1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally concerns non-injurious agents of coercive intervention usable by law enforcement and like personnel to manipulate the environment, including human actors within the environment.
The present invention particularly concerns a ruggedized portable bright light sources usable by policemen and firemen and the like to temporarily illuminate hazardous dark areas without substantial risk to themselves or persons present within the dark areas.
2. Background of the Invention
Criminals have always sought the obscuring cloak of darkness, and criminal activity peaks at night. Many forms of criminal activity that are currently, circa 1991, prevalent in the United States of America involve trade in illegal drugs, or criminals who have ingested illegal drugs. Because of the illegality of selling or consuming illegal drugs, both sales and consumption are commonly conducted during the hours of darkness, and in locations that are poorly illuminated.
Still other criminal activities such as theft are common at night, and are commonly conducted with no or minimal illumination. Indeed, in the common law burglary was defined as unauthorized entrance into a dwelling house at night with the intention of thievery--thereby recognizing the special severity, and the difficulty of preventing or interdicting, crime during the hours of darkness.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. the propensity for violent criminal response to any intervention by law enforcement personnel is currently very high. Criminals are not only willing to resist apprehension by use of deadly force, but are often extremely well armed with weapons of new types that were previously seldom previously encountered by the police. These weapons include semi-automatic sidearms and para-military weapons that hold, and that may rapidly fire, a considerable number, typically in excess of a dozen, large caliber rounds of considerable destructive force.
According to the concealment of darkness in which criminal activities frequently take place, the propensity of criminals to resist the discovery of these activities by the police, and the considerable armaments that criminals possess and seem willing to use in resisting discovery of their illegal activities, normal nocturnal criminal investigative activities have become increasingly hazardous to the police. One simple, and time-honored, scenario of police investigation during the hours of darkness, or in darkened locations, is to shine a flashlight beam upon a suspected scene of criminal activity and/or suspected criminals. In the past a mere inspection by the police infrequently precipitated hostilities, including gunfire. If gunfire did occur it was frequently ineffective, being only a few rounds fired from small caliber weapons.
Unfortunately, modern weapons in the hands of criminals who have scant regard for either human life or police power are serving to make this investigative scenario very risky to the police. The police now realize that even the most causal inspection by flashlight beam of a darkened area may be met with a lethal fusillade of bullets. The fear of personal injury makes the job of the police more difficult, and may even have a deleterious effect on the curiosity, and frequent observations, that are fundamental to investigative police work.
According to this state of affairs, certain technologies that serve to protect the police during their investigations of suspected criminal activities in dark areas are both useful, and widely accepted. One such technology is body armor, including the bulletproof vest. Another such technology is the investigative robot. The robot may be typically sent in harm's way under remote control without jeopardizing human life. Unfortunately, robots are expensive, time-consuming and cumbersome to deploy. Moreover, they generally lack the mobility and flexibility that is required in most investigative situations.
The most common tool--the flashlight--that the police use to illuminate dark areas has considerably improved during recent decades. Modern police flashlight cases are strong, and may be suitably used as clubs. The emitted light is considerably brighter, and is often longer-lasting, than was previously the case. The advent of quartz-halogen light sources has particularly benefitted the police flashlight, which is, in certain cases, desired to emit a very bright, nearly blinding, light beam.
An unavoidable problem with the existing police flashlight, even one emitting a very bright light, is that the policeman holding the flashlight must identify his location. There is usually a time delay between a policeman's energization of his/her flashlight and his/her visual fixation of a person or persons within the flashlight's illuminating beam. There is a further time delay while the policeman, who may be attempting to aim his/her flashlight with a one hand while protecting himself/herself with a loaded weapon in the other hand, interprets the illuminated scene. During these time delays, which may be only momentary, the policeman is in jeopardy of being shot without warning by the party(ies) illuminated, or even by other parties who are still concealed by darkness
Because of these obvious risks, and tensions, the police investigation of a scene of criminal activity, and the apprehension of a criminal suspect(s) under conditions of darkness, is an exciting moment much favored by dramatists. Unfortunately, the real-world police who all too commonly encounter this situation are not substantially comforted, nor rendered more secure, by the universal understanding, in which they share, that the literal shining of light on criminal activity is, in America circa 1991, a very hazardous activity.