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Why Do Capitol Police Have Striped Tape on Their Pistols?

A design problem that's been poorly solved?

By Rain Noe - January 8, 2021

in Social Impact

If you looked closely at those shots of the Capitol Police standing off against the rioters, you likely noticed something unusual on their guns:

And when a Redditor purchased a used pistol once belonging to the Israeli police, s/he found it came with yellow tape on it:

Image: xPainWarriorx

"I heard it was used by Israeli police to avoid friendly fire in situations where they may not be in uniform," s/he wrote.

It would make good sense for plainclothes officers moving among civilians to have highly visible markings on their guns, to avoid being mistaken for one of the bad guys. However, I can't imagine that this would work for long; surely an observant criminal, prior to an event, could pick up a roll of colored tape in order to blend in.

The striped tape used by the Capitol Police is at least not single-colored, but would be easy enough to fake with a red Sharpie and a steady hand. I imagine the tape colors would have to change daily and/or randomly in order to be effective.

Also, in the Capitol Police news photos from different angles, you'll notice each officer only has the tape on one side of their barrels, greatly limiting its visibility.

If "friendly" identification is indeed the purpose of these colored strips of tape, I'd say this is a design problem that's not been adequately solved. The stickers are diminutive and the visibility is not high, and they can be duplicated by others.

What would you suggest as a design fix? What easily discernible visual cue could an officer place on their gun daily, swapping it on a schedule, that would not compromise the gun's operation and holstering/unholstering?

Of course, in a perfect world police would carry effective but nonlethal weapons. In this world, however, that seems like a distant reality.

o

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Tod Corlett

3 years ago

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The Capitol Police have a well-documented problem with leaving their handguns in public bathrooms: https://www.rollcall.com/2019/02/27/capitol-police-weapon-left-unattended-in-capitol-bathroom-again/
Could be they added some visibility enhancement to help avoid this.

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Matt Chin

3 years ago

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The bad guys have neckbeards and flags on spears, no need to sweat the tape coloration.

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Matthew Beyer

3 years ago

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I know that the US military uses RFID tags to track equipment and assemble load-outs for their people. Maybe it's something like that?

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Tzvi (Heshy) Baum

3 years ago

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it can be duplicated. it's intended to make officers take a second look before firing. (By the same rationale, a bad guy can put on a police uniform.) I guess seeing a plainclothes guy with a weapon (even if it's holstered) will make the room more tense knowing (or thinking he is a good guy) definitely helps. (obviously, once shots are fired the situation changes. -maybe the bad guy took it away from the good guy. so the tape is just a reminder to take extra caution before shooting.)

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