The Newhall shooting on April 6, 1970 resulted in the death of four officers with the California Highway Patrol and helped usher in a new era of officer safety training. The shooting, also called the Newhall Incident and the Newhall Massacre, pitted two hardened criminals against two pairs of relatively young officers. Sadly, poor training and planning cost those officers … [Read more...]
Omni-Freeze Zero: Revolutionary Way to Keep Cool Under Your Vest
Wearing a vest sucks. Yes, body can save your life, and I will always wear one when in uniform. But they are still stiff, heavy, and hot. If you work in places like Texas and Florida, they can get blistering hot in the summer. There have been a number of things done to try to make vest wear more tolerable. I think most officers are wearing some type of … [Read more...]
Custom Benchmade Knives
Want to build your own custom Benchmade Griptilian knife? Benchmade makes it possible for you to build a knife using different colored handles, blade edges, metals, liners, clips and even custom lasermarks. … [Read more...]
5.11 TPT R7 Flashlight
5.11 introduced several new flashlights that would appear to be great tools to consider for carrying on duty. One of them is the TPT R7 rechargeable duty light. The TPT R7 is a full size light that is just over a foot long (12.2") and uses a NiMH D-cell battery pack. The light comes with A/C and D/C connectors for the charger. So, you can install it in your … [Read more...]
ArmorWorks UCBA: Ultra-Concealable Body Armor
At last month's Special Operations Forces Industry Conference (SOFIC) in Tampa, Randall and I had the opportunity to meet with the folks at ArmorWorks and take a look at the new ultra-concealable body armor (UCBA) they are working on. The UCBA is an extremely thin and lightweight solution for people needing a very discreet way to armor up. The prototype model on the expo … [Read more...]
Edged Weapons: Dismiss Them at Your Own Peril
For some reason, a lot of police officers do not treat knives and other edged weapons as a serious threat. Yet, on average, 1358 officers each year are attacked with an edged weapon. The breaks down to 3 to 4 edged weapon assaults per day on police officers. I imagine that some of this complacency comes from the fact that here in the USA, nearly everyone is walking around … [Read more...]
21 Foot Rule – MythBusters Style
In 1983, Dennis Tueller penned an article for SWAT magazine called "How Close is Too Close?" In that publication, he suggested that being within 21 feet of a suspect armed with a knife was the "danger zone." Tueller's thinking was this: MythBusters recently ran an episode where they "test" bringing a knife to a gunfight, or some such nonsense. Here is their recreation … [Read more...]
Brite-Strike Flashlight Camera
Brite-Strike is now making a flashlight camera for duty use. The "Duty Light Camera" (aka DLC-200-4-MIL-RC) is a handheld LED flashlight that can record standard definition video in addition to throwing up to 200 lumens of light. The flashlight is relatively small at 7.5" long. This puts it into the same general size category as the Streamlight Stinger flashlight … [Read more...]
Review of Beating the Reaper
Tactical Combat Casualty Care is the current US military protocol for treating battlefield injuries. I've written previously about how to adapt the military's protocol for care under fire into something that law enforcement can use for self-care in dangerous situations. I posted a review of the book Beating the Reaper: Trauma Medicine for the CCW Operator at … [Read more...]
StressVest: Next Step in Force on Force Training
StressVest Inc. is looking to revolutionize force-on-force training for law enforcement officers by eliminating many of the traditional problems associated with Simunitions, paintball and airsoft training. The StressVest concept is simple, but the execution would appear to be a real work of technological art. … [Read more...]