I rarely need a siren for anything. My trick has been to know how to get to a scene the most efficient way rather than the common way. For years I beat the patrol officers and they never figured out how. The amber lights themselves are causing you the most problem. Fire department air horns are usually real air horns and run off the air pressure supplied to the air brakes.
Is it even legal to disobey the traffic laws with amber lights? In my opinion amber is not an emergency color, blue and red are. Our state law allows a squad with emergency lights to disobey the traffic laws and you just might be leaving yourself and the department open to a huge problem if you get into an accident on the way to a scene. you need to talk to someone that knows Virgina law.

Hey guys,

Just be grateful you have lighting equipment. At my dept, the CSO units have no lighting equipment whatsoever. And oddly enough....I still beat the Ofcrs to most of their calls.....

In my opinion, CSO units should have Code 3 equipment, and the CSO should be trained to drive in such a manner. This would be useful for responding to accident scenes, marjor disasters, or any other situation where it would be warranted.

The Tucson, AZ police department CSOs are fully integrated into the patrol squads. We use the same patrol cars as commissioned officers do. A squad (usually 6-8 officers, a CSO, a lead police officer (LPO) and a sergeant) has 9-10 assigned vehicles in the squad pool. We take one of them. It has the same red and blue overheads, wig-wags, take-downs and alley lights, MTCs, radio, etc. as any other officer uses. We respond to ANY traffic accident unless there is a fight-brewing situation in which case we usually end up doing the accident report while an officer handles the disorderly conduct. We could not do what we do with a vehicle equipped with amber lights - we would be totally ignored. As it is, the Tucson motoring public barely responds when commissioned officers run code 3!

I work for a smaller city in MN only about 25,000 ppl but i believe that the red and blue lights do make a huge difference. Now we may be a little different bc we are alowed to respond CODE 3 to medicals and PI's if we are certified. THe only amber lights we have is in our arrowstick, and i believe that bc we do have the reds/blues we do get more of the respect that we as CSO's all deserve. NOne of us when doing our jobs needs to be confused

ADDENDUM: that last sentence should read...none of us when doing our jobs wants/needs to be confused with just a city worker of streets worker or anything like that.

I agree that CSOs should have Red/Blue lights. I am not a CSO (hoping to become one this summer in MN!) but I know that whenever I see a CSO vehicle with red/blue lights it shows me their authority. I have also seens CSOs going Code 3 to accidents and the only thing that makes me get out of the way for them are those red and blue lights. If they had amber lights I would be hesitant to move over. A park district in MN has vehicles with amber lights and when you see their vehicles you think of them as maintanence (though they don't carry anything on their belts except gloves and don't respond to accidents, only medicals within the park). So overall, red/blue lights should stay!

I have to agree with everything that has been said here in relation to keeping red/blue's on CSO vehicles. Simply put, I know that at least the side of my squad says nothing but "Police" and I think that with that said we need the red/blue. I think the reason that some departments want amber is because ther are people out there who are CSO's that have this complex that they are cops....I know that 99.9% of us out there know our place..and are probably reminded of it inside our department. But I know those same people who remind us that we are simple CSO's still want us to get the same respect when we are out on the street....enough said I think my point is made.