Good News About Body Armor, But More Education Is Needed
According
to a recently released survey of 1,080 officers:
- More
than 90 percent of agencies require officers to wear their body armor
today; the number has grown from 59 percent in 2009. Most officers obey:
88 percent reported they wear their armor all the time when they are on
duty.
- Officers
wear their armor because they know it protects them, not because they are
required to do so or because they have first-hand experience—73 percent
said they had never been shot at or involved in situations in which their
body armor protected them from possible injuries, and fewer than 1 percent
reported they had been disciplined for not wearing it.
- A
majority of officers know how to maintain their armor but significant
numbers do not know or understand certain aspects of recommended
procedures and do not adhere to recommended practices even when they do
understand them. For example, most manufacturers recommend storing body
armor flat. But the survey found that as many as half the officers in the
survey use a standard clothes hanger.
The
NIJ-funded research was conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum.
Read "A Practitioner's
Guide To the 2011 National Body Armor Survey of Law Enforcement Officers"
13 pages.
Read
the full report, "Body Armor Use,
Care, and Performance in Real World Conditions: Findings from a National Survey"
280 pages.
