Look back at police shows as recent as the 1980's and the cops will have a gun, handcuffs and nightstick. Sometimes they carry extra ammunition and occasionally a huge "portable" radio.

Look at a modern cop and you'll see a lot more. Most carry autoloading pistols with a couple extra magazines. They might wear a duoble cuff pouch with two different kinds of handcuffs. The portable radio is common with a handset/speaker that attaches to thier shoulder. They carry pepper spray, a small flashlight, utility knife, maybe some flex cuffs. They might have some Emergancy medical equipment and often carry a cell phone or pager. Sometimes even more. Cops have taken to calling it their "Batman Utility Belt".

The needs of a cop have always been the same but their way of fulfilling those needs have evolved.

Wyatt Earp is known as a gunfighter but most of his carreer was marked by being a peacekeeper. He was known for walking into a bar with an unruly drunk and if the supect put up a fight he would cub him over the head with his pisto and haul the dazed jerk of to jail. Witnessing this method, a reporter named Ned Buntline gave him a long barelled pistol that could easily serve double duty as a billy club. A city cop in that time period might carry a pistol on his hip but often carried a billy club on a wrist strap for the same purpose.

Handcuffs were used for transporting criminals but until the design was refined they weren't portable enough for everyday use. A law man before that might carry a short length of rope or a leather strap if they thought they might have to take a prisoner very far.

As Nightsticks and handcuffs sere refined and standerdized they became more common but the need for communication was served by having help that could run a message or by police call boxes in metro areas. 2-way radios started getting some use as the military refined smaller versions for portable use but up until the early to mid 1990's a radio with sufficient output was generally to large, bulky and heavy for everyday carry. They were more common with cops that walked a beat but most prefered the radio in thier car with a better antenna and more power. Even then they could be listened to by anyone with a reciever so they weren't used for secure communication.

The MagLite was a boon to cops who now had a portable light source with power near their squad car spotlights and large enough to double as a nightstick with the aluminum shell to protect the works.

Mace gave cops another option beyond impact weapons and lethal force. Personal teargas. Unfortunately, CS Gas, used in Mace, has some nasty side effects that could result in lawsuits if overused so the ancient method of using pepper oil was turned into the modern pepper spray. Combined with ultraviolet dye it not only disables the suspect but also marks them incase they escape. The pepper oil washes off but causes a rash that is easily identified. Add the dye and it is hard to deny who got sprayed.

As police duties expanded it became common to carry a rescue/utility knife, CPR mask, Rubber gloves, and sometimes other tools. Cellphones combine with digital encryption to provide secure communication by phone and radio and the cell phones often have a signal even when the officer is to far from a radio tower to reach dispatch on the radio. Small radio repeaters can even allow an officer to use a handheld radio when he's out of range of a tower as long as his car radio has the power to reach the nearest tower. The repeater recieves a signal from even light duty handheld radios and repeats it through the car radio, effectively allowing the officer to have the power of a base unit in the palm of his hand.

All this makes for a full toolbelt but barely scratches the surface of police tech. Check out more on the web and stay tuned for further hubs on the subject.