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I did a short stint as a police officer in VA in the early 1980's and we still carried revolvers. The dept had an incident where an officer cocked his revolver and held it to the head of a suspect as he was taking him (unhand-cuffed) to his patrol car after a rather lively fight with the suspect (the officer was alone and pretty beat up). Likely had his finger on the trigger (my speculation--to my knowledge not substantiated at the time), slipped on some ice, and discharged his revolver into the suspect's head.

To prevent such occurrences, several major police departments including LAPD, NYPD, and Miami PD ordered revolvers from the factory that were double action only. Every now and then one of these police pistols will come up for auction on GB. My gunsmith is a very accomplished S&W smith and I have had him do several DA-only mods for me. I leave the hammer spur in place--particularly on the newer gen pistols without the firing pin on the hammer. The extra weight of the hammer spur means more inertia and lessens the incidence of misfires with a lighter hammer mainspring.

This modification permanently removes the full cock, single action notch on the hammer so to return it to its original condition you must replace the hammer with one not modified. I typically buy an extra hammer for the DA-only modification and I keep the original hammer as is.

Double action only precludes push off unless they could get the pistol to fire with the hammer fully forward--quite a feat. What they were looking for was single action trigger jobs (or worn triggers) that were so light they would slip off the sear with thumb pressure. They found one in my class as well. Never thought it was a common problem--must be, given their emphasis on the issue.

Double action only--no worries about "push off."

S&W model 66 modified for double action only.