Two rookie police officers had already cut the wounded man’s left pants leg off when veteran Officer Matt Bledsoe arrived to back them up.
"Where’s he shot? Bledsoe asks, as the officers treat the man, wounded on a city sidewalk in daylight last month.
"In the leg,” one of the officers replies.
“I know what he gets,” Bledsoe says as he pulls a tourniquet from its packaging. He slides it above the bullet hole, near the man’s knee and tightens it a few times.
The man lived, and kept his leg too. Without the tourniquet, and prompt medical attention, “He might have died,” Sgt. John Harbourt said.
Years ago, the tourniquet was an absolute last resort to perform life-saving blood control, and people often had their limbs amputated, since they often caused unrecoverable damage to nerves blood vessels and nerves.
Medical advancements, perfected on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S. military have tourniquets back as a front-line device.
Trenton police recently bought 300 of the devices, and also have more extensive first-aid “bleed kits” in police cars too, Harbourt said recently. He spearheaded the effort with Lt. Pete Weremijenko, both of whom handle training for the department.
A Trenton police-issue "bleed kit."Kevin Shea | NJ.com
They were inspired to purchase the kits containing tourniquets following the actions of Officer James Bruins, who in August of 2018, saved a woman’s life by using his own tourniquet. The woman, a pedestrian, was struck by a car in the city’s Chambersburg neighborhood, which launched her against a wall. The vehicle tore her left leg from he body.
Bruins was one of the first officers on scene and - he keeps a bystander’s video of the rescue on his cell phone - calmly put on a pair of gloves, pulled out his tourniquet and wrapped it around what remained of her leg, sealing off the blood that was literally spilling onto the street.
Harbourt and Weremijenko are convinced the young woman would have died of blood loss had Bruins not acted. (The officer remains in contact with the woman, who now has a prosthetic leg, he said. This past spring the department honored him with a medal for his heroics, and the Trenton Thunder named him a Hometown All Star as well.)
Bruins got his tourniquet from Tourniquets for Heroes, a program in which anyone can purchase one for an officer in a department that does not issue them.
The department fixed that.
“We really researched this early last year, and then after (Bruins’ rescue), we really pulled it together," Harbourt said.
The department bought 300 tourniquets to issue one to every officer (the department has about 225), plus 100 bleed kits (each contains two tourniquets, plus other items) for patrol cars.
In a two-officer vehicle, officers will have four tourniquets, and possibly more, since some officers carry their own personal devices, which they will reserve for themselves, Harbourt and Weremijenko say. Shootings are nothing new to Trenton, but as mass shootings rise nationally, it’s in everyone minds.
“(We) train officers for the worst possible scenario," Harbourt said.
Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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