The Akron Police Department recently learned that members of its SWAT unit have been wearing counterfeit body armor.
APD Captain Agostino Micozzi spoke to members of Akron City Council’s Public Safety Committee on Monday afternoon to secure funding to replace the phony ballistic plates the department was apparently duped into buying. The department received a warning about the fake equipment from the federal government.
“In this case, we need to replace them all,” Micozzi told the committee. “We became part of a bigger investigation. We were notified by the Department of Homeland Security that the plates we had – some of those plates were found to be counterfeit. And so as a result of that, we need to replace them all.”
The department sought approval to spend $60,000 on 40 sets of “ceramic-type” ballistic plates for the unit’s protective vests that are meant to stop high-powered rifle rounds. City Council voted unanimously on Monday night to approve the funding.
Micozzi said the APD is “cooperating” with a Homeland Security investigation into counterfeit body armor and hopes the department can get its money back “somewhere down the line.”
“But in the meantime, in order to keep our high-risk operations operators safe, we need to replace these plates.”
Signal Akron reached out to the Akron Police Department for more information on where the department purchased the counterfeit body armor and about the warning from Homeland Security. We will follow up when more information is known.
