Body ARMOR For POLICE and Security: The Basics

today we're going to talk about soft body armor for police and security work we're all should be talking about the different protection levels and why it's a better idea for everyday wear than hard body armor at least today in 2017 stick around put your hands up here in the car come on Accardo so we're start off by looking at what the NIJ standards are for soft body armor now the National Institute of Justice sets standards for all body armor sold and manufactured inside the United States and soft armor comes in three readings currently we used to have over the old 5 standard which isn't produced anymore but you might find for sale on the used market a little one soft body armor which would stop and have minimal back face deprivation for 38 special round nosed ammunition this isn't built anymore in the United States at that sold as new anymore so there really isn't a whole lot of point in talking about level 1 armor because there isn't a whole lot of point in using level 1 armor today it really doesn't stop most of the threats that we see on the street level q a is the next step up its 9-millimeter nano at 124 grade FMJ at 1225 feet per second or 40 Smith & Wesson 180 grain FMJ at 1155 feet per second with minimal back face deformation order words if you get shot with basically targeted range animal this will stop it and it won't have enough deformation it won't push through the vest and push into your chest far enough or in your abdomen far enough to cause bleeding on any of your organs when you're hit with basically targeting range animals that's level 2 a standard little Q standard is 9 millimeter up from the 12 25 feet per second up higher to the point where you could fire 9-millimeter the specialty sub gun animal out of the sub gun and it will stop it or a 357 bag jacket soft point 158 green animal at 30 and 40 feet per second so that's pretty hot pretty heavy 357 Meg animal out of a 4 or 5 inch barrel it'll stop that without causing any type of internal injuries to you this should be life threatening from there to get to level 3 armour which protects for all of this stuff and 357 sig 125 grain fmg at fourteen hundred and ten feet per second that's smokin that's pretty fast for basically a nine millimeter sized cartridge in a 44 mag 240 grams so jacket at how semi-jacketed hollow points only at thirteen forty feet per second that's also pretty smoky but that is definitely not the hottest 44 mag round you can find so very often people water this down and they try to tell you level 3a is the best to have because it'll stop everything up to 44 mag and that's not entirely true well body armor will stop certain things the bat force based information have to worry about it's only specific cartridges that they're tested against so if you get a 305 green 44 mag out of a five and a half inch barrel like my Ruger Redhawk it may not be stopped even by level 3a armor but the plus side and this is that you're very unlikely to run into that type of thing on the streets we have to kind of play the numbers now obviously as you move up levels you add thickness and stiffness relative to other levels of the same type of armor made with the same type of materials as a bunch of different materials that you use those are constantly evolving so it's not worth talking about any specific material that's used in body armor construction but when you have something made of say Kevlar and it's a level one it's going to be a lot thinner a lot more flexible with something made of Kevlar that's a level 3a the same with spectra at Dyneema or whatever the new thing that they come out next week and I haven't even heard about you this the other thing to kick into consideration with soft body armor is the cut you can still in some places get very small soft body armor soft body armor that only covers a very small area of the vitals and companies will sell those inside plate carriers they're supposed to be for hard body armor and you have to think about the difference between those small plates that might go on a backpack or into a plate carrier that's going to carry just soft armor that power armor plate the surface area that you're protecting but because armor only protects the area that you're covering and coming out from there we're going to talk a little bit about hard body armor now hard body armor the typical size you're going to get is a 10 by 12 such as this right here 10 by 12 polyethylene fire armor plate dish tops everything that is not a P basically so 760 by 39 2 to 3 M 855 all of that is within the specification for level 3 which comes as a hard armor now the difference between level 3 and level 4 is at level 4 it's testing it's a single realm of 30 not 680 that's all the NIJ tests against with these different armor protection ratings for hard armor and for soft armor these are the specifications I'll put a link down below for more in-depth into what the process is they tumble on they spray them with water they submerge and they do all sorts of stuff and make sure that they'll still meet these tests and there's a couple other animals and they don't test against but this gives you kind of an idea of where you're at with different levels of soft body armor the different protection levels that you're at and on there you also see the backspace deformation requirement that the NIJ D uses to determine whether or not this wrongly stopped not just stop it stops effectively to protect you now as hard body armor and soft fighting armor companies come up with higher standards than what the NIJ test for and that's great we can get armor that is level 2 a + level 2 + level 3 a + we can understand that there aren't any regulations that say what a company can claim that their armor stops so they can test it they can independently test it but that doesn't mean that the NIJ certifies anything with level 3 a + or multi-hit capable currently 2017 there is nothing that specifies how multi hit capable soft body armor is or hard body armor other than what the NIJ specifies so with level 3 it will stop 308 it will stop 2 to 3 most of it that's available today with level 4 hard armor it'll stop a single round of 30 at 680 and that's all they test against as of when this video was being put out now there are companies that claim that their multi threat multi shot tested level 3 level 3 plus level 4 level 4 plus multi shot tested that's all well and good but there's nothing that says that those companies have to tell you the truth so if you go to something that's like that you want to make sure you get it from a reputable manufacturer now in hard armor there's a huge difference between polyethylene so anok and steal the polyethylene plates are generally going to be the lightest but they are also the thickest they come in at an inch or a little above your steel plates for comparison there's a steel plate on top of a polyethylene you can see the steel plate is a whole lot thinner any way way way way would weight thinner this is qala polyethylene plate only weighs about 3 pounds this thing this will weigh 7 8 9 pounds they can get really heavy if you start going up from your standard 10 by 12 up in the higher sizes if you're a bigger guy ceramics kind of split the difference in other words that you're going to most commonly find in a level-4 they come in between 6 and 8 pounds but given their size to weight ratio they come in a little better than steel but a whole lot worse than polyethylene for that what you get is armor-piercing thirty-aught-six protection the most important differentiation