Episode 27: Tactical Gear & Procedures, Ft. Officer Heath Layman (Part 2)
As officer Layman explains in his second episode policing is sometimes the difference between night and day ... “chases, foot pursuits, vehicle pursuits, doing containment for other major crimes that have occurred and we're setting up and trying to catch bad guys and waiting for a K-9 to show up. Those are more of your night shift types of calls. Night shift is a ton of fun. Small-town policing, night shift is usually boredom, boredom, boredom, chaos, then hours of paperwork and back to boredom, or chaos stacked on top of chaos and we can't keep up. It's usually all or nothing.”
Transcript:
Welcome to the MAGTAC podcast with your host, Lou Desmond. Let's join Lou and business owner/police officer Heath Layman as they discuss the latest in tactical gear and procedures.
Lou Desmond:
I want to get into the difference between nighttime and daytime work.
Officer Heath Layman:
All right. Nighttime calls for service are usually what most cops would consider the more fun calls for service. It's usually things that are in progress: fight calls, domestic violence calls, burglary calls-
Lou Desmond:
Chases.
Officer Heath Layman:
... chases, foot pursuits, vehicle pursuits, doing containment for other major crimes that have occurred and we're setting up and trying to catch bad guys and waiting for a K-9 to show up. Those are more of your night shift types of calls. Night shift is a ton of fun. Small-town policing, night shift is usually boredom, boredom, boredom, chaos, then hours of paperwork and back to boredom, or chaos stacked on top of chaos and we can't keep up. It's usually all or nothing.
Officer Heath Layman:
But day shift, a lot more of the service-oriented calls for service: serving civil papers, cold burglaries, cleaning up what was missed by night shift type of calls for service.
Lou Desmond:
At night are the perpetrators bolder because they have the cover of darkness? They think they can run more than they would during the day, more pursuits?
Officer Heath Layman:
Absolutely. There's definitely more, I think, foot chases using darkness to conceal themselves, and bad things get done in the dark. That doesn't mean things doesn't happen in the daytime as well, but definitely more predominant. 9:00 PM to 3:00 AM is when I think even statistically that's-
Lou Desmond:
Prime time.
Officer Heath Layman:
Absolutely.
Lou Desmond:
Prime-time crime time. Would you say at night, for police officers, there's definitely a heightened sense of physical danger?
Officer Heath Layman:
Oh, yeah. Technically speaking, you should feel that heightened sense all the time, but reality and experience says yeah, nighttime you're much more likely to get into that type of stuff in the hours of darkness than you are in the daylight. Some of the most exciting and adrenaline aspect parts of the job have been in low light, that's for sure.
Lou Desmond:
So, when you are in a darkness situation, a low light situation, a quality light source obviously is key. Right?
Officer Heath Layman:
Oh, absolutely. Yes, a light that you can rely on. You don't want to be halfway through something and have a battery die or drop and the bulb's going to be out on you in the middle of it all. My dad was a retired police officer, and something he always preached to me was one is none, two is one. So, if you need a flashlight, you need two flashlights, and if two flashlights is good, you probably should have three.
Lou Desmond:
Talk to me about gun-mounted versus handheld and when you use each.
Officer Heath Layman:
I use a weapon-mounted light, and I'm a big believer in having weapon-mounted lights. You can't point your firearm at something unless you're willing to destroy it, so if you're relying on your weapon-mounted light as your primary illumination device, you're setting yourself up for failure, and you're violating one of the four firearm safety rules about pointing your firearm at something you're not willing to destroy.
Officer Heath Layman:
And if you think you're going to be able to take the light on and off under stress of a gunfight, you're fooling yourself. And if you think that you're going to be able to cast enough light by just shining it down towards the ground and cast light out towards what you got, you haven't done enough training in different type of environmental conditions to realize that that's not going to solve your problems.
Lou Desmond:
Suffice to say you need both.
Officer Heath Layman:
Yes.
Lou Desmond:
And you wouldn't want to use your weapon-mounted light to do an iris test of a drug suspect.
Officer Heath Layman:
No, you definitely wouldn't want to do that for an iris test. You wouldn't want to do it for pretty much anything other than once you have a threat identified.
Officer Heath Layman:
During firearms training, we place a big emphasis on our low-light training of the transitioning of primary ... your light is out and on and it becomes a threat, in transitioning yourself to the weapon-mounted light, and doing it in such a manner you're not delaying yourself or having to think about it. So, that unconscious competency type of level, you just transition to another light. Takes a long time to get guys to that point if all they're relying on is the quarterly firearms training to get to that point, but the guys that take those skills and practice it, you can tell it works, and it works well.
Officer Heath Layman:
To go to that support-hand flashlight, you either stow it or hold it in such a manner that they can hold their firearm and their light at the same time, but then use the light mounted to the firearm to do their eliminating. I think that's the ideal way to do it.
Lou Desmond:
Obviously, like I've heard from many law enforcement professionals, trainers, military folks, there's a place for both. The handheld and the weapon-mounted, they have two very different purposes, but oftentimes have to make them work in concert together.
Officer Heath Layman:
Absolutely. Your duty pistol, I'd love for the guys to get both hands on the gun when they're shooting, but sometimes there's not time for that. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but I've looked at them before. Statistically speaking, you're shooting one-handed at close quarters, and whatever was in that support hand at the time that you started engaging somebody is going to stay in that hand.
Officer Heath Layman:
There's even some demonstration videos of a pop can in a guy's hand, or a soda can, whatever side of the country you're in that you want to call it, but having something in your hand like that, and instead of dropping it and just putting both hands on the gun, they get done with a stressful shooting and they're still holding onto that item that was already in their hand.
Lou Desmond:
Bullets flying and gunshots going off will make people do strange things.
Officer Heath Layman:
It does. Under stress, we do some very bizarre things.
Producer:
Want to learn more about how officers may use tactical equipment in the field? Join us for the next episode of the MAGTAC podcast with Lou Desmond and Officer Heath Layman.