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Night Vision on Patrol: ITT and Richmond find monoculars improve safety and productivity

Night Vision on Patrol: ITT and Richmond find monoculars improve safety and productivity

Law Enforcement Technology May 2000

Tactical teams have seen the benefits of night vision. But what about patrol officers? Couldn’t patrol officers benefit from using night vision?

ITT Industries Night Vision partnering with the Richmond (Virginia) Police Department found the answer is yes. Specifically, the manufacturer of night vision since 1959 wanted to find out if night vision improves officer safety and productivity, says Allen Thornton, a former police officer who is developing ITT’s training program. Again, the answer is yes; night vision improves officer safety and productivity.

“The applications of night vision really go throughout policing to the field officer, to officers in specialized assignments,” says Lt. John Buckovich, officer-in-charge of the City of Richmond Police Training Academy. “For patrol officers, being able to see in the dark can mean officer survival.”

Richmond Chief of Police Jerry Oliver says darkness poses a problem for law enforcement officers because it provides a cover for criminals. Most violent crime occurs at night and the majority of police officer deaths occur at night, he notes.

Buckovich adds, “If officers can see the person before the person sees them, it gives the officers the advantage, reducing the risk of a deadly force encounter.”

In addition to experiencing the benefits of officer safety, he says, “The officers who used night vision during the test program were able to make arrests that they probably wouldn’t have been able to without using it.”

The partnership to study the use of night vision among patrol officers began in June of 1999. ITT provided night vision equipment and training and the police department provided the manpower. Two training courses were conducted at the Police Training Academy in Richmond, about 185 miles northeast of Roanoke, Virginia, where ITT Industries Night Vision, a division of ITT Industries, is based. About 55 officers were trained in a four-hour course and used the night vision. Approximately 20 additional officers were trained by fellow officers and had a chance to use the 15 monoculars ITT lent to the department during the six-month test program.

Initial Reactions

Some of the officers had never used night vision before or had used earlier generations of night vision. The night vision on loan from ITT was Generation III, the latest technology on the market.

When night vision was introduced to the officers, at least one officer was skeptical.

“I didn’t think that night vision would be that useful, “ says K-9 Officer James Turner. “I thought there would be too much light in the city. I was very pleasantly surprised at how advanced this was and how useful it was.”

Earlier generation night vision that Turner had used outside his job “whited out” when there was too much light. The model used by Richmond police in the test program was the night enforcer PVS-14. This model has automatic gain, or brightness, control and prevents the “white out” effect.

Officer Stephen Pond confirms the equipment had no problem adjusting to bright light. He went to the brightest lit streets he could find and looked directly into headlights with the night vision. “It went from one extreme of bright light to very little light with no difference, ” Pond says.

The PVS-14 in addition to automatic gain control has a gain control knob, which allows further adjustment of brightness.

Not having enough light did not cause the officers problems either. The monocular has an infrared illuminator that can be turned on to create light invisible to the human eye. Although the odds may be slim, it should be noted that infrared can be detected by others using night vision.

Patrol Applications

During the test program, Richmond patrol officers discovered the applications of night vision are as varied as duties of the patrol officer.

Pond used night vision while patrolling public parks along the James River, where there is very little lighting. “The night vision lit that up,” he says. “You realize that you’re using the night vision (images have a green tint), but you can tell what you’re looking at.

Officer John Graham Jr. used night vision for parking lot surveillance. “It allowed me to see things more clearly,” Graham says.

While surveying street corners for drug deals, night vision helped Officer Michael McCray obtain a stealth position and gather intelligence. “We’d use it instead of using our flashlights to avoid falling down and breaking our necks,” he says.

Night Vision also can be used to search buildings, inside and outside. Inside the dark buildings, night vision can prove helpful in daytime or nighttime.

