Houston Police Officer John "J.D." Calhoun learned first-hand last summer the importance of wearing his bulletproof vest.
"The vest saved my life," the seven-year veteran of the force told Officer.com following the Safariland Group's SAVES Club induction ceremony at SHOT Show in Las Vegas last month. "You just never know when it's going to happen. It can get really crazy really quick."
Calhoun and his partner were initially sent to investigate a minor car crash on the afternoon of Aug. 13, but a police dispatcher changed their assignment, sending them to check out a report about a suspicious person with a gun at a bus stop in the city's Greenspoint District.
The caller gave the dispatcher a detailed description of the man, including his clothing and a backpack. The caller also said the man was smoking marijuana and holding a gun.
As the officers pulled up to the scene around 2:30 p.m. in the 1900 block of Airline Drive, they saw a man standing near a bus stop who matched the description, including the backpack. After they attempted to speak to him, the man grabbed his backpack and began to quickly walk away.
Calhoun caught up to the man and shoved him in the back. The man slammed against a tree before the officer put him in a bear hug. As he tackled him, Calhoun heard a loud "pop" and looked down to see the man with a pistol in his hand. The suspect jammed his .380 caliber gun against the officer's left side and shot him. The ABA HP02 Level II body armor stopped the round. The man then pistol-whipped him in the face as his partner attempted to take him down.
At that point, Calhoun said the man still had the gun and began to repeatedly pull the trigger, but nothing happened. The suspect had jammed the firearm into his side so hard, that it knocked it out of battery and didn't allow another round to be sent into the chamber.
Calhoun immediately returned fire, striking the man several times. His partner helped him take the suspect down and they took him into custody. The gunman was later pronounced dead Houston Northwest Medical Center.
"When he ran from me and I tackled him and wrapped up and I felt the pop, I actually first thought that he grazed me because I didn't feel pain; I didn't feel the heat. I didn't feel anything, I just felt vibrations.
"I was thinking that he just totally missed," he said. "So, I knew that there was a gun, but I didn't immediately think: 'I'm shot.' "
Meanwhile, Officer Ben LeBlanc, a member of the police department's Tactical Unit, was in the area when he heard the initial radio transmission as the incident was unfolding.
"I work all over the city but just happened to be, say, a mile away," he recalled. "I heard it go out over the radio and I was like 'I know that voice.' " That voice belonged to Calhoun -- LeBlanc's best friend and his wife's partner.
"You hear a little bit of chatter and its craziness on the radio," he said. "Then, you hear 'shots fired,' and I definitely knew the voice. I knew that it was John. My wife is his partner, he's 'Uncle John' to my little girl. I heard it going on and I made a police car look like a space shuttle."
At the time, LeBlanc wasn't sure who was hit, and when he arrived at the scene, he saw Calhoun sitting on the sidewalk, grimacing in pain. He looked at his buddy and fellow officers and said: "It feels like I got kicked by a horse."
After checking him out, they saw a hole in his shirt and took off his vest to reveal a large bruise on his side. They felt and saw no penetration as Calhoun asked, "Are you sure it didn't go in?"
While the vest stopped the bullet, the impact left a large bruise on his side. The officers on the scene knew their colleague was lucky to be alive.
"You couldn't have put two bullets next to each other with how low it was on the vest," LeBlanc said.
Just a week earlier, LeBlanc, his wife a Calhoun had returned from a family vacation.
"It just shook me up because, I'm like 'I have my wife and my best friend, we just came back from vacation and I hope that's not our last,' " he said. "Him and her, they've handle it like champs. I'm the one who tears up about it."
When the incident occurred, the Houston Police Department had a policy in place that made it mandatory of officers to wear their vests, but LeBlanc and Calhoun said that policy included an exception said that they could go without them if the heat index was over 100.
That exception was taken out about a month later.
"We now have a new policy in place where you have to wear your vest at all times -- even if it's hot," LeBlanc said.
Calhoun, whose parents were both members of the department, said that he always made it a point to wear his vest, no matter how hot it was outside. The day of the shooting, it was in the 90s.
"I've always worn it," he said. "Some people would say 'Why do you wear the vest, it's so hot outside.' In Houston, we get up to 105 degrees easy."
After his incident, Calhoun said that there were officers who had been on the force for 20, 25 years who called him up to say that they were going to start wearing their vests all the time.
Paul Peluso | Editor
Paul Peluso is the Managing Editor of OFFICER Magazine and has been with the Officer Media Group since 2006. He began as an Associate Editor, writing and editing content for Officer.com. Previously, Paul worked as a reporter for several newspapers in the suburbs of Baltimore, MD.
