LA Police Gear is a cool site. They have a ton of useful stuff at good prices. I started ordering 5.11 pants from them and then continued ordering SAR gear as I get more involved with that.

First the good. They are a one stop shop. I can usually find everything I am looking for all in one place and at a good price. Tactical pants, molle gear, paracord, its all there. They also have good customer service. They always have been more than happy to answer my questions or re-arrange my orders.

But here is the down side: It seems I can’t place an order without something being on backorder. Now, by itself this is not such a bad thing. Brownells and MidwayUSA both have things on backorder all the time. But here is the difference. Looking at LA Police Gear’s site you have no indication as to the inventory status of each item, until you actually place your order. So then I have to call them up and ask them how long until X item is back in stock and then decide if I can live with that. It would be nice to make an informed buying decision in the first place.

If anyone from LA Police Gear ends up reading this, please go take a look at MidwayUSA and Brownells and see if you can implement real time inventory like they do.

This is my most recent experience. I wanted my gear for a Labor Day Search and Rescue training. I had two orders with LAPG, both of which had back orders holding up the orders. So I called them up and had all the in stock items moved to one order and all the back orders moved to the second. Then I canceled two of the bigger ticket items that were on backorder as I could get me at botachtactical.com for cheaper/immediately. Hopefully with this arrangement I will be ready to go with 85% of my new kit for the training.

In summary, one-stop-shop, good prices, good customer service, buzzkill inventory problems.