LEOs - Are you issued with High quality lights or do you have to buy your own?

Here's a question for the Police out there.

I am a member of a state Police force in Australia and we have to buy our own lights or use the provided 3 cell maglites. I currently carry a SF 6P with 3.7v LA and 17670 setup. I am thinking of trying my Falcata 6V with a 9V lamp and 2 x R123 as my duty light.

Do your departments provide you with high quality personal issue lights or do you have to buy your own? What do you carry?

My Department issue Surefire 8NX. I, also carry a 6P and 9P.

We are issued a 3D Mag and now have SL Ultra Stingers available to use. I use my personal Tigerlight FBOP and Gladius. I'm also in the process of having a milkyspit custom X364 built. SF M3 head with 3 Cree XR-E leds on a C3 body, it will run off of 2 17500's with a runtime of approximately 90 minutes at 364 lumens.

Prior to my retirement, I was issued a Streamlight SL-20XP. They now also issue Streamlight Stingers for belt carry.
I had a SL 35 of my own, and I bought a Scorpion to keep on me.

Almost always had to buy my own. Only thing every issued was an old 3 Dcell Mag and had to beg for batteries. That's when I went to Magcharger with charger in unit. Now that I retired I am having fun with all the new lights. Got two Cree's and several others. Progress is great.

When I was an MP in the Army I carried either a privately purchased Mag 3D and a Mag 4D, depending on which shift I worked.

Worked for a 20 man municipal Police Dept that initially issued Magchargers. The Magchargers were phased out for rechargeable Streamlight Stingers purchased on a grant. Although most officers were grandfathered and allowed to keep both their Magchargers as well as the Stingers. New hires only got Stingers.

Then worked for a State Agency that issued Streamlight SL-20Xs. These were being phased out in favor of rechargeable Surefires although I was never issued one of those.

No longer work in LE.

I retired 11/2005. I was the Senior Firearms Instructor and Rangemaster. A number of years ago, "Management" wanted to buy flashlights for the sworn personnel in the office and was looking at D cell maglites or rechargeable models. Physically to big too carry in a suit, and the rechargeables would never be charged when really needed. I know the guys pretty well. It would have been in desk draws, war bags, or in the cars (or at home).

I to my surprise, convinced them to get Surefire 6P models, and later dedicated Surefire weapon lights for the personally owned handguns. After that, dedicated lights for the shotguns, AR15s, and the HK submachineguns. When we went to an agency owned Glock model 22, I had them buy Glock brand weapon lights for each Deputy.

I figured they would "cheap out" on the first idea to buy lights, but they did not. We went through tons of CR123s, and there was never a gripe about the cost of the batteries. They even after that bought Streamlight Stingers to cut back on battery usage. As I predicted no one used them, and they were never charged when someone grabbed one. Most of the batteries were killed by improper charger usage!

The good stuff. When I retired, I retired with me 2 Ultra-Stinger (they need the batteries replaced), 2 Surefire 6Ps, 1 surefire Z2 (I received from Surefire when I went through Instructor training with their training division), and 1 Glock brand weapon light. (Not listed are the lights I bought out of my own pocket.) Along with a bunch of other stuff they did not want back to reissue as "used". Management was much more generous than I thought they would be. I was pleasantly surprised they let me keep the stuff. The office typically would not reissue used stuff. New Deputies were issued new equipment!

I could almost start my own agency if I had the money to buy a small island!

Great work DasRonin. I hope the boys bought you a case of beer when you organised them some quality lights!!

harddrive said:

Here's a question for the Police out there.

I am a member of a state Police force in Australia and we have to buy our own lights or use the provided 3 cell maglites. I currently carry a SF 6P with 3.7v LA and 17670 setup. I am thinking of trying my Falcata 6V with a 9V lamp and 2 x R123 as my duty light.

Do your departments provide you with high quality personal issue lights or do you have to buy your own? What do you carry?

Click to expand...

hey HD, if you are in Sydney I will gladly lend you my 2C Mag modded to a 1150 lumen ROP LE so you can give it a spin for a few shifts.
30 minutes run time on High = 1150 Lumens
60 minutes run time on Low = 550 Lumens

Issued large, cheap plastic, D battery eating, dimmer than a candlepowered flashlight. They won't issue anything else, probably for two reasons- the plastic lights cost less, and they would break pretty easy if you tried to hit someone with it.
I don't think anyone actually carries the light as a primary duty light. They are no rules which say that we can only carry the duty light.

DasRONIN,

You are obviously a man in the know about guns/lights and apreciate quality equipment. Therefore, I think you'll get a laugh out if this. Along with our 3 cell maglites we are issued S&W .38 revolvers (I hope I havn't just stared a semi-auto vs revolver debate.....)

