The nonprofit founded by Tyrone Police Chief Brandon Perkins to provide body armor to police departments in need recently found a recipient in the Woodbury Police Department.
Perkins said the leadership of the American Armor Foundation, a Georgia-based 501(c)(3) public charity tasked with a mission to provide body armor to law enforcement officers working in underfunded agencies, recently announce that the Woodbury Police Department has been selected as the recipient of its first large agency grant.
Perkins and members of the organization’s board of directors were on hand at the Woodbury Police Department on Sept. 14 to present seven of the agency’s officers with brand new body armor.
“Notably, this isn’t replacement body armor. These officers, like thousands of others across the United States, had been performing their duties without it due to a lack of funding,” Perkins said.
Perkins note the lack of body armor in some of the nation’s police departments nearly two years ago after reading in a RAND study indicating that as many as 200,000 American law enforcement officers work without body armor.
“Having always worked for agencies that provided body armor and not actually knowing any officers who didn’t have it, I found that estimate hard to believe, so I conducted my own research,” Perkins said. “While I cannot substantiate the claim that 200,000 are working without it, I can conservatively affirm that tens of thousands of my fellow officers are, in fact, working without body armor due to a lack of funding.”
Perkins found this unacceptable and decided to make it his mission to do something about it and The American Armor Foundation was born in March 2015.
“It takes time to complete all of the legal requirements to form a nonprofit, to develop a solid board of directors and raise the initial funding necessary to get such an organization off the ground,” Perkins explained. “The Woodbury PD project is the culmination of 18 months of hard work getting this important organization started and we are proud to have them as an important part of our story.”
American Armor is funded by tax-deductible private and corporate financial donations as well as by participation in several additional fundraising initiatives to include a vehicle donation program. The Foundation’s flagship funding source is its “Monthly Heroes” program in which individuals can automatically donate as little as $3 per month to help them purchase body armor.
“There is power in numbers, so if we can get 1,000 people from across the country to donate $3 a month, we could provide about 80 vests a year,” said Perkins. “We’d love to see 1,000 people commit to $10 a month or more, but we wanted to give supporters an option to fit any budget.”
For more information on the nonprofit visit www.americanarmor.org
