Local entrepreneurs say they’ve invented body armour that will not only protect police officers in the line of duty, but also make them look good doing it.
Vancouver-based Harding Tactical Systems is hitting the personal protection market with its flagship Harding Trauma Shield, a two-piece tactical suit that’s designed to fit beneath standard issue uniforms.
CEO Paul Mann has teamed up with local police officer Fred Harding to revolutionize how every day cops protect themselves on the streets.
But body armour is nothing new to specialized crowd-control units, so what’s different about Mann’s technology?
“It’s like a paper clip,” Mann explained. “If you never had a paper clip, once you start using it you wonder how you did without it.”
The Harding technology employs a polymer composite to protect officers from blunt-force impact.
It can’t stop a bullet, but an officer on the street won’t sustain as bad of an injury if he or she gets whacked with an iron bar or wooden stick.
That’s not a heck of a lot different than what’s already available, but what is different is the fact that the Harding gear is comfortable and can be worn covertly.
The concealed nature of the product allows users to wear it with street clothes or undercover, Mann said, and it’s been designed to look somewhat stylish.
On top of that, he said it provides a far greater range of movement than traditional body armour.
That means police officers can wear armour without attracting too much attention, and also be able to move more easily in combat situations.
Although the product has barely hit the market, the Justice Institute of B.C. has agreed to put it to the test.
“My sense is anything that provides good protection and allows comfort and flexibility in its use, I think will be looked at quite closely by police forces, corrections, sheriffs and others,” said Mike Simpson, dean of the public safety and security school at the Justice Institute.
Simpson believes an initial market for the product could be in training centres.
Today, law-enforcement recruits are trained using bulky body-armour suits that are difficult to move in.
As a result, recruits don’t get the best sense of how real life combat situations unfold.
“You can’t really run in them, you can’t really move around very much in them,” Simpson said. “They do their job, they absorb the hit but in terms of creating a real-life scenario for student officers to practice on, it’s not quite there.”
The Harding technology could offer an alternative, though it would only be a small market for a company with much larger ambitions.
Mann wants to see his suits in police departments throughout North America, implementing them in crowd-control units to start with.
Last summer, Vancouver Police Department Sgt. Jeff Harris donned the Harding suit for two shifts during the Celebration of Light.
“I had a guy whack me with one of our batons, the steel ones, he got me across the shin and … there was no bruise, it didn’t really hurt,” Harris said. “So you can take a lot of punishment with that stuff.”
He said the technology is perfect for a crowd-control unit, but he wouldn’t recommend it for every day patrol.
“I don’t need that kind of protection every day on the job, and it would be too cumbersome and it would be too hot.”
In order to get its product to market, the company is focused on building a reputation for its gear with trainers and police departments.
Mann said the company is already in talks with a number of departments, and once the product gets off the ground he sees further use for it in extreme sports and mixed martial arts training.
But even if it takes a little while for business to get off the ground, Mann said the product’s “astronomical” profit margins would generate much-needed revenue right away.
In the end, it’s the simplicity of the product that he believes will attract customers.
“It’s a bit like you holding your arm up and me swinging a baseball bat at it, and you being able to sustain that hit and carry on,” Mann said. “In most cases, you would have a broken arm. When we show that to the [police] departments that’s what really sells it.”