Thank you all for the responses and ideas. I am not looking to re-create the wheel just looking to give some of the patrolman an enhanced capability to accurately engage targets out to 150 yards. The chief is not looking to get rid of his sniper (me) but in this changing world a SRT cannot be on standby 24 hours a day. Looking to fill that void between an urban rifle and sniper.
Just looking for course of fire, weapons set up/optics, eventually I will have to present some thoughts/ideas to the Chief. I want to be able to present a couple of different options. My work email is
nsnichols@sanfordmaine.org
Now I understand what you're trying to do. It's bad juju, and here's why.
First, there is no reason a SWAT team cannot be on call. You may not have enough guys working to constitute a full team on any given shift because your agency is small but that is what cell phones, recall rosters, and mutual aid agreements are for.
There is no reason a well-trained rifleman on an AR cannot make a good shot at 150yards. If your patrol guys can't make hits at 150 they should not have a rifle. This also brings up the issue of where do you think they'd have to engage at that distance? I've done the math in my AO, which is urban. I know where my long shots may be, because we've pre-planned high-risk locations.
BUT there are two primary issues and a host of secondary, tertiary and quarternary ones.
LE sniper shots are usually within 100 yards. Same-same for sniper/observer OP locations.
This is important because even at that short distance sniper teams have excellent optics to fulfill their intel gathering function. The problem with making a a shot at 100yds or more in LE is not so much the marksmanship piece but the decision-making piece. That is to say, your optics have to be good enough for you to determine your target needs to be shot. You must be able to articulate how and why your target, who is more than a football field away, was about to cause death or serious bodily injury when you pulled the trigger. And your equipment will be a huge factor here, because the naked eye can't make out sufficient detail at those distances to make that decision unless the bad guy is shooting at you. Doing it with iron sights or an Aimpoint is not an option.
Therefore, your patrol cops would need better optics than a 3x flip away magnifier. And unless you want them constantly pointing a rifle at something, they need either a spotting scope or (preferably) a spotter. In my city, we coined a saying. "Don't scope the pope." You can imagine where that came from and why.
Depending on the optic you choose, you are likely to degrade their ability to use that rifle at CQB and short distance. And truth be told that's where they'll earn their money.
How often are you going to let these guys train? It would have to be an enhanced training schedule relative to the non-DM patrol cops.
If you do this, you'll end up with a few specially equipped cops who will be trained better than their fellows but not to the level of a fully qualified sniper. Problem is, you'll be deploying them as baby snipers until a real sniper can arrive.
In a civil lawsuit you will be spending an exorbitant amount of time, money, research, expert witness fees, and testimony trying to make the jury understand the difference between your designated marksman (which as has already been pointed out is a term used in some agencies to denote snipers) and a real sniper. At the end of the day, the jury may understand the difference but decide that if a real, schoolhouse trained sniper was on the gun things would have been different. Verdict for the plaintiff.
I could go on and on.
For my money, train another sniper/observer team or arrange for proper mutual aid coverage. Taking half-measures is not going to solve your (perceived) problem and will guarantee headaches down the road.
