Washington, DC – Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) are leading a bipartisan group of senators in a push to make it easier for local law enforcement agencies facing financial hardships to buy bulletproof vests for their officers.

Leahy, Clinton, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) have introduced a bill to allow need-based waivers of the local matching requirement for grants under the existing Bulletproof Vest Partnership Grant Program. The eight-year-old grant program has been a great success in making it possible for local police and sheriffs’ offices, correctional facilities and other law enforcement agencies across the country to equip their officers with life-saving body armor, ever since it was chartered under legislation authored by Leahy and by then-Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.).

Leahy said, “We know that body armor saves lives, and this program has worked well in helping local police departments to afford them. The dangers that police officers face every day do not disappear when a community is hit by special hardship – if anything, those dangers increase. Senator Landrieu made that case as strongly as it could be made, in her advocacy for New Orleans’s hard-hit police force after Katrina. We should rise to the occasion and partner with hard-hit communities, so those officers can have the bulletproof vests that protect them while they are protecting us.”

Clinton said, "Every day, our nation’s law enforcement officers place themselves in harm’s way in order to protect the American public. It is unconscionable that many of them are forced to go without the body armor they need to protect themselves. This legislation will ensure that our deserving police officers, correctional officers, and other law enforcement officers will be able to obtain protective gear they need even in cases of financial hardship."

Bulletproof and stab-resistant vests remain one of the foremost defenses for uniformed law enforcement officers, but law enforcement agencies have struggled to find the funds necessary to replace either aged vests, which have a life expectancy of roughly five years, or to purchase new vests for newly hired officers. Vests cost between $500 and $1000 each. Officers have had to dip into their own pockets to pay for new vests due to local and state agency budget shortfalls.

Since 1999, the Bulletproof Vest Program has provided $173 million to purchase about 500,000 vests in more than 11,500 jurisdictions nationwide. The program funds up to 50 percent of cost of replacing or purchasing new vests. The program is required to fully fund the 50 percent of requested vest needs for jurisdictions with populations below 100,000, and the remaining funds are distributed to jurisdictions of over 100,000.

The changes proposed in the new Leahy-Clinton bill, introduced Tuesday night, would give discretion to the Director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance within the Justice Department to grant waivers or reductions in the match requirements for bulletproof vest awards to state and local law enforcement agencies that can demonstrate fiscal hardship. The senators point out that local law enforcement agencies are constantly responding to new challenges, from fighting a recent rise in violent crime to responding to threats of terrorism. Waiving the match requirement as needed for life-saving body armor would make vests available for law enforcement officers in New Orleans, in other Gulf Coast states, or in other rural or urban areas that experience disasters or other circumstances that create fiscal hardships. Leahy and Clinton note that DOJ already has such a mechanism in place for determining if waivers for financial hardship are warranted in programs such as the Violence Against Women Act, the COPS program, and grants to Indian tribes.

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