Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
I happened to have opportunity over the weekend to observe several traffic stops. In one instance, after the fact, I had the chance to speak with an officer about his cruiser lights and why they were wired the way they were. You see, during the course of the stop I realized that the primary officer was being blinded by his back-up officer's lights. I didn't understand why the back-up officer didn't turn off the emergency lights facing forward on his cruiser. The short answer was
he couldn't.
Back in the day, when I had the option of choosing how a car would be wired (along with a work mate) we decided that our lights needed to have several capabilities.
1) We needed to be able to push a switch one click to a position that would light up the whole car: front, back, sides.
2) We needed to be able to push the switch to another position that lit
only the front.
3) We needed to be able to push the switch to another position that lit
only the back.
Different buttons turned on the take-down lights (overhead spotlights) and the alley lights individually.
Why were we so picky? It seemed like logic to us. If we're pulling traffic we want lights to the front so that the driver we're stopping has a clue to pull over. We wanted lights to the back to make sure all those other drivers on the road saw the cruiser clearly and didn't mash into it due to a lack of visibility on our part.
We wanted to be able to turn off the back half of the lights - leaving only the front half of the emergency lights on - so that if a back-up officer pulled up we could turn off our back lights - thereby not blinding him or hindering his ability to see what was going on in front of our cruiser.
We wanted to be able to turn off the front half of the lights - leaving only the back half of the emergency lights on - so that if we were the back-up officer our lights weren't blinding the primary officer.
Does that all make sense to you readers too? or am I losing it? Your thoughts, observations, inputs, etc are appreciated.
