Does your agency have a mandatory annual low light/no light shoot?

[HCM]

I've been talking to a few of you offline about this and getting a wide variety of feedback.

As an annual sustainment requirement (i.e. not basic/follow-on academy coursework), does your agency require an low-light/no-light shoot? For all personnel, or only certain personnel? Catch-all administration, or individually tracked?

This is just for the sake of curiosity and seeing what other agencies are requiring. Thanks for your participation, even if you just want to hit up the poll and don't want to post.

I'll start:

We are required to shoot an annual low-light/no-light fam fire. It is not individually tracked like your qualification, rather, during one of the qualification cycles (we're on trimesters), the HQ mandated post-qualification drill will be a low-light/no-light shoot. I guess it's generally an okay solution, but not great since there's risk for people to miss that low-light/no-light shoot if they're out of the office for that trimester due to a combination of when they qualified during the previous trimester and a combination of leave, being on limited duty for an injury, etc.

We require all gun carriers to do low light training at least once a year.

That usually takes the form of a review of flashlight techniques, a live fire low light fam fire and some sort of live fire target identification exercise.

However when resources allow, we have also met the requirements via “shoot house” type training in low light vs paper targets with Sims.

The big debate is usually, do we try to do low light in the summer to avoid the Texas heat or do we do it in the winter when there are more “hours of darkness ?”

[AMC]

We had a low light session every other year.
The ordinary qual was shot in the afternoon, then "classes", a 2 hour lunch, and more "classes".
At dark there would be a low round count famfire consisting of a few rounds at each yard line from 15 yards in. Scored, but with no penalty for abject failure.
It always struck me as the poster child of court mandated training: do the absolute minimum to meet the loosest interpretation of the letter of the law that you can get past the City lawyers...and paperwhip until you get your hand slapped.
2/3 plus of Patrol worked during the hours of darkness and every officer was subject to low light conditions 24/7.
Never a word on use of WMLs which were (hand to God) prohibited during the low light exercise. Ya hadda use your handheld.
I literally can't even.

I seriously hate police departments.

Agency I retired from had 2 outdoor ranges available. The primary range in the city was built in 1945 originally, in the dunes on the southwest edge of town. Over the years a neighborhood grew up around it, so we ended up with a city MOU that prohibited shooting between 10pm and 7am. Normally, except during Academy recruit training where lowlight training/testing was mandated by POST, the Range operated on Bankers hours. 7am-5pm, Mon-Fri. Only a few times, during winter months, were we able to even run lowlight quals for night watch officers. All arguments and justifications and warnings fell on deaf ears. When we began allowing weapon mounted lights, a Deputy Chief told me they were a terrible idea, because if officers were able to see threats in low light conditions, they'd likely shoot those threats....and we'd have more OIS incidents. I shit you not.

As of today....no lowlight quals, much less any training. Hell, They're not even letting cops go to quals in the daytime due to crisis staffing levels.

[SamueL]

Annual "Dim Light" duty pistol qualification AND annual dim light pistol, shotgun, and rifle proficiency.

Qualification includes both handheld and weapon-mounted lights. Proficiency is handheld and weapon-mounted lights for pistol and rifle and just weapon-mounted lights for shotgun.

[Rick R]

Retired also but same as this.

First four hours of the 8 hour “low light” course were taught from noon to 1600 at an outdoor range. Yes, it was daylight. It was pointless.

Did anyone else ever get to experience the low light goggles? I think they were a Safariland product, basically standard sand/wind/crappy environment goggles with welder grade inserts. Everyone had to don them then sit around for 15-20 minutes before firing. Of course WML and night sights were worthless and half the shooters were disoriented but by God you didn’t have to pay OT because people could shoot during the daytime.

[Dennis]

We have quals running day and night so if you go at night it's a low light qual where you can use your WML or night sights and ambient light. Due to my schedule I would say that 90% of my quals have been in low light.

Dennis.

Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk

[BobM]

Did anyone else ever get to experience the low light goggles? I think they were a Safariland product, basically standard sand/wind/crappy environment goggles with welder grade inserts. Everyone had to don them then sit around for 15-20 minutes before firing. Of course WML and night sights were worthless and half the shooters were disoriented but by God you didn’t have to pay OT because people could shoot during the daytime.

Desantis I think. I bought a set when they came out. They are useless. I seem to recall my agency using welding goggles when I started.

I usually ran a night shoot annually but I’ve been retired two years now and I doubt that it’s being done.

[MD7305]

Our department shoots in the Spring and Fall. We incorporate lowlight at the end of the Fall shoot, including rifle and pistols. One of the primary reasons is our range is at a city landfill surrounded by the county. In years past county residents raise such a stink resulting in a lawsuit and an agreement was reached that we wouldn't shoot past 9pm. So now we shoot when the sun sets earlier.

SWAT schedules one of their range days in February so we can get more lowlight training between sunset and 9pm.

[UNM1136]

Annual night quals, biennial low light training by state mandate. All evolutions are timed and scored. Most of the "low light" "training" is just review, refresh, and qual.

Back when we had access to a 180 degree range, with a shoothouse the instructors used to keep trying to outdo each other on course design. We did some really neat and fun stuff on no budget and a lot of creativity.

I used to schedule the range for a week at a time. 2200-2400, and 0400-0600. The Chief and DC, pretty much everyone with a star on their collar, bitched and bitched about a 0400 report time for mandatory training. But getting dirty with COFs requiring shooting a non standard target to be engaged under a parked unit, or having them run the shoot house in the dark with 3-4 no shoot targets and a single shoot target had them grinning and buying my breakfast. I normally slept at the range for that week teaching two classes at the beginning and end of each night. For a department of 45 sworn, it worked for us.

At that range we did a lot of shooting at and from vehicles, to include a couple of classes where we shot from moving vehicles. The rule was if you screwed up and shot a vehicle that you weren't supposed to you had to autograph the hole. Or around the hole...whatever. The only hole I saw autographed around was the one caused by a lieutenant...The SWAT lieutenant...for the largest agency in the state....and my co-instructor for the next couple of iterations of the class.

pat