With great progress comes a really great odor
You know what stinks? A two-week-old corpse on a creek bank. You know what also stinks? A cop’s body armor. In fact I think it would offend the corpse were they to compete in such.
It’s been a part of my life for so long I don’t think about it much anymore (the technology, not the funk) but looking into it I see that outside of finding ways to make it more form fitting there have been few advances in it since back in the day when it (Kevlar at least) was invented by DuPont in 1965.
External vests became the big new thang post 9/11 (for my younger readers, “some people did something” in New York City on September 11, 2001), so for a long time we went from officers in the Norman Rockwell style pleated polyester uniforms with big round birth control hats, to cops in black tactical vests and cargo pants because. We liked to call it “Freedom”, but the novelty eventually faded for two different reasons.
First, they were slightly less approachable by members of the public, with which I agree, and second, given the “varying” physical fitness standards of cops as a rule, 325 pounds of fatass looked a lot better in the old traditional polyester rigs than the tactical vests that looked more like they were trying to keep the cops’ stomachs from exploding through a complex system of Velcro rather than keeping projectiles out.
(Attention Department Leaders: I hope you’re reading this. If your men and women look like crap in wrinkled 5.11’s and strained and faded Point Blank tactical rigs, you look like crap. See Something, Say Something, yo.)
Second, there is a compromise that’s been made in making outer carriers look like traditional uniforms which afford 10,000 times the flexibility and comfort while still looking professional. But the ballistic material itself? Strangely untouched.
Actually since cops were getting murdered wholesale during the Obama administration (just the Dallas “BLM Rally” alone, folks) they’ve added ballistic plates made in a form of ceramic, but they are generally the diameter of a paper plate and weigh as much as a spare truck tire which means they do not get used (much like the funny “almost L-shaped” PR-24 batons from the old days, which is why they were mostly phased out too).
What has improved though? So much so I credit it with the halt of ballistic technology advancement itself?
Febreze.
Just as Stephanie Kwolek of DuPont gave us the lifesaving material Kevlar during the summer of the Watts Riots, Proctor & Gamble gave us Febreze in 1996. Little did they know this would do real damage to their laundry detergent division, but its impact on Summer Cop Funk Syndrome is comparable only to the impact of Viagra on senior dating habits.
I can smell like source material from a Walking Dead episode, or I can smell merely “unpleasant”, with an air of fresh sheets (or bamboo, which I didn’t even realize had a smell).
External vests (that look like a uniform shirt and not a bondage and/or containment device, mind you) and chemicals that prevent your odor receptors from detecting Funk…we live in amazing times.
The bullet absorption aspect? Oh that’s all fine and good, but comfort and being less physically nauseating is a bit more practical in the big scheme of things. And besides, who wants to get shot and smell like the floor of a UTK dorm room?
So when he or she is not on a traffic stop or otherwise doing cop things (like eating) and you wish to shake their hand or tell them that they are automatically judged as racist and abusive because of the clothes they’re wearing, be grateful, or at least less hesitant to do so.
You’re welcome.
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.