Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 13, 1990 TAG: 9005130207
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B6 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A grin spreads across his ruddy, weather-beaten face. "Nothing to it, folks," he says with the satisfaction of a man who has shot himself more than 130 times as a sales pitch for the bulletproof vests his company manufactures.
Despite Davis' confidence in his product, the federal government is pushing national standards for body armor that he and other producers consider unreasonable. The feud is so bitter that some law enforcement groups, for whom vest quality is a life-or-death matter, are asking Congress to intervene.
Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., said he expects to introduce a bill to establish mandatory standards this month. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., has written Attorney General Dick Thornburgh urging him to mediate a compromise. "The increasing uncertainty can only hurt law enforcement officers," Levin wrote.
Lt. Curtis Vandenberg of the Michigan State Police worries that arguing over vest standards in public endangers police. "The more media coverage there is, the more bad guys will know that police are wearing vests and they'll shoot for the head," he said.
The highly technical debate boils down to four issues: how the vests should be designed, particularly the amount of stuffing needed to stop bullets; how they should be tested for effectiveness; who should set the standards; and whether the standards should be voluntary or mandatory.
The National Institute of Justice, a branch of the Justice Department, has set voluntary standards for vests and tested them for quality since the early 1970s.
During testing, vests are mounted on clay blocks and bullets are fired into them from varying distances and angles.
To meet institute standards, a vest must stop bullets and prevent them from making an excessively large dent in the clay. That's because a bullet can strike with enough force to damage internal organs even if it doesn't penetrate the vest.
The government toughened its standards in 1987 to keep pace with changes in weapons and ammunition, said Lester Shubin, science and technology director for the institute.
Now, more than 50 percent of the vests flunk the tests.
Manufacturers - including Davis' Second Chance Body Armor of Central Lake, Mich., - cried foul, saying the only way to ensure their vests would consistently pass would be to make them so thick and bulky that police wouldn't wear them.
"Police officers don't really want to wear the stuff, anyway. Give them any excuse to take it off and they will," said Ed Bachner, ballistics manager for E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. His company manufactures Kevlar, the synthetic fiber used in most bulletproof armor the past 20 years.
"Police are dying because they aren't wearing vests, not because the vests are bad," Bachner said.
Surveys show that only about 30 percent of police wear vests, even though many law enforcement agencies require it, said George Austin Jr., national executive officer of the Fraternal Order of Police. Manufacturers say the number may be lower.
Du Pont has documented more than 1,000 "saves," or incidents in which wearing Kevlar body armor prevented death or serious injury, Bachner said.
Most are shootings, but many saves have resulted from stabbings, auto accidents and even a couple of bull gorings.
A single vest retails for about $350, Davis says, although he recently sold 4,000 to the Detroit Police Department for $175 apiece.
Larry Gates, executive director of the Personal Protective Armor Association, an industry group, says no vest ever has failed to protect a wearer from bullets it was designed to stop.
"They've performed flawlessly in the field, where it counts," he said. "But in the laboratory tests under the NIJ standards, over half the vests fail. The test is flawed, . . . but the NIJ won't budge."
Shubin counters that vests have a good field record because his agency's tests have kept duds off the market.
"We believe a lot of their armor is marginal," he said. "But we believe if it passes our standard it's going to work 100 percent on the street, and it has. We're being faulted for being successful."
Last year, Du Pont and the Personal Protective Armor Association established their own standards, which they say produce more consistent test results than the government standards while meeting wearers' comfort requirements.
Shubin and many police leaders are unconvinced.
"I could put up with a little discomfort in exchange for extra protection," said Austin, the FOP officer and a Poquoson, Va., beat cop. "And I'm the one out there on the street getting shot at."
Police generally have sided with the government in the dispute.
New York City police Commissioner Lee Brown, who favors the institute standards, calls the debate over vest design and testing procedures a smoke screen.
"The issue is who's going to develop the standards," Brown said. "I want them developed by someone who has no vested interest in selling a product."
by CNB