Recently, the Los Angeles Police Department came up with a novel way to ensure its rifle-equipped officers take their trauma kits with them when they have to respond with their rifles. LAPD decided to incorporate the first-aid gear into a rifle magazine carrier, reasoning that very few officers would want to deploy at a critical incident without ammo.
Of course, the agency was not equipped to make the product itself. So it held a product evaluation between multiple police product manufacturers to see which one could produce the best kit. The winning entry in that evaluation was the Tuff Active Shooter Kit (T.A.S.K.) with P.T.K. manufactured by Chula Vista, Calif. -based Tuff Products.
Natt Stevens, founder and CEO of Tuff Products, says the specifications given to the companies bidding for the agency's business were fairly simple. "They basically just told us what they needed to put inside it. So we purchased all of the items that were going inside. We then plotted them out to maximize space and made a prototype to get the concept down. Then we made samples and submitted them for overall evaluations."
Stevens believes that the testing was rigorous. "They issued the kits to different officers for testing in training scenarios held at their rifle range. Those officers used our kits and probably abused them, and then we got the feedback," he says.
Critiques from the testing officers of the Tuff Products T.A.S.K. with P.T.K. were positive, according to Stevens. "They were really happy with the design and had one request, to allow officers to use both 20- and 30-round magazines, which we accomplished," he says.
