The Little Rock Ambulance Authority on Tuesday approved a purchase of bullet-resistant vests for medics at the state's largest ambulance service, a safety measure taken after deadly attacks on emergency personnel and police officers across the country.
Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services of Little Rock is set to buy 275 vests for $275,000, and it plans to have medics fitted and equipped in six weeks. The agency employs roughly 220 medics full time and about 55 on a part-time basis. All will be required to wear body armor on the job, with few exceptions.
The agency's special tactics and advanced response team, a unit of 10 medics who double as certified law enforcement officers, had been the only MEMS employees with ballistic vests. The last time ambulance crews wore bullet-resistant vests in Little Rock was in the mid-1990s, during the peak of gang violence in the city. Those vests have long since exceeded a five-year life span. MEMS Executive Director Jon Swanson said the agency began researching new body armor in late 2015. He said that recent mass shootings, such as the massacre at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub in June, and the targeted killings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge this month placed a greater urgency on the process.