Psychological Reasons Cited for Policemen’s Refusal to Wear Bullet-Resistant Vests

Two pounds of armor can mean survival for a police officer, but thousands of officers eschew bullet-resistant vests and, for some, the decision is fatal.

“I don’t want to second-guess anybody. I don’t even want to give the appearance of it,” said Capt. John Cerar, chief of firearms and tactics at the Police Academy, whose responsibilities include promoting use of the vests. “I don’t want to go to funerals, either.”

Death of Policeman

Last month, 5,000 police officers went to the funeral of Detective Louis Miller, 60, a 33-year police veteran shot in the chest and stomach when he responded to a report of a burglary. He was not wearing his vest.

The Police Department issues bullet-resistant vests to every officer, but, at the insistence of the police union, does not require their use. However, the union does urge officers to wear them. Cerar estimated that 40% of patrol officers do not wear the armor.

Their reasons range from comfort to more complicated issues of stress, law enforcement experts say. Fundamentally, they say, many officers do not want to admit that they may be fired at.

“A bulletproof vest is great if somebody’s shooting at you,” said Thomas Reppetto, an 18-year police officer and president of the Citizens Crime Commission, a watchdog group. “But very few people think, ‘Today is the day that somebody’s going to shoot me.’ ”

Vests Save 14

Ninety-nine city police officers were shot from 1981 through 1986. In the same period, bullet-resistant vests saved 14 officers from death or serious injury, Cerar said.

“There has been no patrol officer killed who was wearing his vest,” he said. “I can’t put it any better than that. The vest has done its job.”

But the vests, made of Kevlar fabric tough enough to stop bullets from more than 90% of the handgun types found on the street, can be hot, bulky and confining enough to induce claustrophobia in some officers.

Moreover, said Patrick V. Murphy, police commissioner from 1970 to 1973, pulling on a bullet-resistant vest each day can promote psychological stress.

‘Going Into Combat’

“Can a police officer put a bulletproof vest on every day, every week, for five or 10 years and still feel positive and secure about his job?” asked Murphy, now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Or does he begin to get battle fatigue? Does he feel he’s going into combat every day?”

In order to forestall sanctions against officers caught without vests, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Assn. rejected a department proposal to make vest use mandatory, association President Phil Caruso said.

Wearing the vests in a car in summer heat can be unbearable, Caruso said. He said some older officers are reluctant to change their ways, and some officers who do undercover work fear that the bulge of a vest will give them away.

But the union and the department strongly encourage use of the vests. Trainees see videotaped testimonials by officers whose vests saved their lives. Comedian Rodney Dangerfield and actor Daniel Travanti, of television’s “Hill Street Blues,” made tapes promoting vests. Every officer’s locker bears a sticker: “Wear Your Vest. Your Life May Depend Upon It.”

Didn’t Wear Vest

Although the department and the union work to promote the vests, Caruso, a 29-year veteran of the force, knows what they are up against: As a patrolman in the late 1970s, he did not wear his vest.