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More armor, tougher crooks
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http://www.twincities.com/mld/twinci...s/14943409.htm
More armor, tougher crooks
Police concerned as more criminals wear bulletproof vests
BY MARA H. GOTTFRIED
Pioneer Press
Twin Cities criminals aiming to get a leg up on the law and other thugs are increasingly donning bulletproof vests when they hit the streets, say police officers alarmed by the trend.
When St. Paul police officers pulled over a reputed gangster in April, they found the traditional tools of a would-be criminal in his van — a ski mask and a semi-automatic handgun. They also spotted criminal gear that appears to be gaining in popularity — body armor.
Last month in Minneapolis, body armor surfaced in two cases. Police say a man they arrested was wearing a bulletproof vest he wore during a drive-by shooting. And robbers who brandished guns and ordered people in a business to the floor left body armor behind.
Blame it on three factors, says one Minneapolis police official. Body armor is more readily available than before, especially on the Internet. It's less expensive than it once was, although still fairly pricey. And criminals may be getting more violent.
"Wearing it is almost a fashion statement to some of these guys," said Minneapolis Capt. Rich Stanek. "I think about when I started as a cop 25 years ago, most cops didn't wear body armor. Now, a large majority of police officers do, but more and more of the bad guys are, too. They think it makes you invincible, when in fact it doesn't."
That criminals are increasingly turning to body armor is another stage of the age-old battle between cops and robbers. When bad guys started using semi-automatic pistols, cops upgraded from revolvers. Highway patrols have turned to Ford Mustangs or other sporty squads to keep up in chases.
Locally, law-enforcement officers say it's still relatively rare to come across body armor on criminals in action. Police say most of the vests they've discovered surfaced during searches of homes or cars.
Criminals probably turn to body armor to protect themselves in case they get in a shootout with another bad guy or the police, said St. Paul police Cmdr. Todd Axtell.
That nightmarish scenario came to life in a prominent case in 1997, when Los Angeles police got into a gun battle with robbers wearing full-body armor. The robbers fired thousands of bullets from their automatic weapons, injuring 10 officers and six bystanders, while officers' bullets bounced off of them. Finally, the officers fatally shot the two men.
"It always concerns me when the bad guys are better equipped than law enforcement," said Kent Bailey, acting agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's Twin Cities office.
FBI agents in the agency's Minneapolis bureau have observed that people with body armor tend to be "the more violent felons," said Special Agent Paul McCabe.
Drug dealers, afraid of being robbed, are one group the DEA has seen with bulletproof vests, Bailey said. The majority of the cases Bailey has encountered involved people in the methamphetamine trade.
Gangsters also seem to gravitate to bulletproof vests, police said.
In the late 1990s, a couple of members of one Minneapolis gang were known for wearing bulletproof vests whenever they went outside, said Ron Ryan, Metro Gang Strike Force commander. The members of that gang were "so hated by other gangs, everyone was shooting at them," he said. "It was a survival thing."
But a recent case that Ryan found "more of a concern to us in law enforcement" involved a St. Paul gang member who had a bulletproof vest and allegedly carried a handgun with armor-piercing bullets.
"People of that mindset are obviously gearing up for police," said Ryan, whose son, St. Paul police officer Ron Ryan Jr., was fatally shot in the line of duty in 1994.
With the knowledge that criminals might be wearing body armor, police departments now train officers to vary their target pattern if they get into a shootout with such a person, Axtell said. Officers also have access to weapons that can penetrate vests, he said.
Under Minnesota law, it's legal for anyone to buy or wear body armor, but it's a felony to wear or possess it while committing or attempting to commit a crime.
Even so, not everyone will sell body armor to people who don't work in law enforcement.
"We don't want it to fall into the wrong hands," said Jeff Schneider, store manager of KEEPRS Inc.'s St. Paul store. "We're in the business of protecting law enforcement."
Some states have moved to ban violent criminals from possessing body armor. California passed such a law after the 1997 shootout there. Locally, some in law enforcement said they think it's a good law that Minnesota should look into adopting.
Body armor was mentioned in three criminal complaints the Ramsey County attorney's office filed in April and May, but in only one of those cases was a person charged with committing a crime while wearing or possessing a bulletproof vest.
In one case, a Ramsey County sheriff's deputy pulled a car over in Shoreview and spotted what appeared to be a police badge inside. He searched the car and found numerous knives, drug paraphernalia, a red police-style dash light, binoculars, a large can of tear gas, a semiautomatic handgun and a bulletproof vest. The badge was for a bail-enforcement agent, the complaint said.
The man, a felon, told authorities he had always wanted to be a police officer or to get into the bounty hunter business, but that story might have been a cover, said Tom Rudenick, a sheriff's office investigator.
"Any time felons are in possession of body armor, it really raises our level of suspicion as to what his true intentions were," he said.
Another complaint detailed St. Paul officers pulling a man over and noticing he was wearing a bulletproof vest when he got out of the car. When asked why he was wearing it, he told officers it was a fashion statement, the complaint said.
Axtell, the St. Paul police commander, believes that was a flip response.
"These are people engaged in criminal activity," he said. "They are wearing it for a reason."
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Computer-assisted reporting editor MaryJo Sylwester contributed to this article.
Mara H. Gottfried covers St. Paul public safety. She can be reached at
mgottfried@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5262.
