Police Officers
Get Vested (Literally) VIA the Net
By
Lily Whiteman
On July 24,
2000, a car-theft suspect pumped a bullet at point-blank range
into the chest
of David F. Azur, a Detective with the Baltimore Police
Department.
But thanks to his bulletproof vest, Azur survived the shooting
with only
minor injuries.
On January
21, 1999, a suspected vandalist shot Police Officer Alan Freed
of Falls
Church, Virginia at close range. But thanks to his bulletproof
vest, Freed
survived the shooting with only minor injuries.
On November
25, 1997, a gunman who was part of an ambushing team shot
A bullet from
his 9-mm gun into Officer John Ruane of the Special Mountain
Bike Patrol
of the Philadelphia Police Department. But thanks to his
bulletproof
vest, Ruane survived the shooting with only minor injuries.
Vests
Save Lives
Azure, Freed
and Ruane are just three of about 1,500 U.S. police officers
whose lives
have been saved by bulletproof vests since 1987, according to
the International
Association of Chiefs of Police. Indeed, an officer wearing
a bulletproof vest faces only a small fraction of the fatality
risk faced
by an officer not wearing such a vest, according to the Federal
Bureau of
Investigation.
Nevertheless,
about 150,000 officers, or 25 percent of our nation's officers,
currently remain deprived of bulletproof vests, according to
Congressional
estimates. Why? Because many state and local governments
simply cannot
afford these vests, which each usually cost between $400 to
$700. That’s
why, in 1998, Congress began annually allocating $25 million
to state and local law enforcement agencies to help them buy a
total of
90,000 bulletproof vests each year. Administered under the Bulletproof
Vest Partnership
(BVP), the grant program allows each participating jurisdiction
to use BVP funds to cover up to 50 percent of its total vest
costs. (Although
Indian tribal governments may use federal funds as matching
funds, all other jurisdictions must us nonfederal funding.)
The Need
for Speed
But the BVP
is no ordinary "hurry up and wait" grant program. Created
to address
an urgent, life-threatening problem, the program is specially
designed
for efficiency and speed. How? The BVP is entirely web based.
"This
means that program applicants walk through the entire process
electronically,
with the help of easy-to-understand instructions," explains
Robert
Watkins who manages the program from the Department of Justice’s
Bureau
of Justice Assistance. "The entire payment process also occurs
over
the Internet." The program's web
site.
The BVP’s
electronic format eliminates unnecessary and tedious paperwork.
It also "allows
us to quickly communicate with program participants through
e-mails, on-line
mailing lists, electronic articles, and our web site, which
is linked
to the web sites of potentially interested organizations, such
as criminal
justice associations," adds Watkins. "We can immediately
tell them about
important deadlines, program updates, and any additional information
we need in
their applications."
Moreover,
BVP’s web site supports quick analyses of important data
that used to
be the sole provence of manufacturers. "But now we can identify
national trends
in the popularity of various types of bulletproof equipment
and evaluate
new models of equipment," says Watkins. Posted on the
BVP web site,
this type of information helps jurisdictions select the types
of equipment that best suit their needs.
Small
Communities
By law, at
least half of the BVP grant money must go to jurisdictions that
have fewer
than 100,000 residents. Why? Because small communities
generally
have the tightest budgets, so they need the most help. Small
communities,
however, also tend to be the hardest to reach.
Nevertheless,
the BVP web site is successfully beaming the word about the
grant program
to small communities. How do we know? For one thing, the
BVP’s
research indicates that over 99 percent of communities that are
interested
in applying for its funds are plugged into the Internet.
Moreover,
during the program’s second year, 3,079 of the 3,508 communities
that applied
for funds had fewer than 100,000 residents. BVP managers
believe that
the Internet has enabled them to reach more communities
faster than
would ever have been possible solely through conventional
methods of
communication, such as mass mailers, flyers, newspaper articles,
announcements
at professional conferences and notifications to Congressional
officers.
So efficient
and effective is the BVP that it won a Gold Award from the
Federation
of Government Information Processing Councils (FGIPC) in 1999.
Who Belongs
to the BVP?
The BVP’s
membership includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the National
Aeronautics
and Space Administration, the U.S. Census Bureau, the Office of
Community
Oriented Policing Services, the Office of Justice Programs, the
National Institute
of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
More Vests
Needed
The BVP will
begin its third year of operation in January, 2001. Speaking
at a May 15,
2000 ceremony honoring 139 officers killed on the job this
year, President
Clinton encouraged Congress to pass a bipartisan proposal
that would
extend the BVP, which was originally authorized for just three
years, for
an additional three years. "If we do it, we'll be able to
protect every
single police officer in the United States with a bulletproof
vest,"
the President said.
For More
Information
Contact Robert
Watkins with the Bureau of Justice Assistance. You may reach him
at (202) 514-3447 or watkinsr@ojp.usdoj.gov-and.
About
the Author
Contact Lily
Whiteman, National Partnership for Reinventing Government, 750-17th
St., NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20006; (202) 694-0086 or lily.whiteman@npr.gov.
October 16,
2000