When assisting another officer on a nighttime traffic stop, the cover or backup officer, upon his or her approach, should turn their headlights off, leave the marker lights on, and switch the emergency lights to only show to the rear.

This tactic avoids silhouetting the contact officer for the subjects in the target vehicle to see and also avoids blinding or reducing the contact officer's night vision. Obviously if the stop is of the felony type, we want as much light on the subjects as possible, and this tactic would not apply.

Just think of how many times you've been sitting in your vehicle conducting business--using the MDT, writing a ticket, or what have you--and your cover officer arrives and unintentionally blinds you with their headlights, which shine into your rearview mirrors. This tactic will avoid that problem.