MISSIONARYMAN,

I'm in Victoria unfortunatly. That is a nice sounding light. Any more details or pics? I'm a real newbie when it coms to modified lights.

The new guys are given a Pelican M10.


Personally, I rotate alot, but currently it's a Pelican 3Watt LED and a Streamlight SL-20X.


--dan

If I may spin a teeny bit off topic.

When we got the SF 6P issued I did a low light/flashlight training session at the firing range. I taught several methods and recommended the Surefire method of using the light, in the back of hand to back of hand method with the pistol in the strong hand and the Surefire 6P in the support hand.

One know it all Deputy said if the light was close to the body the bad guy would shoot at the light and hit the Deputy. He wanted to use the old FBI technique of holding the light at arms length, shoulder high... away from the body. He was not going to listen, because I did not know what I was talking about (his opinion).

I secured all weapons for the demonstration, and instructed the "students" to stand at the firing line. I walked 20 yards down range in a totally dark firing range and did the FBI flashlight thing. I asked Mr. Know-it-all "Bob, can you see me?" he says "yes". I ask... "Could you aim at me and shoot me?" He says "Yes".

I then go into the Surefire flashlight stance with a dummy pistol and shine the light right in his eyes as I asked... "Bob, can you see me and shoot me now?". Using very foul language he directed me to get the light out of his eyes, he could not see anything! I had no further problems getting Deputies to go along with the program!


Harddrive. Go to www.surefire.com and look at the Tactical products and then Weapon lights. There are a bunch of examples there. Nothing for revolvers though.

Our department issues Streamlight SL15X lights, plastic, and just issued Surefire G2Zs for belt use and clipping into our M4 carbine light holders.

Now me, I carry the SL15 that I beefed up with glass lens and hi power bulb, my personal Tigerlight combo, and my Maxabeam HID in the back seat.

We are issued everything including undershirts! A regular patrolman sports $5,000 worth of equiment on his body! 2 pistols, taser, radios, pagers, armor, 2 sets cuffs, etc., 6 sets winter and summer uniforms cleaned twice a week. Special details have this and all the other toys they need; we got it made.
Ligthts are Mag Chargers in the car and personal issue is Streamlight Jr. Xenon, which I think was just discontinued by the manufacture and the Glock pistol Light. All issued equipment must be worn, no exceptions, except lights can be substituted with approval. We can carry our own lights. If I can find a reliable source of WA 01160-U bulbs we will upgrade our Mag Chargers to that.
Two OITs out of the academy came sporting their own Surefires, you can see by my posts a lot of us carry Dae's Golston and the new kids are changing after working with our and theirs.
I love the OHH and AHH effect of my unassuming hotwires when I hand them to the unsuspecting!
Here is my opinion on what we carry.
http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1708925&postcount=16

my dept. issues streamlight Streamlight SL-20X to all patrol officers. investigators also get SF Z-2's. i am retired now and have my lights that were issued.

Wow I always thought my dept was lacking in the illumination area but some of you guy have it made. We are issued the 5 D Maglight and a personal smaller light (Minimag, Stinger, Surefire, etc.) is approved. My 5 D has been in my riot bag since I graduated the academy which was the last I used it. (Morning runs with a 5D mag sucks) I change the batts once a year just in case I would need it. I carry a magcharger with the WA bulb and a NIMH battery. I also have a slighly modded Surefire 6R on the belt.

My father is a retired Police Officer in Wisconsin - his department gave him a certain amount of $$ to spend on clothing & gear (knife, flashlight, baton) every year, so he was to provide his own light with that. He used a SL Stinger XT HP.
john

My Force now issues our Cadets with Mag 3 D. Some Unit Commanders had bought Streamlight Polystingers for each patrol vehicle and had the chargers mounted in the vehicles.

I have been encouraging as many of my partners as possible to look at buying at least a MagLED up-grade module for their issued Mags, or TLE-HP3 module for their Stinger HP/XTHP, or an LED Logic Striker VG, Goncz E3 or Night-Ops Gladius LED illumination tool, or a Pila G3 or G4, Wolf-Eyes 9T or M90, or Goncz M3 incandescent illumination tool, and AW, Battery Station or e-lectronics.net 17 or 18 mm x 50 or 65 mm 3.7 v or 16 x 34 mm 3.0 v li-ion rechargeable cells to run their lights on.

Logic and commonsense would dictate that every LEO should be carrying a SF M3/M4/M6, or the like.

However, society seems to undervalue the role of these important folk (just as they do those of teachers and nurses etc) - and tend to reduce health & safety concerns to a bottom-line dollar figure.

If it were the bean-counter's own sons/daughters out there in the line of fire, then one suspects that no expense would be spared.

The force in which Northern Lights works obviously gives a sh*t about its people - which is really good to see - and there should be more of it... especially as people's lives are on the line here.

Just my 2/100 of a dollar's worth...