The Basic Police Go-Bag

Let's face it: active shooter incidents aren't going away and we're seeing them more often in locations that AREN'T schools. So the need for a patrol rifle accompanied by your Go-Bag, sitting in your trunk, maintained and ready to go, still exists. Therefore I ask you... what's in your Go-Bag?

The Basic Police Go-Bag

Let's face it: active shooter incidents aren't going away and we're seeing them more often in locations that AREN'T schools. So the need for a patrol rifle accompanied by your Go-Bag, sitting in your trunk, maintained and ready to go, still exists. Therefore I ask you... what's in your Go-Bag? While that seems a simple question to answer (if you're honest), perhaps we need to consider what kind of bag it should be and what it makes sense to have in it.

Before I get too far into that, let me point out what, to me, is an essential difference between the law enforcement crisis incident response go-bag and the all-too-commonly-discussed bugout bag: An LE go-bag is loaded to equip the officer with essentials to support him (or her)self through the response and fight against one or more active shooters. A bugout bag is more of a general purpose 72-hour (or more) survival pack. All I'm discussing in this article is the LE go-bag.

First and foremost I think we need to realize that although a backpack is better to have than nothing, it's not the most convenient or efficient type of bag to use for this purpose. After all, some of the items in your go-bag need to be accessed on the move, and that's difficult to do if everything is in a pack on your back. To my way of thinking,...