NYPD training with military first-aid tool
Every NYPD cop will be trained in the use of lifesaving tourniquet technology used by American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan — to deal with potential mass casualties from terrorist attacks.
Uniformed officers will be receiving kits of QuikClot, a spongelike gauze pressure dressing relied on in combat, and special instructions on how to use the equipment, officials said.
“The training and the products that they’re issuing . . . now — they’re just making us be able to do our job better,’’ said Detective Meghan Kinsella.
And she would know — Kinsella used the special kit last week to save a suicidal man in Queens.
The kit’s gauze contains kaolin, a mineral that aids in clotting the blood quickly, giving rescuers more time to provide lifesaving aid to their victims.
On Wednesday, Kinsella and her partner were responding to a report of an emotionally disturbed man with a knife at Cranberry, a market on 42nd Road in Queens. By the time they arrived, the man had already slashed his own throat and was lying at the bottom of the stairs “bleeding profusely.”
“I grabbed the combat gauze, ripped it open and applied it to his neck. I applied pressure, rendered aid until EMS got on the scene,” Kinsella, a 17-year veteran of the force, told The Post.
The EMS workers “said that if it wasn’t for the QuikClot, he probably would have bled out at the scene,” Kinsella added.
The man was hospitalized and eventually upgraded to stable condition.
Detectives’ Endowment Association President Michael Palladino praised the equipment — and Kinsella’s cool-headedness.
“Technological advances have definitely given us new tools to work with. But you still need a dedicated cop with some courage for the technology to be effective,” Palladino said.
The kit also was used by cops on the night of Nov. 18, when a 62- year-old man hit his head as he tumbled off the platform at the 110th Street and Lexington Avenue subway station in Manhattan.
Officers immediately used the QuikClot to control the man’s heavy bleeding until he could be taken to the hospital, where his condition was further stabilized.
NYPD spokeswoman Detective Sophia Mason said more than 20,000 officers have already been instructed in how to use the equipment.
“We plan to train and distribute the kits to all uniformed person- nel over the next two years,” she said.
Money for the kits and instruction is being provided by the federal Department of Homeland Security and funneled to the NYPD through the state.
The goal is to have everyone trained to use the equipment in “all different situations,” Mason said.
Those situations include the type of attack that occurred on Oct. 31, when ISIS-inspired terrorist Sayfullo Saipov, 29, killed eight people and injured a dozen more as he drove a rental truck onto a bike path, officials said.
Weeks later, attempted suicide bomber Akayed Ullah detonated a homemade pipe bomb inside a subway passageway at Port Authority, officials said.
Ullah, 27, injured three people and himself when the faulty device did not fully detonate.
“Because of the times, these events, it’s good that every officer has these tourniquets. Because if there are a bunch of injured individuals, it’s fast-acting,” Kinsella said.