Police Equipment

A nonprofit organization is making it safer on the streets for law enforcement. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Council donated 500 bulletproof vests for all sheriff's deputies and corrections officers. At $600 per vest, the total cost was $300,000. The donation comes at a time when county funds are tight. "This stuff is not cheap," bomb squad Sgt. Stan Mathiasen said. "Everything we have from them we would not have, or it would be very difficult to get through county funding sources."

Chico police officers are learning how to use a new weapon. The department has purchased two Taser "stun guns," which it hopes will help cut down on physical confrontations between officers and suspects, Police Chief Bruce Hagerty announced. The yellow pistol-shaped devices stun victims with a low-amperage, 50,000-volt charge that temporarily disrupts the body's central nervous system. Police say they are capable of bringing a suspect instantly under control.

It began with a single gunshot. Last summer, an undercover police officer stepped out of a van in Pennsylvania to make a drug bust and was shot in the abdomen. The bullet penetrated the front panel of his body armor. The officer survived, but the damage -- to him and to an industry that exists specifically to protect law enforcement -- was done.

The widow and young son of an Oceanside police officer shot to death after a routine traffic stop filed a lawsuit Tuesday alleging that he died because his protective vest was defective and allowed three bullets to hit him. The lawsuit, filed in Vista Superior Court, alleges that Michigan-based Second Chance Body Armor Inc. knew that the Japanese-made material used in the vest was defective, but "in a rush for market share and profits" allowed the vest to be shipped to stores.

With the Mexican metropolis of Mexicali just a dozen yards behind him, Calexico Police Officer Eric Hackett is explaining why officers here need more firepower to protect themselves and the residents of this Imperial Valley town. "We are the first cops, and the last cops, in America," he said. "As it stands now, anybody with a deer rifle -- a drug gangster, or bank robber, maybe a fugitive on the run -- could hold this town hostage and there isn't anything we could do about it."

They have restrained some of history's most infamous killers, but Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has ordered his deputies to turn in more than a thousand pairs of handcuffs made by a 223-year-old British company because they may be hurting suspects' wrists. "It appears the engineering may cause injuries," Baca said of the steel cuffs made by Hiatt & Co. Ltd. "That is not our intent or our policy." Anyone in handcuffs who struggles can be injured, Baca said.

As local officials prepare for a possible war in Iraq, Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton warned Wednesday that the city's police officers and firefighters are ill-equipped to deal with biological or chemical attacks at home. LAPD officials said that about 200 of the city's 9,000 police officers and 3,000 firefighters have protective gear. They estimated that it would cost $100 million to properly equip the rest.

State laws haven't kept up with advances in technology making it easier for police to determine whether a driver is under the influence of drugs, according to a study released Thursday. People who drive under the influence are rarely detected, prosecuted or referred to treatment programs, according to the report by the Walsh Group and the American Bar Assn.'s Standing Committee on Substance Abuse.

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton said the police department's system for tracking crimes is so inadequate that he decided to scrap it before instituting a model that was key to reducing crime in New York City eight years ago. Bratton said L.A.'s data analysis system, known by the acronym FASTRAC, is a watered-down version of the original CompStat crime mapping system he put in place as New York City's police commissioner in the 1990s.

Ventura County supervisors Tuesday put off a decision on whether to raise annual vehicle license fees by $1 to pay for updated fingerprint scanners at police agencies in Port Hueneme, Santa Paula and Fillmore. Supervisor Kathy Long said she wants more information about how the county would use the estimated $570,000 the fee would generate each year before she approves an increase.