How many crimes commited with body armor?

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Skribs

Skribs

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I've asked this in a few of the Aurora threads that have popped up, but those threads were locked before anyone answered me (due to going around in circles about the shooting). I'm not really interested in exploring the Aurora shooting any more in this thread, but I do want to look at the issue the media brought up - body armored assailants.

As we all know, the LA bank gunfight is one of the major reasons most police forces issue carbines in modern times. Now, even though it appears as if "The Joker" (as this man calls himself) was not wearing body armor, the initial media hype stirred up a lot of questions regarding CCW defending against armored assailants.

My question is this: excepting the famous bank robbery, how many crimes have been committed by armored assailants?
 
Not many. Here's my best attempt at hard numbers. I think these numbers are for people sentenced for Federal crimes, but it's all I got. In plain English, the chance of running into a bad guy (or more) who wears body armor is pretty slim. The bulk number is probably higher due to the possible omission of state and local criminal and sentencing data. A quick Google search revels that crimes committed by perpetrators wearing body armor are quite rare, as it isn't very often for such things to emerge on the news. Armor usage is most common for high-risk operations such as bank robberies or armored car heists.

http://www.ussc.gov/Data_and_Statistics/Annual_Reports_and_Sourcebooks/2006/table18.pdf
 
I'm not sure that the Colorado incident involved true body armor. Someone posed the question that his VEST may have just been a tactical vest for carrying extra ammo, etc. Does anyone know for sure if it WAS true body armor, or just an initial misconception?
 
What we do know re: CO shooting is that he had a tac vest for carrying mag pouches, etc. Some other people have the link to the gear he bought off of a specific website, I can't remember the exact details. We do not know whether he purchased body armor from somewhere else. It appears that he did not have armor, but it is still possible he did have it.

Either way, I'm looking for other incidents involving armored BGs. Dissecting the CO shooting has been done enough.
 
How about Ned Kelly, that's a pretty old case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Kelly

A final violent confrontation with police took place at Glenrowan on 28 June 1880. Kelly, dressed in home-made plate metal armour and helmet, was captured and sent to jail. He was convicted of three counts of capital murder and hanged at Old Melbourne Gaol in November 1880. His daring and notoriety made him an iconic figure in Australian history, folklore, literature, art and film.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ned_kelly_armour_library.JPG
 
Every time a SWAT team raids the wrong house. Quite a few.
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Interesting perspective. Not sure how that applies to your average CCW holder, although it would be very interesting to discuss the differences between a mistaken SWAT raid and a group of criminals pretending to be SWAT members (although I think that's very unlikely unless you're in the top 1% or its a terrorist attack that someone would go to those lengths against you).
I guess I should have made it clear in my OP - I was mainly trying to see if there are enough cases of people wearing armor for me to look into possibly making some carry choices around the possibility.

This brings 2 people onto my radar now.
 
I was mainly trying to see if there are enough cases of people wearing armor for me to look into possibly making some carry choices around the possibility.
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In that case Ned Kelly probably wouldn't benifit you. You'd most likely encounter someone wearing soft body armor these days (if you were assailed by one wearing armor at all). The problem is that it's best to train for center mass point of aim, and if you DO get targeted by a perp wearing armor, hopefully your fire will at least deter him. At best, your shots will miss the armor and hit him somewhere that will still shut him down OR hopefully his armor will be a very low rating for which you have a defeating caliber.
 
Well not necessarily looking at them from a tactics perspective, but from a what-are-the-chances perspective. If there's a handful of occurances every year in the US, then it might be something to look into. If there's one every year or couple of years in developed countries, it's a possibility to consider, but not necessarily that important. If it's one every hundred years on Earth, then I'd be better off preparing for a tsunami in Montana.
 
That does nothing to tell me what the actual chances are ztnedman. It's a nice analogy, but that's it.
 
I'm not sure of the statistics but I would expect the number is very low. Even in the situation where the BG has body armor we must think about our initial goal as ccw holders. The way I look at it is we are trying to stop the BG not necessarily kill them. I knew a guy who got shot while wearing body armor and while he is still alive he described the experience as getting hit in the chest with a baseball bat by Babe Ruth. In that case for initial reaction I'd shoot for center mass and if they keep coming you can react to the situation and take aimed shots while they are dazed. :)
 
A friend of mine was first in the door, while serving a warrant. That's all he remembers. He woke up in the ambulance, and was told he took a .357 to the chest.

Cracked ribs really, really hurt. A lot. And, if it weren't for body armor, I would have one less friend.
 
Down here in paradise we had a few incidents some years ago.... Having said that, though, I never ran across any request to gather that kind of info in 22 years in law enforcement.... I also never saw any training related data on criminal subjects wearing body armor (although I'm sure that any pros that do use body armor are going to be part of anyone stats since they tend to set things up so that law enforcement is never involved...).

