Cops need a PTT on the steering wheel.
They make ‘em and foot pedals, nothing is great for chases.
The dumbest thing is all of these agencies are on trunked systems and could separate TX/RX frequency far enough to do full duplex for one or two lead units in a chase. The tech exists, the stupid agencies keep buying the same old Motorola crap.
Speaking of Motorola crap, that isn’t one of the old school good Motorola mics in the car. That’s one of the modern lightweight ones that Mother M literally glued a chunk of lead inside the back with hot snot glue to make it feel like it has the “heft” of the old ones. That mic is a plastic POS.
I was surprised he had to do so much radio work. Don't police units have "lowjack" or some GPS positioning beacon in them? Seems it would be easier, and safer.
Heck, even Uber tracks vehicle location.
Someone thought you were asking if the cop had GPS, and you were asking about real time tracking. Tracking is an option that costs millions on already overpriced Public Safety systems. Most agencies doing it are doing it with cellular data instead of the built in low speed data on the trunked two-way dispatch radio.
You can hear he’s on a digital two-way system. All of them have the capability to send the data but it’s the display and tracking consoles for the dispatcher that are expensive as hell for no good reason. Usually if an agency has it, it’s linked to their computer aided dispatch software and you really don’t want to know what THAT stuff costs. You extra super duper don’t want to know what the “medical” version of the CAD software with built in prompts for the dispatcher for medical emergencies costs. It’s insane.
Public Safety is the money printing division of any two way radio shop.
The mic you see is his collar mic for his portable. Some guys like that, in my area reception would be crud so I use the car mic.
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The biggest radio issue is when guys heading to assist can’t stay off the air. We’ve tried to coach our folks to self-dispatch via the computer (one button) and keep the air clear for the units directly involved.
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The reload issue looked like a possible issue of not indexing the mags. Mine are set up so that my natural grip puts mags in the right orientation. Same for handcuffs.
Some agencies have the handhelds repeated through a higher power transmitter in the vehicle so the coverage issue goes away. Fire uses it heavily these days for fire ground work, repeater in the truck keeps the dispatcher apprised and the on the ground radios can all hear the transmitter in the truck better than they can hear the dispatch system’s closest trunked site.
Agree on the staying off the air thing when joining. That used to drive me insane as a dispatcher. I know you’re all covering in a shots fired scenario, you’ll drive 30 miles to do it. Shut up and let the lead car talk. Better yet let the lead car hand off to the second car because lead is way too busy up front. Second car can give a running location without quite as much stress and a whole lot less yelling into the damn mic which makes y’all completely uncopyable anyway.
Agree also it looks like the mag wasn’t indexed. I bet he doesn’t miss that detail again when loading up the belt for a while. You get lazy and then it’s backward. It’s gotten officer’s killed.
Hows the spring tension on a full mag? You get a lot of stove-pipes? And if not, how does the last few rounds feed?
I have one of those if that’s a Mec-Gar. Cheap mag but spring is fine. Actually have them in .45 ACP that fit a 1911 and the real reason I have them is they also fit the Ruger Ranch Rifle. Same deal in 9mm, fits the 3rd Gen S&W pistol as well as the 9mm Ruger Ranch Rifle. Both rifles also take the standard sized mags for the two pistol types. Nice to not have to carry different mags. The big ones are just a joke for plinking. They don’t help accuracy or balance of either firearm that both calibers and types fit, like most giant magazines.
I live in komnifornia, those are a no no here
I believe the cops can have them there. They can buy stuff not on the approval list, which makes them “higher class Citizens” which is just flat wrong. But whatever. The Citizens like their cops to be legally higher in stature than everyone else there, I suppose. Historically that’s an extremely bad idea.
The real problem with this shoot is there’s no way the officer could determine that he had a safe backstop. Killing an innocent bystander with the chase or the shooting would have changed this story from hero to zero.
It’s one thing if the bad guys hit bystanders. This video would never have seen the light of public view if the officer had, until it went to court.
Of course he’d not have had any civil liability for the death and unlikely to have charges filed for it either.
Anybody else shoots from a moving vehicle like that, even in some sort of strange but true self-defense scenario? They’re getting arrested and charged for endangering the public. That’s just fact.
He got lucky. That’s just the truth. Very dangerous chase. Even more dangerous to fire from the vehicle.