September 14, 2005

LEGISLATIVE UPDATE

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PULLS SUPPORT FOR ZYLON VESTS

On November 17, 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the U.S. Department of Justice’s Body Armor Safety Initiative in response to concerns from the law enforcement community regarding the effectiveness of body armor in use. These concerns followed the failure of a relatively new Zylon®-based body armor vest worn by a Forest Hills, Pennsylvania, police officer. The Attorney General directed the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to initiate an examination of Zylon®-based bullet-resistant armor (both new and used), to analyze upgrade kits provided by manufacturers to retrofit Zylon®-based body armor, and to review the existing program by which bullet-resistant armor is tested to determine if the process needs modification.

As part of the Body Armor Safety Initiative, NIJ has issued two status reports to the Attorney General containing results from the body armor studies. These status reports highlighted the following findings:

· Ballistic-resistant material, including Zylon®, can degrade due to environmental factors, thus reducing the ballistic resistance safety margin that manufacturers build into their armor designs.

· The ultimate tensile strength (the maximum stress that a material, in this case a Zylon® yarn, can withstand prior to failure) of single yarns removed from the rear panel of the Forest Hills armor was up to 30 percent lower than that of yarns from “new” armor supplied by the manufacturer. Artificially –aged armor of the same type that failed in the Forest Hills incident was ballistically tested, but no bullet penetrations occurred.

· The upgrade kits tested did not appear to bring used armor up to the level of performance of new armor. However, used armors with upgrade kits performed better than the used armors alone.

NIJ has now completed ballistic and mechanical properties testing on 103 used Zylon®-containing body armors provided by law enforcement agencies across the United States. Of the used armors, 60 (57%) were penetrated by at least one round during a six-shot test series. Of the armors that were not penetrated, 91% had backface deformations in excess of that allowed by the NIJ standard for new armor. Only four of the used Zylon® vests met all the performance criteria expected under the NIJ standard for new body armor compliance.

NIJ intends to adopt interim guidelines for testing vests, effective September 26, 2005, in order to help ensure that officers are protected by body armor that maintains its ballistic performance during the entirety of its warranty period. Under these interim requirements, armor models containing PBO (the chemical basis of Zylon®) will not be compliant, unless their manufacturers provide satisfactory evidence to NIJ that the models will maintain their ballistic performance over their declared warranty period.

With very few exceptions, a vest with any Zylon® at all will no longer be NIJ certified and will also not be eligible for federal matching funds under the Bulletproof Vest Partnership (BVP) Program. The DOJ has announced that an extra $10 million will be added to the $23 million that Congress allocated for the BVP grants for fiscal year 2005 to help police departments replace Zylon® vests. However, the DOJ will no longer allow federal reimbursement for departments that have already bought them. NAPO is working with members of Congress to come up with a way that police departments will not be punished by having to spend their own money to replace defective vests. NAPO will update you with further developments in our efforts.

NIJ is moving towards trying to ensure the validity of rated threat level capabilities for the warranted life of the vests (usually 5 years) but it is still moving painfully slowly.

This is the third report by the DOJ Bullet Proof Vest Initiative, in which NAPO is playing an active part.

ATTORNEY GENERAL CRITICIZES SENATE VERSION OF PATRIOT ACT REAUTHORIZATION

On August 29 Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales criticized the Senate bill, S. 1389, that reauthorizes the 16 expiring provisions of the Patriot Act. Although the legislation would permanently extend 14 provisions, it includes 4-year sunsets and tighter restrictions on the remaining, and most controversial provisions, which permit roving wiretaps of terrorist suspects and court approved searches of business records in terrorism cases.

The Attorney General said that the bill’s stricter provisions would make it too difficult for investigators to conduct secret searches or obtain roving wiretaps in terrorism investigations. He also commented that the threshold for obtaining business records, including those held by libraries, would be set too high by the Senate bill.

