No second chance for Second Chance?

[unixronin]

bfudlmint pointed me at this MSNBC article asserting that President Bush may have been wearing a bulletproof vest that ... wasn't:^[1]

WASHINGTON - May 2002:  President Bush attends a memorial for police officers killed in the line of duty.  Under his jacket, he's wearing a Second Chance bulletproof vest, according to a company insider critical of the vest.

Make a note of that phrase "company insider".  It'll become important later.

A year later, a California police officer wearing the same model vest is killed when a bullet penetrates his vest.

The article goes on to discuss allegations that Second Chance knew the vests were defective, but did not recall them until after the officer died.

Sources involved in the case say the Justice Department now is conducting a criminal investigation into whether the company — Second Chance Body Armor — knowingly sold defective vests to the Secret Service, military and police.  The company denies the allegation.

The article goes on to make veiled allusions to "a company whistleblower" (who is later named) and "a top company research official".

A company whistleblower says the Secret Service bought possibly defective vests for the president, his detail and others.  Another worker told NBC News her group made vests specifically for the president and first lady.

Things start to get interesting when we track the story back to the previous article from November 2004.  In this article, we learn that the whistleblower and the "top company research official" are one and the same, and we learn that company president Richard Davis knew -- and apparently did not approve.

Now Davis is a guy who stands behind his company's product ... literally.  For years, he would personally demonstrate the effectiveness of Second Chance ballistic vests by putting one on and then shooting himself in the chest at point-blank range with a .44 Magnum.  The whistleblower, Aaron Westrick, apparently advised the company, and thereby Davis, when he learned there was a problem:

In a December 2001 memo, Westrick urges that customers be warned, saying "lives and our credibility are at stake" and advising the company not to "continue operating as though nothing is wrong until one of our customers is killed."

And Davis seems to have taken the threat seriously:

And in a draft letter to the company's board in 2002, president Davis wrote that one undesirable option was to, "continue operating as though nothing is wrong until one of our customers is killed or wounded."

(Emphasis mine)

"I had to write a very nasty letter to my own board of directors and really get them off their butts and force them into doing something," he says. "I said, 'my God, don't wait until somebody gets killed!'"

Linked from that article, you'll find this one.  In this article, we discover that the problem is with a "Zylon" fiber bought from a Japanese company, Toyobo Co.  We also learn that Second Chance recalled 130,000 vests made entirely of Zylon, and issued a warning about 100,000 others made partially from Zylon.  It transpires that Toyobo knew the fiber loses up to 20% of its strength within two years of manufacture (the failed vest, when tested, was found to have deteriorated by 30%) when exposed to light, heat and humidity.

Now, let's consider a few things here.  First of all, George W. Bush was almost certainly NOT wearing a defective vest.  You can bet that if Second Chance made vests specifically and individually for him and the First Lady, they took extra care with them.  The President and First Lady would also have had brand-new vests that they would seldom wear, and then probably only for at most a few hours at a time.  To all practical purposes, at that photo-op he was still wearing a brand-new vest.  The vest that failed had probably been worn day-in, day-out for two or three years, probably eight to ten hours a day, by a police officer who had to get hot, and sweaty, and rained on during his shift and couldn't dry off until he got off-shift.

Then let's consider Davis.  Back when I knew more about Second Chance, and Davis was shooting himself in the chest, Davis's word was law at Second Chance, and Second Chance proudly proclaimed that their vests were made with 100% DuPont Kevlar.  More recently, with higher-energy threats to face, Kevlar was replaced by Spectra fiber.  Where the hell did this "Zylon" stuff come from?  The Wikipedia article on Zylon says it's a thermosetting polyurethane, but, confusingly, also says it's an electron-beam-crosslinked thermoplastic polyurethane.  It is described as being "vaguely related to Kevlar and nylon" .... well, I suppose just about any carbon-based polymer could probably be described as "vaguely related to Kevlar and nylon", as well as to styrofoam.

Putting aside that issue for a moment, what's this about Davis having to write "very nasty letters" to his Board of Directors to get them to act?  Back in The Day, when Davis ran the company, he wouldn't have had to ask anyone's permission to recall a defective line.  He'd have just ordered it done.

 

Here's where we move from documentation into speculation.  I have a gut feeling that what really happened here was something like this:  Richard Davis lost control of the company he founded, and the Board made the decision to switch from DuPont Kevlar or Spectra ballistic fiber to Toyobo's Zylon fiber, the most likely reason being because it was cheaper.  They apparently didn't bother to properly research it; a competitor, Pacific Safety Products, says that they discovered the Zylon deterioration problem during the development of their own vests, and solved it by sealing the ballistic panels inside a non-breathable nylon pouch^[2] containing a desiccant packet.  (Man, that's got to be a bitch of a hot vest to have to wear.)  As we've already read, the company -- which, really, means the Board -- is denying everything, although the chronological evidence is clearly against them.

If this is correct, then Second Chance's board basically sacrificed the reputation of their company and brand, and endangered police officers, in the name of profit.  (Like that's never happened before.)

It's just speculation, of course.  But what'll you bet me it's correct?

---

[1]  Actually, to be pedantic, this is true by definition, because if we're being pedantic, there is no such thing as a "bulletproof" vest.  They would be more accurately described as "bullet-resistant" vests; a given vest is rated for a particular threat level, which is normally defined in terms of a specified list of calibers, and the rating asserts that under normal conditions, the vest will stop normal ammunition of that type fired from the general class of firearm in which it is commonly used.  The NIJ rating system used for "bulletproof" vests is explained here.  (Yes, it's a Shadowrun gaming site, but the NIJ table included is accurate, and it's the first link to it I could find.)  Even within these threat ratings, note the restriction "normal ammunition"; a vest may be defeated by unusual bullet types even in an ammunition class it is rated to stop.

[2]  Incidentally, I've since learned that a similar construction to this -- layers of cross-laid fiber embedded in resin, and enclosed in a non-breathable membrane not dissimilar to Saran wrap -- is the standard construction for Spectra-fiber vests as well.  One assumes there is a sound technical reason for doing this, and given that, it doesn't seem reasonable that the old Second Chance would have switched to a new fiber without testing to determine whether the vapor membrane was in fact still necessary.

Comments

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

twitch.

Your speculation sounds about right. At what expense, saving some money???

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

What's fun about this is that the veil of corporate liability limitation does not apply to a company's directors. If it can be shown that they did this, they are jointly and severally fucked. As they should be.