Hey guys, I work patrol and last night we had a robbery near a church. I set up by a school nearby to see if my suspects ran through the back and while there I saw movement, probably 250 yards away. It turned out to be a guy who lived nearby on a walk, but it got me thinking about getting some kind of NV. My dept. is okay so long as it's not thermal. Can anyone recommend a good setup for use? I have found some NV monoculars on amazon that have the ability to zoom, take photos and have IR on them.

But before I dump my own $$$ on something that expensive I wanted to pool from the collective knowledge here. So with that said does anyone here have experience with a particular unit that I could afford, say $300-$400 max? Also has anyone ever run into defense attorney shenanigans over the use of NV?

Thanks guys.

Check out TNVC - there are also a lot of posts on the NV forum in the Armory section.  

How much are you looking to spend?

For nv your going to be looking at least $1200 for an ok set up to 3k for a top of the line.  I bought a barely used pinnicle enforcer for $2000 last year on the ee and its awesome.  At the least get gen 2, but gen 3 is alot better.

Check out the nv forum under armory.

Our department leases them through this program.  I believe it's $300/year and includes repairs if needed.  It might be worth looking into.

Why not thermal? We have a couple of thermal units as well as night vision, and those things have been invaluable on critical missing persons.

I came here to point you to this.


I used a lot of NOD's when I was a patrolman, but I was always queasy about wearing a set of goggles. It's like looking out of a soup can, and I was afraid some one was gonna pop me because I couldn't see them fast enough. At least with monoculars you have one naked eye to let you know the moonlight was enough to let other people see you...

For surveillance work, they were great. But for actual manhunting, for me, (shrugs)


Also, there is quite a bit of depth on this topic over in the arf NV forum. Lotta good info in there...

I missed this. You don't want any of that shit. It's a toy.


Also, I testified in county, state and federal court extensively for a couple of years on electronic and technical surveillance. I never got a question about using I2 for direct viewing. Anything I recorded was picked apart pretty thoroughly though.

Pick up a used pair of PVS 7. Great for what you described, stationary viewing. When it becomes a tactical situation go Pvs 14 or better and do ALOT of training with them.

this, we use our hand held thermal a couple times a week on stuff from looking for bad guys, missings, discarded items etc.

J-

I have my own PVS 14s
The dept went out and bought several 14s after I started using my own
They also have some other thermal stuff; never heard any legal objections.
Why would there be?
All it does is allow you to see in low light situations

Therm-app

I bought a Russian NV device at the gun show years ago. Far from being state of the art, but I could see things moving around at night that I couldn't see with the  naked eye.

I have seen the cheap toy store spy kid NV actually be usefull when used with an IR illuminator.  Use the surefire led IR lights and those things are well worth the $50 just to have the option to see into the shadows without using white light and giving your position away.  So long as you remember its a toy and dont trust your life to it.  Id never get out the car with them though.  Ive seen them used to park in a dark lot and watch the back of a dark gas station for drug traffic.

Well,

I haven't heard this spill over into direct viewing as of yet (I keep up), but

When you record, it becomes a potential Daubert issue.

The problem is twofold.

First is the application of the plain view doctrine. Would a reasonable person have been able to see what you saw? If not, should you have needed a warrant to collect that evidence?

Second is the difference between enhance and manipulate. Courts rule often in favor of enhanced images. The defense will present, however, the image is now manipulated, and therefore, altered, and no longer a true representation of the scene.

It's a ball pain, and I am glad I didn't get a great deal of pushback in my cases over digital evidence.

I think that's kind of splitting hairs in the scenarios that I envision NODS being used.

I mean, what are the scenarios where LE will be using NODS
Low light searches for lost persons or hostile threats
That's about it in my mind
I don't see how the lawyers will fault LE using NODS in those scenarios

I have used them since the early 90s, right now i use a mono that has a 5x magnifier you can screw on. i lot of cool uses i have noticed is that you can see a bad guy that has a cig a long way off and it seems like they all smoke something, their cell phones light up and you can see them, from a distance even if they are in a pocket. Around here we have a lot of cows and cow pastures and if somebody cuts through a pasture, even if they have a head start every cow in the pasture will be looking at the dude or looking at the direction they ran   .Good for tracking where the K9s are at too, we put infrared flashers on the dog or handlers and you can see them for a ways.   Our copter has a infrared laser pointer that you can point at a target and ground units using NVGs can zero in on the guy without lighting him up with the sun. the new ones for aviation have a yellow image vs a green one, In the pix they look a lot clearer, i think they take out the shadows.

Never had an issue with the Flir or NVGs in Fla that I can recall, most of the time like you said is S and R or tracking guys that already have done something to run from.  I use to watch poachers for long periods and listen with scopes but there were on county/state water in plane view, just dark. one thing i forgot to mention is that you can find cameras that are set up to catch you. usually on grows or where guys have labs hidden on state or fed property.

Iv never used ultra high end NV, the NV monoculars we have aren't bad but they don't give much definition past 30 or so yards. our thermal monoculars on the other hand are invaluable for the hunting type of work. In areas like parks, construction sites, warehouses etc.. the bad guy glows. Most of them have a visible laser as well, so when a hot spot is seen you hit it with a laser. Then guys can either move closer or go ahead and hit it with white light to check.