Under Armour evidently wants to get into the law enforcement officer uniform business, and they have what sounds like a scheme to get free marketing and field testing of their new products by outfitting one Baltimore police district with them for free. Sounds like a great idea to us, yet the proposal has led to tooth-gnashing among some elected officials about whether it is ethical or wise for the city to accept what they seem to view as some sort of Trojan compression shirt. Though we rarely find ourselves arguing that local leaders are overly scrupulous about such matters, this appears to be a situation in which the potential benefits to the city far outweigh any potential harms.
One theoretical risk for the city in approving the deal, which is due a vote at the Board of Estimates tomorrow, is that Baltimore would somehow find itself beholden to Under Armour for police uniform contracts in the future, a $1.3 million expense last year alone. Perhaps city officials would consciously or subconsciously return the favor for the free uniforms by tipping the scales Under Armour's way in future bidding. Perhaps Under Armour would produce a uniform of a type that traditional manufacturers cannot match — certainly a possibility given its high-tech athletic wear — and the city would create bidding specifications as a result of its experience with these uniforms that attract no other bidders and thus drive up costs.
But the flip side is that the police department will get a chance to see if Under Armour really can make a better uniform, one that reflects not just a changing sense of style but also the demands of the job. As one observer pointed out in The Sun's news report on the proposal, many more officers wear bulletproof vests than in the past, and that makes sweaty, itchy uniforms a bigger problem than they had been. Maybe the police will discover that technical fabrics don't make much difference, and maybe officers will discover that they do. At that point, it will be up to Baltimore — and other cities, for that matter — to make a cost-benefit calculation. Should the uniforms become popular, you can bet Under Armour won't have the sector to itself for long.
The other risk is that Under Armour might get preferential treatment from the city generally as a result of this gift. The apparel giant benefited from $35 million worth of tax increment financing when it expanded its Locust Point headquarters in 2012. Now, with the possibility that the company may be seeking to develop a larger campus in Port Covington, it could soon be back looking for more assistance. The Locust Point deal generated some opposition back when Under Armour was a $1 billion company; any incentive deal now that it has surpassed $3 billion in annual revenue would almost certainly spark louder protests. (For the record, there has not yet been any request for assistance, or even much public acknowledgment of any Under Armour plans for the property, which the company's founder, Kevin Plank, has assembled through various entities.)
But the idea is that Mr. Plank or Under Armour would get special accommodations on some future development project as a result of this donation to the police rather badly misreads Under Armour's place in Baltimore. Under Armour has already given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the city for things ranging from police department equipment to turf fields at public high schools. Mr. Plank has explicitly said he intends to concentrate his company's charitable efforts in the city it calls home. If that's just some kind of cynical ploy to get favorable treatment, it's an awfully generous and sustained one. (And a lot more productive and honorable than the usual method for such things: campaign contributions.)
Under Armour is already Baltimore's greatest home-grown success story in years. The bigger it gets, the better it is for the city's image, not to mention its employment and tax base. If the city can help it grow by accepting some free police uniforms, all the better.