What is your morning routine—coffee, a quick jog through the park, some breakfast, grab the paper and you’re on your way? Perhaps you get the calm, relaxing luxury of walking your children to the school bus after preparing their lunchboxes.
In contrast, we must not forget the hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers throughout the United States who start each workday by putting on two pieces of equipment that they hope to never use: a bullet-resistant vest and a firearm. These brave men and women then walk out the door to a job so dangerous that they have to pray they will get to see their loved ones again at the end of each shift. But anyone who has even loosely kept up with current events over the past several years can’t ignore the fact that it’s not only our police officers who are the target of aggression.
In December 2016, an ambulance crew in Selma, AL, was met with gunfire as they arrived on scene for a blood pressure check. Fortunately, neither employee was injured. The district attorney who handled the case believed the act was part of a gang initiation ritual.
As members of the public safety field, we work in a world that many others choose to ignore. We are routinely surrounded by drugs, weapons and violence in a country where one-third of all patients admitted to emergency rooms are diagnosed with a psychiatric condition. Yet most of us are not trained behavioral health technicians. We are the first line of response to the mass shootings and acts of terrorism that our communities continue to fall prey to. However, most of us are not homeland defense or tactical EMS experts. Criminals will take days or even years planning their attacks, yet we as first responders may have only a mere four- to six-minute response time to organize our reaction.
Looking beyond tactical incident response
A recent trend in the fire service has been to equip and train emergency medical responders to tactically work alongside law enforcement in response to active incidents of violence. Unfortunately, there is significant risk in such situations for the medical providers to become patients themselves if they are not properly protected. We provide turnout gear and breathing apparatus for firefighters rushing into a burning building, so it would only make sense to outfit medical technicians with body armor before they enter an unsecured shooting scene. However, we are leaving a sizeable safety gap by assuming that the only hostile situations our uniformed members will encounter are the ones in which they are called to.
Ask any forward-thinking, progressive public safety agency and they will tell you about how vested they are in the community. Fire departments are transitioning to a holistic community risk reduction philosophy to increase life safety and reduce the occurrence of fires. Police departments are putting community policing programs in place to get officers active in their neighborhoods to gain the trust of the citizens. Emergency medical care providers are breaking ground with community medicine teams to reduce costly and unnecessary emergency room trips for low acuity calls. If nothing else, this culture shift will take our personnel away from the security of our vehicles or cubicles and expose us even more to the dangers that are sometimes present on our streets.
As recently as April 2017, a firefighter with the Baltimore City Fire Department was shot at when he stopped in a marked vehicle to render aid at a motor vehicle collision. A year earlier, in nearby Prince George’s County, MD, one firefighter was shot to death and another seriously wounded as they forced entry into a home for what they believed to be an unresponsive patient during a welfare check. Two firefighters and a paramedic in O’Fallon, MO, were shot at by their patient in May 2017 after administering an opioid reversal medication to him. It seems as if hardly a week goes by before another attack is reported in the fire service news.
Current trends are making it clear that we can be targeted whether we carry handcuffs, a fire hose or a stethoscope. Sometimes our attackers are the very people who called for our help in the first place. Other times, we are ambushed without provocation during routine duties. So the question to be asked is this: Why are we waiting for a problem to arise before protecting ourselves?
Some agencies have taken the use of body armor beyond a strictly reactive philosophy. In 2016, Jersey City Medical Center EMS took measures to outfit their personnel with bullet-resistant vests after law enforcement received credible threats against paramedics and EMTs. The vests were permitted to be used during routine calls as opposed to violent incidents only. Although routine use of the vests has subsided as the original threats have gone away, the option is still available to the responders.
Common concerns
The paradigm shift in the protection of Jersey City EMS staff also addressed common concerns regarding the subject of body armor for fire and EMS members. To reduce the financial impact of providing body armor to every employee, the organization opted to purchase less expensive armor carriers for each individual. The carriers are simply fabric vests that have large compartments for holding bullet-resistant panels. The more expensive armor panels are easily inserted to the carriers and are checked in and out during each shift. Jersey City purchased carriers that were identical to their uniform shirts. Since the vests do not have a tactical appearance, the wearer is not likely to be mistaken for a police officer.
