# Police officers should add a traffic vest to their go bag for active shooters



## CJIS

*Police officers should add a traffic vest to their go bag for active shooters*

by Scott on April 15, 2009


Can your traffic vest be more important than your bulletproof vest during an active shooter?

During an active shooter training scenario (See end of article for the scenario) one point became pretty clear. Cops are probably going to shoot cops. During our realistic scenario almost everyone shot another uniformed officer.

The fact is cops are ramped up and speed to shoot instinctively becomes the most important issue for them. To increase speed, shortcuts are made by officers and one is obviously target identification.

Part of the problem comes from the traditional methods of training. We drill officers to watch the hands and then identify bad guys during scenarios by putting weapons in their hands. We have neglected to teach looking at the whole person first. This causes friendly fire incidents when speed is paramount and all the good guys have weapons in their hands too...

See link for the rest.


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## 263FPD

How about we send flaggers in first?

It's a win/win.


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## vtdeputy

Honestly it kinda makes sense on one hand...although I still don't like the idea of being a big bulls-eye, but if it helps identify you to a brother/sista in blue why not? T


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## Hush

*Excellent Point!* Paul Howe addresses some of these issues on target discrimination on his site.

http://www.combatshootingandtactics.com/published/tactical_shooting_thoughts.pdf
DOES YOUR SHOOTING INSTRUCTOR OR SYSTEM HAVE A
DISCRIMINATION PROCESS OR USE ANY DRILLS TO DEVELOP THESE
SKILLS?
Through intense training, we have been taught and conditioned to shoot faster than
we can think. This is dangerous practice. We must bring up our discrimination
skills to the same level as our shooting skills. When looking at new instructor or
shooting system, ask them what discrimination process they use or what drills they
use to help the officers develop their discrimination process. If they do not have
anything in this area, be cautious of the information they put out. Discrimination is
a critical safety valve for speed shooting.
I can recall several instances where officers looked for the gun first, saw it and then
went to center mass, pulled the trigger, all while their mind is saying "what is wrong
with this picture." They generally get one round off, their brain catches up and they
realize they are engaging a friendly officer. Some commanders will attribute this as
an inherent danger of multi-breach point or window "Break and Rake" operations.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The problem is a weak or non-existent
discrimination process.
I changed my discrimination process years ago from what I was originally taught in
special operations. There they taught us to look at the hands first. This caused
problems down the road when operators were shooting faster than they could think.
They would look at a gun, go to center mass and launch rounds only to find the
target was a good guy. Their mind was not moving fast enough to process the
information, that the weapon their target was carrying was the same as theirs. They
simply responded to how they were taught and this generally cost them their job.
Now, my first step is to look at the whole person and then I collapse to the hands.

http://www.combatshootingandtactics.com/published/active_shooter.PDF
http://www.combatshootingandtactics.com/published/wait_and_see_is_not_an_option06.pdf
http://www.combatshootingandtactics.com/published/active_shooter_equipment06.pdf


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## Lost

This is the same as the "which side of your rain coat do you show at night" argument. You're more likely to get hit by a car, so why not be safety yellow out on every stop, right?

I'd trust a police officer to not accidentally shoot me long before I trust a bad guy to not intentionally shoot me.


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## fra444

In those active shooter training scenarios you KNOW your going to shoot something. You go in there prepared to shoot. In an active shooter scenario you dont know whats ahead of you and, (at least I would venture to guess) you would be more cautious. Simple fact, THERE IS NOTHING AT ALL TO LOOSE WHEN TRAINING SO YOU DONT THINK AS MUCH!


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## EnforceOfficer

I think this is part of the reason why some Public Safety staff in the UK have external body armour made from high visibility material


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## jedediah1

what about mag pouches and other pockets currently on tac vests? these are going to be tougher to reach with a vest over them are they not?

the tac vest companies need to start producing (north american style) high vis tac vests with all the features that currently exist, pouches/loops/padding etc. as an option for the non-SWAT members of LE


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## firefighter39

EnforceOfficer said:


> I think this is part of the reason why some Public Safety staff in the UK have external body armour made from high visibility material


 This was also a problem at Columbine, one of the FF's that responded was wearing his old black turnout coat, and was almost mistaken for one of the shooters (black trench coat).


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## Eagle13

firefighter39 said:


> This was also a problem at Columbine, one of the FF's that responded was wearing his old black turnout coat, and was almost mistaken for one of the shooters (black trench coat).


Yeah but that was okay since it was just a FF.


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## uspresident1

Great article. I'm not going to lie, during a simulator last November this exact incident happen to me. Active shooter in a school, walking down a hallway towards a 4-way intersection and I saw the nose of a rifle coming around the corner and opened up on a plainclothes officer with a badge around his neck. I think either a traffic vest or a raid jacket is certainly a good idea.


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## DoD102

Good little article. Never really gave that thought before but it really makes sense. Thanx for the info.


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## Hush

uspresident1 said:


> Great article. I'm not going to lie, during a simulator last November this exact incident happen to me. Active shooter in a school, walking down a hallway towards a 4-way intersection and I saw the nose of a rifle coming around the corner and opened up on a plainclothes officer with a badge around his neck. I think either a traffic vest or a raid jacket is certainly a good idea.


That echoes a common point, that most people tend to see the gun first. I wonder if there would be a benefit to putting some kind of IFF on the gun itself. A traffic vest isn't going to be as noticed, when you're tunneled on the barrel coming around the corner.


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## GARDA

Your bad guy's description may not be known, and can change. A clever active shooter can obtain just about any disquise to alter his appearance, including a police traffic vest.

Fratricide in such an environment isn't completely preventable, but there are ways to reduce those 'blue-on-blue' _unfriendly_ fire situations through training...(let's not give away the store here, on a public forum).

Nothing can replace each responding officer's responsibility to identify the threat before squeezing off any rounds in someone's direction. Granted, you may only have a fraction of a second to decide whether to engage or not, but that is one of the reasons our finger remains off of the trigger until your threat is clearly identified. That extra millisecond giving your brain time to process what your eyes think they are seeing may just save another cop's life.

We owe that much to ourselves.


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