The Tactical Vest is a police officer personal armor, available only in the 112 Operator Factilities DLC, that can only be placed in the chest slot. It becomes available several days into any career, scenario, or freeplay game, and costs €4,000 to purchase as part of a gear set for police officers.
The Tactical Vest offers 5 different skill bonuses to the officer wearing it, all of which are incredibly useful to the point where they may even substitute for certain tools - freeing up tool slots for specialty equipment.
In general, the Tactical Vest should be equipped on every officer who does not need some other specialty armor for their particular job. It is one of the most important items to start placing on officers as soon as it becomes available, despite its cost.
Criminal Bonus[]
The Tactical Vest increases an officer's Suspects skill by +0.5 (also known as the "Criminals" skill - they are one and the same). This speeds up the officer's work when interrogating witnesses and issuing fines to offenders (no other policework affected). Note that the base Suspects skill for a rookie officer is just 1.0, so such an officer will work 50% faster with the Tactical Vest when resolving the relevant issues. The bonus is less keenly felt for more experienced officers, whose Suspects skill is already much higher to boot.
The Police Laptop and Terminal both provide a Suspects bonus of their own; but they do not necessarily replace the Tactical Uniform nor vice versa, since the bonus is additive. All three items equipped together would make a rookie work 250% faster than normal when solving relevant incidents. However, note that an officer's Suspects skill can never exceed 4.0, so adding this much equipment to a veteran officer can be wasteful. If you exceed 4.0, the Terminal is the item you'll want to remove from the gear set.
Handcuffing Bonus[]
The Tactical Vest increases the officer's Handcuffing skill by +1.0 (shown erroneously as +10.00 in some tooltips). This speeds up their work when arresting suspects by +1 Work per Second. Note that without any Handcuffing bonuses, an officer's Handcuffing skill is only 0.1 - arrests will take many minutes to complete - so the Handcuffs are essentially required for an officer in order to be able to make arrests within any reasonable timeframe.
This bonus is most important for officers riding in vehicles that are expected to make arrests, such as Police Vans or even Patrol Cars. Other units (e.g. Police Motorcycles, Police Helicopters, etc.) may never be required to make arrests at all, if you use them strictly for other purposes like questioning witnesses and issuing fines. Nevertheless, it's typically a good idea for any officer to have the ability to arrest suspects, even if they must then wait for another unit to come take those suspects to jail.
Note that the Tactical Vest provides the same +1.0 Handcuffing bonus as a pair of Handcuffs. Despite the Tactical Vest's description saying that it already contains handcuffs, the bonuses from these two items are cumulative. As a result, officers wearing both items together will be extremely quick to complete an arrest - around a minute of in-game time (on SLOW game speed).
Protection and Damage Reduction[]
The Tactical Vest offers a Protection value of 0.3, which is 3/5 as much as a Bulletproof Vest. Though this is hard to verify, 0.3 Protection appears to reduce the chance for the officer to get hit with any attack by 30%. This makes the officer somewhat safer, as they fight to neutralize their assailant.
Note that it is currently unknown how Protection bonuses from multiple items (including the armor of the vehicle that the officer rides in) affect each other. However, it is clear that there is a certain cap: it's not possible to attain 100% protection (e.g. by wearing a Tactical Vest for 0.3 Protection, while riding in a Special Forces Van for another 0.9 Protection). Some attacks will always get through.
Furthermore, the Tactical Vest has a Damage Reduction bonus of +3. While it is not entirely clear how this bonus works, it reduces the Damage value of any weapon attacking the officer by 0.03 points. This may either reduce the chance for the assailant to score an injuring blow to the officer spontaneously; increase the number of times the officer can be hit before they are automatically injured; or both. All in all, it slightly increases survivability during combat, especially against weaker weapons like the Baseball Bat.
Search Bonus[]
The Tactical Vest provides a bonus of +0.5 to the Search Skill of any crew member who wears it - half as much as a Search Vest. This is a fairly good bonus, speeding up the rate at which that officer's team completes searches, including both manual search (sector-by-sector) and automatic (at the search incident site).
This bonus is cumulative with other Search bonuses, such as those provided by certain vehicles (helicopters, motorcycles, etc.). Such units will be fairly quick when performing searches; if they are nearby a search zone (even if it's an incident they can't resolve themselves), they can pitch in quite effectively.
Description[]
"Personal armor that absorbs the impact of firearm bullets."
Availability[]
Available only in the 112 Operator Facilities DLC.