why do police take cover behind

Here is a test. Drive your car to an area that is out in the open.

Park the car and proceed to get out. When you're going this (getting out of the car), have a buddy take a couple of shots in your general direction.

See where you go for cover
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ROTFLOL at that one because you are exactly right. A car door may not provide adequate protection but it's better than nothing.
 
Cover vs. concealment.

Cover is bullet proof (thick trees, brick wall, earth mound, sandbags, etc.)

Concealment is not bullet proof, but offers some protection because you are partly out of sight, a harder target, concealment may de-celerate or deflect the bullets. Household walls, appliances, furniture, and car doors are concealment.

Out in the open you are a sitting duck!
 
I like to find some secluded place to shoot and try all sorts of real world targets to determine if they are concealment or cover. You'd be surprised. I hear that .223 rifles have a tough time penetrating windshields because of the angle and most just bounce right off.

having shot many many 5.56 at a large variety of windsheilds(bmw m3-dump truck) i can assure that this is untrue.

it also takes a suprising amount of 5.56 to stop/seize an engine.
 
Police Interceptor Kevlar Panels

The doors of police cruisers sometimes do offer cover and not merely concealment.

Beginning a few years ago Ford started offering the option of factory installed Kevlar panels in the doors of Crown Victoria Police Interceptors. I believe this was an attempt to capture some of the market discovered for such products by aftermarket installers.

They were somewhat expensive, starting out at over $1,000 per door, with the option of ordering panels in both front doors or just the driver's door.

The manufacturer brags about its products here:

http://www.body-armor.com/vehicle.php
 
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On TV the car door is cover, in real life it's concealment.
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That being said, most people are quite indoctrinated by TV. When I attended some training recently, one of the other students was addressing a target in a pickup truck. The bad guy lost sight of the student, who ducked and moved all the way around the back of the bed to shoot the bad guy through the open driver's window while the driver was still searching for the student on the passenger side. The instructor said good job, but why didn't you just shoot him through the cab? Two layers of sheet metal and some vinyl isn't cover and you can see where the bad guy is.

We're trained to look for that clean shot. Hunting may play a part of that also. We wait until the deer is out of the thicket to get that sure one shot kill.
 
I read an account of a BG who had ambushed LE with a .45 ACP. BG was eventually killed, but all 8 of the .40 S&W hits he took (180 gr. hydrashocks) had passed thru the car he was hiding behind, and all penetrated only an inch. He was finally hit by 00 buck that was fired at his feet under the car, and finished with 5 shots of .223.
Lessons learned:
Hide behind anything you can get to.
Don't rely on anything to be the "end all" for any situation.
Keep shooting until the threat is neutralized
If you're caught in a bad spot and you have a lull and a fresh mag, switch to the fresh mag!
 
Actually you fire the 00buck at the road near the car in line with the BG when his feet are swept out from under him you follow up with a couple more blasts. You can do the same thing with a handgun I used to teach it.
 
any object with mass is going to be "resistant"... The question is to what degree. Any cover is better than no cover. Cover is more than just a bullit deflector. It obscures the position of the body that you have behind it. Thus making the shooter estimate where your body is or just limit them to shooting at the part you have exposed(which is much smaller).
 
For the same reason folks "hide in the dark" even though we now have night vision stuff. Instinct is to get out of the light or behind concealment of some sort.

Also, as has been covered, newer cruisers might actually have the ballistic panels installed.
 
About 10 years ago the city of Los Angeles made all of the driver side doors and windows on patrol cars bulletproof (their words). This was on the news and the big concern was cost, something like $1500 plus per car.

I'm not sure they could stop a .50 BMG round, but I'm sure they got the handgun and most normal rifle rounds stopped. In this case, the door makes more sense as cover.
 
We had a motor officer get in a situation where the only thing he had to hide behind was a parking meter post. He used it and survived. Either the BG was a lousy shot or someone was on his shoulder.
 
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