rounds in 2.15 seconds,” he said.

The Glock switch doesn’t increase the power of the bullets, he said, only the volume of gunfire.

A switch can also make a gun harder to control.

A skilled shooter using two hands can fire and maintain aim reasonably well, he said.

But most street criminals aren’t trained, McCormick said.

That poses several threats.

With a switch, shooters don’t need to have great aim, he said.

“If they do aim reasonably accurately, they're likely to hit the target just by sheer volume and the amount of fire and the rate of fire,” McCormick said.

The person hit will also likely suffer more than one wound because of the rapid machine-gun fire, he said.

A Glock switch also puts others at risk.

“Most criminal shooters that we see don't control the firearm very well and you get a lot of [bullet] spray,” McCormick said. “So you have a lot of probability that innocent bystanders will be hit by stray bullets.”

Akron police do not believe a Glock switch device was used in the June 2 shooting that killed a man and injured 28 others on the east side, Whitmire said.

But that kind of rapid fire could have made the shooting even more devastating.

Last year, ATF Director Steven Dettelbach, former U.S. attorney of the Northern District Court of Ohio, said targeting gun switches is a top priority for his agency.

Machine guns on the streets have been a rarity since the U.S. passed a 1934 law aimed at getting Tommy guns away from gangsters.

Glock-type switches have brought them back.

“On the street, what it means is, there’s a kid walking two blocks away, coming home from school, or a family in a park, and they may be nowhere near the actual shooting. And we’re spraying scores of bullets all over our communities and hurting and killing people,” Dettelbach told NBC news in December.

Illegal switches embraced by both gun enthusiasts and criminals

Greg Kinman can’t stop giggling in a video posted five months ago on his YouTube channel, Hickok45, showing him firing a Glock equipped with a switch.

More than 750,000 people have watched him decimate a watermelon, a target shaped like a coffin, some 2-liter bottles and a big ceramic pot in a flurry of machine-gun fire, burning through several clips in minutes.

“It’s fun,” Kinman tells his 101,000 subscribers.

There are dozens of similar videos posted by gun enthusiasts showing what a Glock switch can do.

Even though the switches are illegal, people who have them and use them safely on private property likely won’t run into legal trouble unless they run afoul of the law in other ways, the ATF’s McCormick said.

That’s what happened to a former Ohio National Guardsman from Columbus.

Thomas Develin, 25, was sentenced to 71 years in federal prison last year for making and selling Glock switches and “ghost guns,” untraceable homemade weapons, often made with a 3D printer.

In a plea agreement, Develin admitted he knew both the switches and the ghost guns were illegal.

Develin, who was working as a security guard at local synagogues and Jewish schools at the time, also made antisemitic and violent statements online and was convicted on state charges of making terrorist threats.

McCormick said the ATF doesn’t have the resources to go after everyone with a Glock switch, so it focuses its efforts on violent criminals.

Simmons, the Akron man arrested at the Cuyahoga Falls GetGo, spent part of his teenage years and much of his adult life in prison for crimes involving violence.

Court records note that he’s a member of the Heartless Felons – a notoriously ruthless gang founded in the early 2000s in Ohio’s juvenile prisons. Simmons is also a registered sex offender.

In May, he was indicted on federal charges for having a machine gun connected to his arrest in Cuyahoga Falls the month before.

Police bodycam footage shows Akron police spotted Simmons driving in Northwest Akron May 5.

When they tried to stop him because of the outstanding federal warrant, Simmons led Akron police on a car chase that turned into a foot chase through the woods and down a muddy slope into a creek bed, where he was again arrested.

Simmons – who is scheduled for trial in federal court in Akron Aug. 5 on charges of possessing a machine gun – could not be reached for comment, and his federal public defender did not return a message.

Stolen guns fuel Akron violence

Akron police Lt. Whitmire said guns and Glock switches are especially appealing to street gangs.

In Akron, that's an ever-changing landscape of groups of young men in their teens and early 20s.

The guns that fuel their wars come from three primary sources, Whitmire said: They’re stolen from vehicles, cars and trucks, which are often left unlocked with guns inside; they’re stolen from people’s homes, particularly during parties or other gatherings; or they’re purchased by straw buyers, people who legally buy a weapon on behalf of someone prohibited from owning a gun.

Illegal guns on the streets in Akron sell for about the same price as they do legally in a gun store, Whitmire said, with Glocks costing between $450 and $550.

“Please, people, lock your firearm away, keep it away from your children,” Whitmire said. “If you have people at your house, lock [your guns] up.”

Akron police, who work alongside ATF officers based in Akron, recover most gun switches during traffic stops when they find people carrying other weapons illegally, Whitmire said.

Glock switches in Akron are on the rise but remain somewhat uncommon, he said.

“I don’t think people should be scared to come out of their homes,” Whitmire said.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron police trying to get machine guns — and tiny device that makes them — off streets