Fairfield County, South Carolina (pop. 22,000) - Cpl. Bill Dove of the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office was dispatched to a disturbance call on Jan. 4 at about 9 p.m., following up on a report that a resident in a rural neighborhood had discharged a firearm into the air. When Cpl. Dove and Dep. Ryan Johnson arrived, neighbors reported that the man had fled into the nearby woods. Officers found shotgun shell casings in the yard.
Cpl. Dove called Sgt. Chris Childers, who was working about 20 minutes away in the east zone of the county, to request that he come to the scene with the Bullard TacSight thermal imager he was carrying in his vehicle.
“I approached the woods with the TacSight and almost immediately spotted something that looked real bright, like a bright light,” Sgt. Childers said. “I stopped there, and I gave voice commands to Johnson and Dove to lead them to where the man was hiding, about 35 to 40 yards into the woods.”
Cpl. Dove and Dep. Johnson approached the woods under the cover of flood light from their handheld flashlights, using bushes and trees to protect their approach. When they spotted the suspect, they told him to put his hands in the air and walk backward toward the sound of their voices. The man refused to tell officers where he had stashed his weapon.
After the man was handcuffed, Sgt. Childers used the TacSight to scan the ground where he had been hiding. “About ten yards away from that spot, I saw two bright objects on the screen, in a bushy area covered with a lot of twigs and undergrowth,” he recounted. “I could see a very distinct outline of two weapons on the screen. The metal barrels were warmer than the wood handles.”
Without the help of the thermal imager, Sgt. Childers says officers would have called in a four-man bloodhound team to ferret out the man. “By the time the bloodhounds were there, we would have spent 30 to 40 minutes waiting. And we would have brought at least four more people to the scene,” he explained.
Sgt. Childers says the suspect asked him how officers had found him so quickly, since he had removed his white shirt to avoid being detected. “What he didn’t realize was that by exposing his skin to us, he made himself even more visible to us on the thermal imager,” Sgt. Childers quipped. “When we told him that we found him by using infrared technology, he thought we were just messing with him.”
Tactical Tips
Realizing that they were at a tactical disadvantage in this scenario, responding officers from the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office requested the TacSight in an early effort to place the odds back in their favor. Using the TacSight allowed Sgt Childers to observe the area without projecting a light beam into the woods, so initially the suspect was unaware of the presence of the officers.
Though Cpl. Dove and Dep. Johnson knew where the man was hiding after they spotted him with the TacSight, their utilization of available cover in their approach shows that they did not abandon the basics of solid police work. After the suspect was in custody, Sgt. Childers again used the technology to detect the evidence of the crime. TacSight eliminated the need for and cost of additional personnel being called to the scene.
The suspect removed his shirt in an effort to camouflage himself. This type of behavior can be effective against night vision since both our eyes and night vision rely on light. Because the TacSight only sees heat, the suspect would have shown up with or without his shirt on. Score one for the good guys!