Cost, convenience and protection – against knifes, bullets and more – all matter if you are looking for body armour. Mark Rowe reports on a demonstration by Lorica Research.
Despite the firing range noise of hand-guns and the brutal short burst of the Uzi machine-gun, the most striking image of the day came later. As Digby Dyke of Lorica Research, developer of body armour said, it’s actually a textile; a fabric; a woven cloth. The Cuirazz body armour had been tied to a torso-sized lump of Plasticene, and had Magnum, Colt, Uzi, shotgun and other bullets fired at it from 5m on the Lorica range on the edge of Worcester. After each burst, organisers called the invited viewers to take off their ear defenders, and come from the 20m safety distance to view the results. Armour has to do more than stop the bullet; it has to dissipate the kinetic energy. If the armour is pushed several inches into the body, yes, you survive, but you may be so disabled that you are in no state to prevent the gunman closing in to finish you off.<br><br>Later, indoors, the layers of armour were on the table, the outside covering removed. Mike Riley of Jack Ellis Body Protection pulled away one by one the yellow waistcoat-shaped layers. After three layers the 9mm bullets slipped out, flattened. Beneath more layers were the handgun bullets, also flat and unrecognisable, looking like ancient coins. One round got through ten layers; in other words, not halfway, although further in still you could see stress marks, where a bullet’s energy had been dissipated. Nastiest had been the shotgun, leaving dents – ‘you would have a broken rib, but still alive,’ was Digby Dyke’s view. Also tried was a £100 piece of armour, bought from an unnamed supplier by the day’s organiser Bobby Logue, of the infologue.com website and training company and product distributor Interconnective, whose products include Cuirazz armour. The unidentified £100 piece shuddered under the first impact of handgun bullets, and bunched up – the vest’s way of dealing with the energy. On inspection the Plasticene had two deep craters that you would not want on your body. And a Uzi burst left even deeper craters. It had offered some protection, better than none. Yet as with second-hand cars (and much body armour offered to the private security industry is second-hand, police and army surplus): buyer beware.<br><br>Horror stories about rubbish armour abound, such as the kit offered to a civilian contractor in Iraq, with carpet for filling. The difference between what the salesman (or website) says and reality may be gross. As Digby Dyke (and others) stressed at the demo: “There is no such thing as a bullet- and stab-proof vest. There are stab-resistant or bullet-resistant vests.” What then are we to make of internet sites offering bullet-proof armour? One case raised was of a camouflage British Army battle vest, meant to protect from grenade fragments, but sold as stab-proof. A test knife – costing £10 a time, they have particular edges and so on – dropped down a pipe went into the piece of kit, to the hilt. One of the audience recalled he had worn such a vest on his first time in Iraq. Troops had regarded the item as something that kept you in one piece if you were killed. <br><br>It’s one thing to be sure that a product meets as claimed a Home Office Scientific Development Branch or US or European equivalent standard. It’s another thing to know – even if your product meets a standard – what sort of protection is promised. (The threat from a blade is not the same as from a bullet – and a commando knife is not the same as a carving knife, or a knitting needle, and so on.) The security officer walking a mall may face lads with pocket-knives; or drug addicts with survivalist knives, or syringes; whatever, the officers may well not need as great a margin of protection as a police firearms officer. And a material that resists bullets may not necessarily resist stabbings. <br><br>When Professional Security asked about the comfort of wearing such equipment, Digby Dyke spoke of trade-offs. As he said, it’s no good in a locker (that is, because the owner finds it too hot and heavy to wear all shift, or at all). Then there is price. Research continues towards armour that does more with less thickness: “Technology is improving and armour for the same performance or higher performance is getting less uncomfortable; or more comfortable.”<br><br>As a scientist Dyke has worked on body armour for 18 years, coming from safety-critical equipment. As he told the audience of guarding managers, store detectives and others, the spec includes bricks and clubs; fragments from bombs; kicks, even. Many people have to get it right, else people can die: the customer, the standard-setting authorities, the makers of the raw materials. Over the years, questions have arisen – to be fair, as with any number of products and services – over false claims, products wearing over time so that they perform below the standard they once met, or not working so well when wet (or sweaty?). If you are buying, or wearing, second-hand armour, it does beg the question if the first owners retired the kit because it had come to the end of its life – ‘it is safety equipment, for goodness’ sake’. That said, should we never buy a second-hand car? That’s why cars have MoT tests. Just as we hope never to have a car’s safety tested by a crash, and we seldom use the office fire extinguisher, so armour wearers will hardly ever, if ever, learn for real how good their kit is. But: the test if it comes could be a matter of life or death. <br><br>Dyke touched on the need for training of staff, so that they do not become over-confident: “When you get your kit, don’t think you are Robocop, because there’s always something that will defeat your armour. There’s nothing in my lab that we don’t know how to defeat.” Lorica does run a one-day course for security, police and any other procurement people, to learn about risk assessing, materials; how to trial body armour, and inspect it in service; among other things. The Cuirazz range includes, in various colours and sizes, covert armoured vests (tabard-style, that you can wear under jackets), overt vests, vests for paramedics and journalists (with pockets for notebook), armoured waist-coats (for the executive traveller), ballistic briefcases (a discreet personal shield, besides); helmets; and slash-resistant gloves. <br><br>Also distributed is the Robocam, first supplied in 1999 to a Wolverhampton nightclub. The product has developed since and is used by police forces and security guards. Chris Kahn of Robocam UK described how the product – with a 16 GB Flash drive rather than a hard drive – provides evidence and takes away ‘his word against yours’ cases. The 220g device records audio and video, powered by a removable battery. A guarding user of headcams told Professional Security of how such CCTV does deter trouble, for instance on a late-night train where staff had felt too unsafe to go through the carriages to check tickets. The contract security officers, wearing head-cams, went through the train so that the ticket inspector collected £400 in fares. (This user felt certain that such use of CCTV does not require a SIA public space surveillance licence, as the CCTV is not monitored; do any readers think otherwise?!)<br><br>Earlier, Paul Housego of Beers LLP spoke on the legal implications of the Corporate Manslaughter Act, for the proverbial or literal ‘captain of the ship’, such as the person in charge of a building. No longer does your negligence have to be intentional; not does an individual have to be negligent – Paul Housego spoke of a ‘pool of negligence’ that can lead to a corporate manslaughter prosecution. If someone is injured through a foreseeable risk, and an employer did not act, or action was not enough: that equals negligence, he said. What to do? He spoke of doing risk assessments and the need for a paper trail, always. As for security guards, find out the threats, and take ‘reasonable precautions’. He stressed that the (health and safety) standards expected of employers are rising all the time. Professional Security asked about this legal term ‘reasonable’: Paul Housego spoke of balance, and what would Joe Public, or the ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’ think is reasonable? A security guard may want all equipment, all the time, but the risk also may depend on the time and place: a site on a weekday may be different to a Saturday night. But always make a paper trail. If the client refuses to do what you see as reasonable, and somebody dies, the client, not you will be in the dock. <br><br>Visit www.cuirazz.com
