Officers of the law and other people who help people in emergencies need reliable tools that can help them do their jobs. A lot of the tools officers use are getting more adaptable. They can work in several different ways that can change depending on the situation. When a police officer is writing a ticket at night, he will need a different kind of light from a flashlight than when he is chasing a criminal down a dark alley. The battery in a high-performance flashlight may need to stay charged for hours at a time.
Every day, police officers and rescue teams have to think about how much they can carry. They should be ready for any situation they might find themselves in. This is another reason why it's important to have tools that can do more than one thing. If one piece of equipment can do the work of three or four, they can still do all of their jobs without carrying around a tonne of equipment.
There are newer flashlights on the market that are much better than the ones from years ago. In a lot of these situations, LED bulbs are the best choice. LED lighting has a lot of good points. Older flashlights and spotlights use bulbs that don't work as well. Some of these bulbs give off a lot of heat, which makes them less useful and makes them more likely to break when they get hit hard. An LED bulb is much different. It doesn't make much heat at all, so more of the energy used to make light is turned into light. The light is not made by a gas-filled filament, but by a small diode that gives off light when it gets power. These diodes can take a lot more abuse and can stand up to some rough treatment.
The amount of light that LED lights give off can also be changed by changing the number of bulbs, the amount of power used, or both. When the lumens are high, the light is very bright and can hurt a lot when it hits someone in the face. These lights are often used to blind and scare suspects for a short time. When the lumens are low, the light will be very soft. It can be used, for example, to let an officer see what's going on around them without making them stand out. There will also be a middle level of light that can be used to write a traffic ticket or help a driver with a flat tyre.
The way the bulb(s) connect to the reflector is another great thing about these new lights. You can change the size of the light beam on the new LED Lenser High Performance flashlight by turning a knob. In other words, you can turn the knob to make the light beam as wide as you need it to be if you need a full floodlight. With one more turn, the light will get back to the size of a spotlight. When you add this to the fact that the light output can be changed, you have a great, high-performance, multifunction light that can be used in a wide range of tactical situations. Law enforcement, fire and rescue, and other professional workers are getting flashlights with these kinds of new features.
~Ben Anton, 2008