This is the sharpest criticism to date of the Senate bill by the Bush Administration, which has previously been signaling its preference for the House bill while avoiding directly faulting the Senate version. S. 1389 was approved unanimously on July 29, 2005 by the Republican-controlled Senate and has the endorsement of the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. The fate of the Patriot Act is now in the hands of the conference committee.

KATRINA TIGHTENS APPROPRIATORS ALREADY CROWDED SCHEDULE

Congress returned to the Capitol on September 6 to face a far different legislative agenda than the one they left behind at the beginning of August. Providing relief for areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina is the top priority for Congressional appropriators in the upcoming weeks and months, which will make it unlikely that Congress will be able to pass the remaining appropriations bills before the next fiscal year begins on October 1.

Unless the House and Senate move quickly on the regular spending bills, the appropriators will have to resort to using continuing resolutions, the mechanisms by which Congress temporarily funds agencies for which annual appropriations bills have not yet been enacted, to keep the federal government in operation. House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX) has vowed that he will not resort to an omnibus this year, making it even more likely that appropriators will have to pass continuing resolutions.

Only two appropriations measures have been enacted, the Interior-Environmental bill and the Legislative Branch bill. The House, much ahead of the Senate, passed each of its 11 spending bills before the July 4^th Recess. The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved 11 of its 12 bills; however, the full Senate has passed only 5 bills, the two mentioned above, as well as the Energy-Water (HR 2419), Homeland Security (HR 2360), and Foreign Operations (HR 3057) bills. NAPO will keep you updated on the important pieces of legislation concerning funding for state and local law enforcement.

Senate Takes on Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Legislation

The Senate is currently debating and voting on amendments to the fiscal year 2006 Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill, H.R. 2862. Floor action has been dominated by Katrina-related proposals intended to speed assistance to hurricane victims and expand eligibility in programs such as Medicaid. Despite the desperate need for funding for the law enforcement in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, funding for state and local law enforcement programs continue to be left out in the cold.

This is not to say that Senators have not offered amendments to increase funding to state and local law enforcement officers. However, it seems as if returning funding levels for law enforcement grant programs will continue to be an uphill battle despite the obvious need for more money.

On September 8, Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE) offered an amendment for emergency relief for Victims of Hurricane Katrina that would increase COPS Programs funding to $1 billion, with $700 million going toward hiring and $300 million added to Interoperable Communications Technology. Current funding in the legislation for the COPS hiring program is at a very low $2 million dollars, and Interoperable Communications is at $37.5 million. NAPO continues to feel that these low funding numbers are unacceptable as state and local law enforcement are having to deal with more and more dangers, such as terrorism and natural disasters, as proved in New Orleans over the past few weeks. This amendment was still under consideration on the Senate floor as of September 13.

Senators Mark Dayton (D-MN) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) were successful in having their bi-partisan amendment to add an additional $275 million the Justice Assistant Grants to bring funding for state and local law enforcement programs up to $900 million. NAPO endorsed this amendment and was thanked by Senator Dayton’s office for our help and support in getting this amendment added to H.R. 2862.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) said he expected the Senate to pass H.R. 2862 by Thursday, September 15.

SENATE ADDS COMATING METH TO COMMERCE-JUSTICE-SCIENCE APPROPRIATIONS BILL

On Friday, September 9, 2005, the Senate unanimously adopted the Combat Meth Act (S. 103) as an amendment to the Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill. The amendment, offered by the sponsors of S. 103, Senators Jim Talent (R-MO) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), limits access to cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, the primary ingredient used to make methamphetamine.

This amendment adopted by the Senate includes language approved by the Judiciary Committee at the urging of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), allowing states and localities to enact or retain standards and penalties that are tougher than the federal ones.

The House has a similar bill (H.R. 314) sponsored by Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), but the Senate version will likely be taken up during conference between the House and Senate appropriators.

NAPO has supported this legislation since it was introduced in the Senate in January 2005 and will continue to work to ensure that the amendment will become a permanent part of the conference report in order that state and local law enforcement will have every possible means to crack down on methamphetamine dealers.