Okay, this is what I have:
Customs or Border Patrol shooting occurred in Ca., officer from the San Diego office. Jim Cirillo mentioned it in an article he wrote a couple of years ago. I am in Oklahoma and the article is in Austin. I will find out publication and date when I return in about a week. Verified to me by a Border Patrol agent in the El Paso office.
Houston shooting occurred the last half of 2001. I checked the Houston Chronicle site lookiing for the article, but the archives are a pay site. There were two perps involved.
NYC actually had two shootings. First was in the subway early 1999, suggest contacting Jim Cirillo, he is in NJ and is familiar with the incident, the NY Transit Police, and NYC Medical Examiners office. More recent shooting occurred in Harlem late 2001. I spoke to the dealer in Pa. who sold it to the shooters brother-in-law. Come to find out the shooter was in the witness protection program. Contact NYC ME about that one as well. I tried the ME when I was there in September last year, but it was over the Labor Day holiday and couldn't get the guy. His comment to the dealer was that it was the most destructiive wound profile he had ever seen from a handgun.
Be aware that none of the newpaper articles are going to mention RBCD, just as the do not mention Gold Dot. The closest was the Canadian sniper describing the .50 BMG as the American ammo 'that shoots farther, flatter, and faster' than the ammo they use. Of course the RBCD ammo in use is between 400 and 500 grains rather than the 753 gr (I think) that they usually shoot. No shootings with the new 200 gr load at over 10,000 fps yet besides some unfortunate prairie dogs and coyotes. Neat thing about that load is that you don't need to hit them, the pressure wave from the bullet turns their insides to jelly as it passes by.
ajacobs, RBCD only penetrates thin barrier material. It will break up on a brick wall or sidewalk. It disrupts in a moist medium. Depending on handgun caliber the loads penetrate 8-12 inches with the .44 mag going 15 inches. Photos of shots into ballistic clay (as used by the NIJ and FBI) and gelatin (as used by everyone else) can be found on the website
www.rbcd.net so you can see the penetration in a wet media for yourself. Special Application Ammo (SAA) will penetrate Threat Level III body armor, but that is only available to law enforcement agencies on a PO. There is also a line of ammo available only on federal agency PO that is EXTREMELY expensive, $120/box of 20. The .38 Special is a 28 gr slug at 2600+ fps from a 2" barrel J-frame. It creates a HUGE wound cavity at 25 feet. At 50 feet it penetrates about 1" and does not upset. At 75 feet it will bounce off a heavy leather jacket. If a square hit is made in a limb or neck, the limb or head will be severed from the body. It will not penetrate the body of an airplane (gee, I wonder who uses this?) and will disrupt on a thin barrier. The best source of testing on SAA is from the people at Blackwater Training, ask for Gary. There is also much work being done at Kirkland AFB in N.M. as part of a Sandia Labs project, but it is doubtfull that you will be able to get that info.
There will also be a new video available of RBCD being fired into gelatin (probably ballistic clay as well to satisfy the govt users) using a high speed digital camera. It was to be completed around June, but that camera is currently in use shooting the recreations of the damage occurring to the Challenger space shuttle to analyze the cause of the accident. That work will be completed within the next month or two so I still hope to see the RBCD video by fall.
ReconTech, I have heard of Glaser Safety slugs blowing up on some heavy hardware on a leather biker jacket, but I am not aware of any failure of RBCD ammo in the way you suggest. RBCD is NOT Glaser and is NOT MagSafe. If you know of a specific instance of an RBCD 'clothing related' failure I would love to hear about it.
Even Marshall has published the 3rd edition of his book and although I have not read it, I hear that he has positive comments on RBCD. Marshall is privy to the Kirkland data as he is currently doing security with the NRC at Sandia. Marshall's comments may be conservative as he was not given free ammo to test with and was not happy about it.
