You Are Your Flashlight

Publication

Blair, J.P., Martaindale, M.H., Spivey, E.D. (2022). An Evaluation of light positioning on suspect accuracy in low light environments. Justice Evaluation Journal, 5(1), 109-119. DOI: 10.1080/24751979.2021.1970482

What Was the Issue?

Police officers frequently search buildings and other locations in low light (dark) conditions. To help with these searches, they often use flashlights. A variety of flashlight carry positions are taught. Three of the most common are depicted in the illustration below. This study looked at the impact of flashlight position on the accuracy of a suspect firing at an officer. The basic theory behind this study was that in the dark, the flashlight represents the officer and the suspect will fire at the flashlight. If the officer is holding the flashlight close to their body, as in the Neck Index and Harries Techniques, the suspect’s rounds are more likely to hit the officer.

How Did They Look at It?

The researchers recruited 236 students to roleplay hostile suspects. The illustration below shows the room set-up. The suspects were brought into the dimly lit room through door 1 and placed in the suspect position. The police officer was played by a lab assistant and was already in the room behind a curtain. The suspects were told that the lights would be turned off to simulate nighttime and the curtain raised. The suspects were also told that they were playing the role of an offender who had just shot someone and run into this room to ambush a police officer that was chasing them. The suspects were given a training pistol with a single marking round. The assistant then turned off the lights and continued talking to the suspect as the officer quietly moved into the position marked with an X. The assistant then left the room, and the curtain was raised. The officer then activated his light in one of the three common carry positions according to a random assignment schedule. If the suspect didn’t shoot at the officer in 2 seconds, the officer turned off the light and the scenario ended. If the suspect fired at the officer, the scenario ended, and the officer was inspected to see if the shot hit.

What Did They Find?

About a quarter (27%) of the participants did not fire within the two seconds. These participants were excluded from the analysis. The researchers speculated that they were perhaps trying to get a better fix on the officer before firing.

For the participants that actually shot, 71% hit the officer in the neck index condition, 67% of the shots hit the officer in the Harries condition, and 46% in the dagger condition. This difference was statistically significant and suggested that flashlight position had a large impact on suspect accuracy.

So What?

You are your flashlight. In dark conditions, a suspect will use the flashlight as a representation of where you are. If the light is close to you, the suspect has a better chance of successfully shooting you. Carrying the light in the dagger position protects you.

There are some tradeoffs. The dagger position is less supported than the other conditions and may be more tiring. This may have been a bigger factor in the past when larger heavier flashlights were the norm, but modern lights are quite compact and light. The dagger position also requires the officer to operate his or her firearm one-handed, where the Harries position provides at least some support. So, the dagger position may not allow the officer to fire as accurately as the Harries. We discuss why we think improving first shot survivability is important in some depth in the article. In a nutshell, we think that given the reactive nature of police encounters, it is unlikely that the officer will fire before the suspect. Therefore, it is more important for the officer to survive the suspect’s first shot, than to maximize his or her first shot accuracy. You can read the article and see if you buy our argument.

The “flashlight as you” idea plays itself out in a variety of ways in dark conditions. For example, it also appears that the beam of the flashlight represents your gaze (Think Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings). This means that the officer can control a suspect’s movements with the beam of the light. For example, he can keep a suspect pinned behind a piece of furniture by keeping the light on the furniture.

There are several other ways that a flash light can be used to create an advantage. This is so much the case that some officers who have taken our low light course have reported back that when they have to search, they now turn off lights to make the area dark!

We have data on some of these other uses of the flashlight that we haven’t published. Let me know if you are interested, and I can pull some of it together to publish here.