That said, the stats that are probably more to the point are police officers involved in law breaking while on the job. There was a time in south Florida when that sort of stuff was a lot more common than anyone would like.....

If anyone is who is currently involved with in-service training has any stats on criminal actions involving armored suspects I'd sure like to hear about it...
 
Travelair said:
A friend of mine was first in the door, while serving a warrant. That's all he remembers. He woke up in the ambulance, and was told he took a .357 to the chest.

Cracked ribs really, really hurt. A lot. And, if it weren't for body armor, I would have one less friend.
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Was he raiding the right house?

This sounds interesting. Do you have a link to the story so I can read more?
 
Body armor is rarely involved in any crime and this is the reason it makes the news. Outlawing body armor is about as effective as outlawing drugs. Those wanting it will always be able to get it. For those of us who are law abiding citizens, body armor is not allowed because when the police shoot you they want you to die. All others have "rights".
 
Body armor is rarely involved in any crime and this is the reason it makes the news. Outlawing body armor is about as effective as outlawing drugs. Those wanting it will always be able to get it. For those of us who are law abiding citizens, body armor is not allowed because when the police shoot you they want you to die. All others have "rights".
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The legality of body armor isn't the issue I'm bringing up - in fact, it's perfectly legal. I have no idea where you get the idea that cops want you to die, or that it is illegal. My question about it being involved in crimes is related more to the potential that I might need to defeat body armor (either with armor piercing rounds or aiming around it) in self defense.
 
Crime is not currently known to be used with much frequency in crimes. However, there have been several times when it has been used and has been quite disturbing to the good guys involved in the situation.

As far as chances are concerned.

http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/medical.htm

This site gives average people struck by lightning and average people who die from being struck by lightning annually. In other words... stop thinking about it.
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Well this site gives you the stats on and death from cattle. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5829a2.htm

In other words...think about it a lot!

Well that worked much better than I had thought it would. You can take a completely unrelated subject involving a statistical analysis and state it as if it is relevant to the discussion and appear to draw a conclusion from it and it sounds like some sort of science with a link and everything. Oh wait, no it didn't. It didn't sound any more reasonable than ztnedman1's random site unrelated trivia link. In fact, it sounds silly.
 
Crime is not currently known to be used with much frequency in crimes.
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Actually I'm pretty sure crime is used in 100% of crimes...but don't worry, I know what you meant.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_courthouse_shooting

ArizonaTRex sent me a PM about this from another thread where I asked the question, regarding the above link.

So we now have...
Ned Kelly, 1880
North Holleywood Shootout, 1997
Arroyo, 2005

That's the comprehensive list thus far, and considering how few responses this is getting, I'm assuming there aren't many more. While I disagreed with ztned's method, I do agree with his conclusion - doesn't seem to be something that occurs often enough for me to plan my strategy (i.e. weapon and ammo selection, training regiment to take shots around armor) for an armored assailant.
 
That's the comprehensive list thus far, and considering how few responses this is getting, I'm assuming there aren't many more.
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That would be an amazingly naive assessment. I appear to have more than doubled your "comprehensive" sample in about 5 minutes time.

Body armor is used a lot more frequently than most folks realize. It is worn in in summer with lower levels of protection and isn't noticed (IIa) or in winter under heavy clothing and nobody notices. If not overt or not worn while being shot, it probably isn't noticed and not tabulated.

I do know that in the DFW area, we get one or two sets of bank robbers wearing what is believed to be body armor each year that I catch on the evening news. They are not caught or shot while wearing it and so I don't know.

Then there is stuff like this...
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/unknown/unknown-bank-robbers-2/view

You have to do some good Googling and screening to take sort through more events such as...
http://crimevoice.com/purple-heart-recipient-among-three-arrested-for-robbery-11796/

http://articles.dailypress.com/keyword/body-armor

http://m.rrdailyherald.com/mobile/n...cle_83c410b8-2cad-11e1-95f8-0019bb2963f4.html
{this article is actually here... http://www.defensivecarry.com/forum/carry-defensive-scenarios/133685-trend-body-armor-worn-during-home-invasions.html}
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/15/AR2006071500909_pf.html
http://articles.boston.com/2012-03-27/metro/31238672_1_body-armor-parking-lot-empty-car
http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-chino-bank-robbery,0,7507032.story?track=rss ********* nice pic of armor wearing gunman
 
And I guess I just proved that asking the question won't give you an answer, but proposing one answer will lead to others trying to prove you wrong.
 
Sorry if you must rely on the efforts of others to research topics for you. You drew a dubious conclusion from a lack of information you didn't even actually research yourself and so you arrived at a wrong conclusion and stated it as fact. Go figure.
 
Search engines hate me, so yes - I often do have to ask questions. If we didn't have to ask questions, why would people even use forums?
 
Didn't

the bad guys wear armor in the famous FBI shoot out that caused them to reevaluate their weapon choice?
Or is that Ned Kelly?
 
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