Honest opinions please. Who here would use this product?

[Dragonbreath]

You asked for honest opinions, remember. This product is for stupid people. A plain-clothes or off-duty officer, when trying to deal with a situation, has no time to be distracted by thinking about (much less actually dealing with) putting on a fancy sash. When uniformed officers appear, comply with their orders, put down your weapon, raise your hands and identify yourself using your official credentials when it's safe to do so. No uniformed officer is going to assume that a stranger is a sworn officer simply because the guy's wearing a weird sash that says so, especially since the bad guy could have won the fight and taken the sash off the real officer.

[G50AE]

I would hope that no self respecting "sheepdog" type would wear this tacky crap.

Let me repeat,



Daisy says, "We don't need no stinkin' banners, sashes, badges, whatever the hell you want to call them!"

[G50AE]

You asked for honest opinions, remember. This product is for stupid people.

I couldn't agree more.

[jg1967]

The product was designed by a police officer specifically for use by plainclothes/off-duty police for ID after a shooting in an effort to avoid 'blue-on-blue' events and the tragedy that follows. It was later expanded to include the security and CCW labels as you can see.

The idea with the CCW model is to provide 1) a high visibility indicator (I believe he has some pictures comparing it with regular clothing and just a badge at night) that 2) gives you an extra second or two for the police arriving to sort you out. The idea is that the banner will make for some additional hesitation that could, under the circumstances, keep you from getting shot.

I would expect that you would still get proned out or restrained in some manner, but the main point is to keep them from immediately shooting you, especially if they come running up before you have secured your weapon after a shooting incident.

Obviously, if the local agencies get some kind of heads-up or briefing about it, it will work better.

Phillip Gain appears to have the best pro/con evaluation of the main points about this. I hope this background helps a bit with understanding about the product.

There's a lot of people in here that will mock anything that looks or smells like a badge. They tend to have very well entrenched opinions which cannot be changed by facts like this having been developed by a former LEO. They do know best what works and can imagine each and every situation ahead of time and determine the best outcome. They tend to stick to simple mantras like "consealed means consealed" (it was actually spelled like that) whether they have anything to do with the question or not.

Sorry, guess I had to get that anti TROLL gripe off my chest.

[Samuel]

You asked for honest opinions, remember. This product is for stupid people. A plain-clothes or off-duty officer, when trying to deal with a situation, has no time to be distracted by thinking about (much less actually dealing with) putting on a fancy sash. When uniformed officers appear, comply with their orders, put down your weapon, raise your hands and identify yourself using your official credentials when it's safe to do so. No uniformed officer is going to assume that a stranger is a sworn officer simply because the guy's wearing a weird sash that says so, especially since the bad guy could have won the fight and taken the sash off the real officer.

As previously stated, I will not simply assume that a person with a sash is not a threat. Short of being in uniform on shift, calling for help on the radio, and being near a marked patrol vehicle I will assume you're not a police officer. This is for everyone's safety.

A very good example of uniformed and plainclothes officers dealing with a situation at the same time was in Cincinnati, Ohio on 11/17/2009 in Spring Grove Village. In the surveillance camera video, where a plainclothes officer shot and killed the suspect in a vehicle trying to flee.



If you watch the video, right after the shots are fired the plainclothes officer puts down his handgun. I would like to think that the officer did this because there were uniformed officers in the background, and with the amount of adrenalin and confusion going on he didn't want to be mistaken as a suspect and risk being shot as well.