i like to make for people when they ask me about soft body armor or hard body armor in the comment section a lot of guys say that they don't have the money to buy soft body armor because they look on whatever website and they see the really high-end soft body armor then spent for agencies to purchase for police officer security guards and they say I really can't afford that so especially with security guards going to get his guys say I'm going to get a plate carrier and I'm going to get steel plates and I want to carry those because you know we've got a bunch of rifle threats in the area that I work anyway which to the rifle a bunch of rifle threats in my area they see anyway for a security guard I call shenanigans unless you working like at a nuclear facility or something you probably don't have a whole lot of rifle threats the vast overwhelming majority of ballistic threats you're going to find inside the continental United States are going to be up here on this board in fact I don't even think this level 3a is a really viable threat for most police officers and security guards the most viable threat secured to finding the street the thing you're going to find most is nine-millimeter 357 or for a Smith & Wesson 38 special very rarely here we're going to recover a 44 mag on the street at 357 sig became part of the level 3 a standard because it seems like it might become the next big thing but it really hasn't blown up out there and so we're not even getting three I don't think I've ever seen a 357 sig gun that was listed as stolen so that isn't a huge idea Djinn threat unless you're carrying 357 sig as your duty animal you may want to get level 3a just because 357 sig is only really defeated properly by level 3a armored big thing that you lose when you go to rifle plate over soft body armor is surface area and we have to talk about the surface area issue when you go to rifle plate you only get this 10 by 12 area this is protected from everything from seven sixty by thirty nine and two to three down so yes it will stop all these handgun rounds but you miss out on all this size protection and most of your back protection because most people's backs are you know pretty wide and we're only covering a small area of our body with rifle plate so it can be careful when we decide we're going to go to rifle plate instead of soft body armor that we really need the rights of protection more than we need the full coverage handgun protection this entire area underneath my armpits and along my back all the way around me is protected from handgun fire when I have soft body armor on but if I wear just the steel rightful place that's all I get the area directly under the steel plate finally when talking about body armor for police and security work we got to talk about trauma plates trauma plates are a additional layer of protection that you would slide inside of the velcro area on soft body armor soft body armor often comes with a pouch in the front where you could slide a ballistic plate in for instance this armor that I'm wearing from safe like defense actually has a pocket hood part that is big enough that I can slide a seal plate a full size 10 by 12 steel plate into the front of it well this might be a little heavy for everyday wear in an emergency it's nice to be able to slip a large steel plate in the front but for everyday wear there are also eight by ten and five by seven plates that are smaller that will still rifle rated that some people aware like me I wear a smaller rifle ray to play to the front of my bus and there are trauma plates which aren't rightfully rated or ballistic rated whose primary purpose is to keep the backdoors deformation down you can also get various sizes of trauma plates that you can fly in the front that are level 3 a braided plates which means that they independently will stop all of the animal up to the 3 the 3 a standard so you basically got a small vest on top of your other vest which greatly improves your back face deformation over just wearing the soft body armor highly recommend trauma plates at least trauma plate to the best in the front and in the back so that if you get hit squaring your sternum you don't end up breaking you know five six ribs and he didn't hit with a bullet the body armor does a great stuff of stopping bullets into trauma plates that do a much better job and keeping you in the fight which we've talked about before in other armor videos so when people ask me about recommendations for body armor for police who have to buy their own or security guard who have to buy their own body armor or everyday people who find themselves in dangerous situations a lot and want to have body armor to protect themselves either as a replacement for a firearm or as an augmentation to a firearm my recommendations inside the US as of today are as follows a slot body armor vest with a lot of coverage areas something that the armor touches are almost touches on the sides of your body level 2 or level 3 a this gets us to all of the rounds that we should be using for personal defence and all of the rounds that are likely to be used against us by most of our common criminals everything 9 millimeter 124 grain bonded bullets for a Smith & Wesson 45 ACP 380 everything below that 22 long-rifle 38 special this gets us through everything up all that level 3a gives up that same capability but adds a little less back face deformation when we deal with those rounds so if we get hit with 9-millimeter 124 grain with a level 2 vest it's going to hurt and with level 3 it's going to hurt a little less it's going to keep us in the fight a little bit better it also gives us a little more protection from 12h slog or 44 mag but those aren't really threats that we find an awful lot on the street I also recommend a trauma plate at the minimum and a small ballistic plate I think is ideal something in the 5 by 7 or 8 by 10 category depending on whether going over the trial fling or small ballistic plates and how much each of those ways depending on the circumstances that we're working in I would always love to have a trauma plate front and back so that we can stay in the fight a little bit better if we do get hit and a small ballistic plate at least in the front to augment the ballistic protection that the soft armor gives us over our most critical area our vinyls our hardener our locks if you guys have any questions or comments on this please put them down the description down below if you like this type of content you should check me out on patreon where you can see these videos in advance for a small donation and on Instagram down below you can see the things that I'm doing I try to post on Instagram every day please check out safe life defense who gave me the vest that we're using for this video and also tier 1 firearms whose support has really helped us expand the equipment that we have and the time that I can spend making content for all you on the channel until next week you guys be safe take care of each other I'd like to thank all the patreon supporters and especially the shift supervisor level patreon supporters that we have listed here your contributions are what allows free field training to continue on and become better thank you

Channel: free field training

Views: 256,052

Rating: 4.9182425 out of 5

Keywords: Police, training, sheriff, security, security officer, security guard, cop, cops, police officer, police training, security training, bulletproof, bulletproof vest

Id: GWkqBD137sg

Length: 14min 36sec (876 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 23 2017