Indulge me on strobing lights

[Glenn E. Meyer]

From a discussion elsewhere with a person enamored with the idea of strobing flashlights (remember there was brief craze for these) - do officers carry such? Do you train to use the strobe feature, if you do have one. Do you know of instances where they have been useful.

I will opine that they are overrated. I've found the one I had to be minimally disconcerting as I could look right into at about 4 yards and feel no magic effects. I recall a test where folks mounted one on a target and found most participants could draw and shoot into COM without difficulty. There are many reasons they seem silly to me as compared to normal flashlight usage.

But I'm just checking - being a vision guy - I was curious as to experience

[txdpd]

For the most part I put them in the category of bad idea. With training and team tactics I think they have their places, but nothing that can't be done with a modern LED handheld. What I usually see is an officer shining a strobe in the eyes of a drunk, not checking the drunks hands or waistline, and because of the strobe not realize that said drunk is approaching and closing the gap. IMO the disorienting effects of strobes work on either side of the light, and the loss of depth perception and situational awareness outweighs their potential benefits.

[lwt16]

I have disabled the strobe function on my weapon light but still use the strobe on the hand held flashlight often.

There's literally nothing better to use to get ambulance driver's attention, back up unit's attention, etc when you are on a hot call with a body on the ground. This is daylight hours only so I'm not ruining their night vision or anything like that. Just a nice way to signal "HEY...OVER HERE!" when they get to the call and I am in a yard and not near my patrol car.

I have had good luck with the strobe function with a traffic wand attached to the light while directing traffic. I use it more to signal others than anything else.

Hated the strobe on my TLR 1 HL......so I disabled it. I want my weapon light modes to be "ON/OFF" only. YMMV.

Regards.

[octagon]

My current EDC light (EAG TAC D25A) and the only WML I have both have strobe. I don't use either. However in my experience in other officers using strobe with subjects that were drunk or on drugs the strobe appeared to have a noticeable effect. Not every time but often enough to notice. On regular people I never noticed any effect that a constant on didn't have. I also noticed it was more difficult in determining where the officer was coming from or moving to if they used the strobe function when I was acting as a bad guy in force on force building search scenarios.

[Erick Gelhaus]

Took the Surefire Institute instructor class back when Ken Good ran it. I was taught and got to spend a week working on it back when it had to be done manually. No matter how much I worked with it, it never became comfortable to do and/or use.

Chuck Haggard would be a very good resource on this.

[voodoo_man]

I have used it successfully when stopping people in the middle of the night who were either armed or believed to be armed. It works if it's bright enough.

[babypanther]

I disabled the strobe on my TLR-1 HL, easy to do. I found that it interfered too much with my vision when trying to see and make decisions based off of what I saw. Strobe on the hand held is great for signaling purposes.

[octagon]

I disabled the strobe on my TLR-1 HL, easy to do. I found that it interfered too much with my vision when trying to see and make decisions based off of what I saw. Strobe on the hand held is great for signaling purposes.

Good point. Guys with strobe lights used this fairly often when others were rushing to a scene and trying to find the officers. Someone would use the strobe feature and it made it faster and easier to locate the officer. This worked great for foot chases through backyards when you can't tell what the address is or how many yards you went through and are looking for help and trying to let others know who are trying to find you. The same thing goes for the crazy layout of apartment complexes.

[beenalongtime]

Not a LEO, so forgive the intrusion (family that is). I certainly understand signalling, as I have been in an emergency situation where I was doing what looked like running jumping jacks to get the emergency vehicles focused my way.
What I am wondering is, in what I would consider a normal situation, where you might enter with a flashbang or tear gas, but feel the life threatened, need to go in without that, does one think it might give them a second or two distraction of who they are after? (you know it is going to happen, they don't so to slow their reaction a second)
That to me seems the only real possible use, then the first mentioned part.

[TCB]

I used to amaze other Agents when they would show me their new strobe flashlights by demonstrating how my Surefire Fury had a "variable speed" strobe function... My Fury has a clicky tailcap and when you lightly press it it turns on in "momentary" mode... I would just activate it in momentary mode "strobing" it at different speeds with my thumb elisiting ohhs and ahhhs...

"Strobing" at night (day time too) is very helpful when getting other Agents or air assets in to your position, but can be done easily, manually. Being in foot pursuits at night with someone strobing is annoying.