Another option is for low-profile vests to be worn underneath the standard uniform shirt throughout the entire shift. Once thought to be heavy and bulky, recent developments in body armor material have led to the creation of vests that are not only extremely lightweight but also have moisture-wicking capabilities. The vests are therefore less cumbersome and do not soak up sweat on a hot day.
Durability and performance
Adherence to NFPA 1975: Standard on Emergency Services Work Clothing Elements should be taken into consideration when your department is conducting research into outfitting emergency personnel with body armor that has a possibility of being worn during structural firefighting. The purpose of NFPA 1975 is to provide emergency responders with thermally stable work clothing that does not contribute to burn injuries. Some clothing types, including many synthetic materials, have the potential to burn and melt to the skin of the wearer under extreme heat conditions.
Aramid fibers are some of the most common fabrics used for body armor throughout the world. Certain brands of aramid fiber are considered compliant with NFPA 1975. This shouldn’t be surprising since aramid fibers are also commonly used in firefighting turnout gear. Because the use of body armor in fire and EMS situations is a new and innovative concept, other body armor fabrics on the market have not been tested under NFPA 1975. Most armor carriers and even some armor plates are constructed from blends of nylon, polyester and other synthetic fabrics with poor thermal resistance. Even if the synthetic blends aren’t exposed to enough heat to cause melting and burn injuries, long exposures to extreme heat will often degrade the material more rapidly than what would be expected from normal temperatures.
Agencies that are in the market for body armor that might be worn during firefighting operations should request NFPA 1975 compliance-testing results or a formal notice of compliance from the armor provider. The provider should also supply a technical specification sheet accounting for 100 percent of all materials that the armor and its carrier are made of. All materials should be in compliance with NFPA 1975, not solely the ballistic-resistant components.
Selection and purchasing
The National Institute of Justice (NIJ)—the U.S. Department of Justice’s research, development and evaluation wing—is the premier agency for body armor analysis. The NIJ has established minimum performance standards and benchmarks as outlined in their free, publicly accessible document: Selection & Application Guide to Ballistic-Resistant Body Armor for Law Enforcement, Corrections, and Public Safety, which can be found at nij.gov. This standard covers many topics, including body armor selection, fit, care, training and even considerations for procurement and purchasing. The NIJ also teamed up with the Bureau of Justice Assistance to create PoliceArmor.org, a user-friendly website that provides a one-stop shop for body armor technical information, statistics, compliance testing results and frequently asked questions.
Numerous agencies throughout the United States have successfully sought funding for body armor. Grant opportunities exist through the Homeland Security Grant Program as well as the Assistance to Firefighters Grant. Smaller departments have even raised funds locally through their community. Through the Department of Justice, the Office of Justice Programs Bulletproof Vest Partnership/Body Armor Safety Initiative even states that fire marshals and arson investigators may be eligible for a monetary award program to help cover the cost of body armor.
Training and procedures
As most of us in the public safety industry are well aware, our equipment is only as good as our training and the policies that govern it. All members who will potentially wear the body armor, regardless of frequency, should be educated in its care and use. Standard operating procedure should dictate that wearing body armor alone doesn’t qualify the user to enter unsafe situations that they otherwise would have avoided.
The use of body armor in tactical EMS incidents, such as active shooter response, requires a much higher level of training and possibly even a higher level of body armor than what is required for daily use. A clear distinction at the procedural level should be made between response to active incidents of violence and the wearing of body armor for personal protection during calls without an elevated threat level or hot zone.
In sum
The world around us is constantly changing and, unfortunately, it is not always for the better. Fire and EMS service culture should embrace this change and continue to shift its focus to proactivity rather than reactivity. We need to face the reality that our members encounter just as much danger performing routine duties as we do while responding to active violent incidents. It is not only our frontline responders who have the potential to be in harm’s way either; fire code inspectors, fire and arson investigators, volunteers/cadets and even public educators spend much of their time at locations and events in the community that are targets of attack.
We do not wait until it is too hot to put on turnout gear. We do not wait until there is too much blood to put on medical gloves. Therefore, we should not wait until the gunshots ring out before we put on protective armor.
Brandon Siebert
Brandon Siebert is a full-time inspector/investigator for a career fire department in the suburbs of Phoenix. He also volunteers at a second fire department for a total of over seven years of fire service experience. He holds an associate degree in emergency response and operations and is currently studying at Arizona State University.
