Recently the State of Colorado put out a bid for body armor. Also on the bid were 12 other states. Part of the bid process was vest testing. Colorado purchasing asked that officers from the State of Colorado participate in the testing and evaluation process. A board of officers was established to design the testing criteria. All of the bidding companies had to submit five of each vest model that they submitted bids on. Second Chance submitted five of each of the pieces of armor they wanted to include in the bid. One of the pieces of armor they submitted was the Monarch Summit. Out of the five vests that they submitted, Monarch’s, all five failed the testing. This is THE VEST that they are replacing the ULTIMA with. Once the failure information was given to the evauluation board, it began to circulate in the State of Colorado. One of the officers on the board email his fellow officers that Second Chance had again failed in testing.
This is where this story gets unbelievable. The Second Chance Rep, handling the bid, Jim Layman, called the head of purchsing for the State of Colorado, and scheduled a meeting. He went in to the Director of Purchasing’ Office and began to threaten the State of Colorado with legal action if the information was disclosed. He then went to the department that the officer responsible for the email works at, and demanded an IAD investigation, and dismissal of the officer. He has also threatened US Testing with legal action.
Our question is this. Why is Second Chance replacing failing armor with armor that will obviously fail, and why are they threatening officers who are concerned about officer safety with legal action and losing their badges?
Shouldn’t Second Chance and Jim Layman trying to fix the problem, instead of hiding it and threatening police officers who wear their faulty armor?