Holster idea sends cop from force to business world

BOISE — After 21 years in law enforcement, Mike Lowe had racked up his fair share of equipment mishaps.

While running after a suspect, he saw his gun bouncing along the ground and realized it had jostled out of his holster. While struggling with an attacker he saw the weapon fall to the floor. The holsters that did hold the gun securely, Lowe said, made it difficult to quickly re-seat the weapon if nonlethal force was needed.

The Associated Press

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Finally fed up, Lowe decided to design a new holster himself. The result, dubbed "The Professional," has drawn interest from law enforcement agencies around the nation and could be available in March.

"I got tired of waiting for the manufacturers to come out with something better," Lowe said, "so I just started thinking of a better way to do it."

Lowe, who eventually left his job as an instructor with the Boise Police Department to start Tactical Design Labs http://www.tdlabs.com/ , hit on the idea while sitting at his kitchen table.

He was looking at his gun, imagining all the ways it could be secured inside a holster, when he reached out and pressed on the bowl of a spoon lying nearby. The spoon’s handle lifted off the table. He pressed again and had a flash of insight.

A simple lever mechanism could secure the gun from inside the holster — instead of the outside strap used by many models, Lowe decided. The release button could be positioned to encourage a correct firing grip and covered with a protective sheath, making it harder for criminals to defeat.

"The problem with many holsters is they rely on a strap or hood that snaps closed. Most children recognize how to defeat a snap," he said.

Other secure holsters require that the wearer first push down on the gun before drawing, or use an unnatural forward motion to free the weapon. That, says Lowe, can force an officer to shift his grip after he draws the gun to have a proper shooting hold. Many more holsters combine the retention methods, making them more secure but requiring that officers learn a series of movements.

"Most often, police officers will draw their gun prematurely because of the difficulty with holsters," Lowe said. "But as the situation progresses, they may not need the gun and want to use nondeadly force instead. So then you need to holster the weapon and have it secure."

Placing a gun in a holster with multiple safety features can use up valuable seconds in a confrontation, said Lowe.

"I’ve known officers who have had to throw their guns away because a suspect was rushing them and they needed to have their hands free for nondeadly force," he said.

Lowe’s holster is made out of hard plastic and has a cylinder — called a finger tray — running alongside the barrel.

Inside the cylinder is a button that releases the holster’s grip on the gun’s ejection port. When an officer draws the weapon, Lowe said, he uses an index finger to hit the button and pulls the gun free, leaving the hand in a natural firing position.

Engineer and co-inventor Tony Senn refined Lowe’s idea. Plastic can expand or contract with temperature changes, so Senn began a series of tests to ensure the holster would not grip the gun too loosely or tightly. He made sure the material would not be weakened by the cleaning solutions and oils used on guns.

Senn even adjusted the opening in the bottom of the finger tray to make sure it was wide enough for a quarter. That way, Senn said, if an officer accidentally dropped some change inside, it would fall to the floor rather than jamming the release button.

The holster was nearly complete, but Senn still had one concern. He feared the design was just too ugly for traditional-minded cops.

A faux basketweave leather finish was added to mimic the look of the holsters already popular with law enforcement.

"Without the basketweave, it looks a little Luke Skywalkerish so a cop for 30 years was going to say no," Senn said.

Sgt. Dave Douglas, a range master with the San Diego Police Department is waiting for some of Lowe’s holsters to arrive.

After a friend at a marksmanship training school in Texas mentioned the holster, Douglas decided to test the product for his department.

"My first impressions are that it’s well designed and does everything that we’d require it to do: protecting the gun, being able to present the gun rapidly and the draw sequence is easy," he said. "We’ll test them here at the range and then send them out with a few officers in the field to see how they do."

As a rule of thumb, Douglas said, an officer must practice drawing a weapon 2,500 times before the motion becomes automatic. The practice is necessary, he said, because the fine motor skills required with most holsters can evaporate in times of stress.

The high-stress nature of the job is part of the reason the San Diego Police Department no longer allows most of its officers to use so-called Level III holsters — holsters with three different gun retention mechanisms.

"Some of them have hoods you have to slip off, some have levers to push and so on," Douglas said. "There’s probably not too many situations where there’s more stress than in a shooting situation, and sometimes the fine motor skills it takes to draw a gun just go away."

Lowe hopes that problem will become obsolete once he launches the new holster at a Las Vegas trade show in February.

"It’s the most important piece of equipment an officer can have next to his weapon," Lowe said. "If you’ve ever been to an officer’s funeral, you understand how important safety is. I’m dedicated to get this out."