Responding to a burglary call, Turner found night vision was almost too helpful. When he entered the boarded-up house, known as a place for prostitution and drugs, it was pitch dark. Searching the house, Turner did not find a burglar; instead he found a naked man sleeping in a bed. “He didn’t have any idea how he could hear me and not see anything,” Turner says. “Night vision allowed me to see that he didn’t have a weapon and that he was in fact alone in the room.” He added, “I’d rather not have seen him naked.”

Without night vision, Turner uses a flashlight. If he had been cutting his flashlight on and off, he says at one point the naked man would have seen him.

On the outside of buildings, Turner says night vision is helpful because a burglar wouldn’t be able to look out a window and see him shining a light.

While a fellow officer was driving, McCray used night vision to look out the patrol car and watch people as they were going down an alley. A call went out over the radio to be on the lookout for two males with guns in the area. McCray was able to spot them two blocks away with night vision. One of the suspects, a 15 year old who had been in a shooting two weeks earlier, was in possession of a stolen gun and drugs. He was apprehended.

“With call change, you don’t know what you’re going to go on,” Officer Douglas Wendel says. “You don’t know what you’re going to do. Having night vision by your side is very convenient. You go on a call, and if there’s a situation where you need it, you have it. You have more of an advantage to handle the call.”

What officers liked, what they didn’t like

The equipment held up to the officers’ tests. It’s not a good idea to try this, but this particular model even survived accidentally being dropped on concrete.

The only time the equipment failed is when the batteries mistakenly had been left on. This was remedied by an officer stopping at a convenience store and purchasing AA batteries.

Officers tried out the Night Enforcer PVS-14, with and without the head mount. Some did not like the head mount, others were not fazed by it.

Turner noted it’s difficult to walk through the woods with the head mount on. “You don’t always see all the branches and stuff hanging down and your peripheral vision isn’t as good,” he says. “I found it’s better to pick up the monocular, look around, pick a position and move.”

“I tried walking with the headset on and I just didn’t feel comfortable,” Wendel says. I felt if I had to draw and shoot my weapon, I would have felt real uncomfortable.”

Building his confidence in training would have helped, he said.

“Nowadays we need every advantage we can get,” Wendel says. “People have (radio) scanners and lookouts who hang out in the bushes with two-way radios.”

A couple of times lookouts spotted Wendel using the monocular, which has no magnification. Adding a 3X magnifier lens to the front of the monocular allowed him to stay back farther. From about two blocks away he could watch a corner for hand-to-hand drug transactions.

“I think the magnification increases the officer’s safety because the officer doesn’t have to get up close,” Buckovich says. “He can see what’s going on as he makes his approach so it gives him more time to prepare.

Why isn’t every officer equipped with night vision?

The officers who participated in the test program do not have night vision by their side every shift. The department has eight night vision units. Four are assigned to specialized units other than patrol units and four are available to sign out when a supervisor calls Buckovich. Looking at the benefits, why isn’t each of the more than 700 sworn officers at the Richmond Police Department issued night vision? Or why isn’t the equipment in at least every vehicle?

A Generation III monocular with an image intensifier tube-life of five years can cost more than $3,300. In relative terms, this is almost inexpensive compared to the $10,000 night vision equipment once cost law enforcement.

Buckovich says he feels so strongly that night vision increases officer safety that he would like to see the federal government provide grants just as it does for bullet-resistant vests.

Although the test program is over, Richmond Police Department will continue to receive equipment from ITT to test. Officers expressed an interest in trying out night vision binoculars or maybe night vision with video for narcotics cases. Those who didn’t have a chance to use the magnifier attachment wanted to see its benefits.

Working together to bring about the best equipment and training for law enforcement, ITT employees and Richmond police officers envisioned what night vision might look like in the future years, maybe decades from now. There was talk of a monocular Velcroed to a uniform, a flashlight with night vision, a unit with forward looking infrared and image intensification, night vision eye glasses, and an entire windshield of night vision.

For now, patrol officers would just like to have night vision equipment with a 3X magnifier in their hands.

For more information, visit ITT Night Vision’s web site.

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