Most civilians hate to watch crime shows or cop movies with us because we complain (justifiably) that Hollywood gets it wrong. You know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’re going to pretend to be us, then at least get it right.
And that’s why something I read the other day made me scratch my head. It was a publication for a group that writes crime fiction and the column, penned by a current law enforcement officer, was in response to the question: “Do police carry a second weapon?”
I came from a department where backup guns were absolutely forbidden. My chief didn’t like them and didn’t authorize them, so in this case my background definitely affects my attitude towards the subject. That said, policing is a whole lot more dangerous and high profile these days, so it’s not too much of a stretch to think that departmental acceptance of backups would also change with the times.
Back in my day, the fear that came with a backup was that it would be used as a "throwdown" weapon to justify a bad shooting. But now some departments authorize them as long as the officer carries a departmentally approved weapon and qualifies with it. I also understand some uniform manufacturers now make equipment that accommodates backups.
What made my eyes open wide was that the LEO who wrote the piece told a bunch of creative civilians that “more than half “of the officers he knew carried backups. In a back and forth with the LEO, he continued to assert that a large number of agencies allow backups, which is why you see so many fictional cops reach into their ankle holster/pocket, etc. and pull out a second gun.
I wondered if perhaps I was simply experiencing a disconnect with today’s policing and reached out to a few friends who possess both serious credentials in the field and have a wide network of contacts. They, in turn, reached out to their go-to people and came back with the following estimate: The collective best guess (and I want to emphasize this was not scientific) was that about two percent of LEOs carry backups.
I had to think that the officer who claimed LEOs everywhere are loaded down with backups (and he says that in some cases officers carry two backups) based his answer off local agency policy and didn’t do much research beyond his backyard. That’s a shame because the public believes what they see in the movies. Consider the number of times an entertainment misconception has crossed the boundaries into your real work. Such misconceptions can cost us in both public relations and when we try to do our jobs.
People who watch shows like CSI and think you can get a DNA comparison back in a day or so or believe the absence of fingerprints denotes innocence can lose good cases when a single juror confuses fact with fiction.
In this case, look for lots of novelists to arm their police with backups—and not simply firearms. The same article also asserted that some carry knives as backups, too. I don’t know about you, but few officers are properly trained for a knife fight. The one I kept was to cut seatbelts and other more mundane tasks. Anyone who pulled a knife on me in an aggressive manner would have gotten a couple of center mass projectiles.
The moral to this column: Be careful how you answer the questions civilians throw at you. They can come back to bite us in unexpected ways.
