Houston police being armed with combat tourniquets

Tourniquets designed to save the lives of soldiers on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan are now being deployed on the streets of Houston to provide crucial first aid to crime victims and injured officers.

They are a gift from the Memorial Hermann Hospital's Texas Trauma Institute, which is donating 5,000 first aid kits equipped with the combat tourniquets to the Houston Police Department.

“The significance of the use of tourniquets and gauze on the battlefield is the main lesson to save lives in the civilian community,” said Dr. John Holcomb, director of the trauma institute. 'They've saved millions of lives on the battlefield,” Holcomb asserted before a news conference Thursday announcing the gift.

The aim of the program is to ensure that all patrol officers are equipped with two tourniquets and gauze. Officers will be trained in how to use the kits in the civilian world.

As of now, 1,000 officers have undergone the training and received their kits, and it is estimated that by 2015, all uniformed officers will have the skills and equipment to use these emergency tools, according to Holcomb, who is also a professor and vice chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland Jr. said all patrol officers by the end of August will have completed instruction and received their kits. Next, all nonuniformed officers, such as investigators or undercover officers, will be trained.

“I've been told that in the past year, we've actually used these kits at least three times,” McClelland said. “One was on a police officer who was shot and survived.”

At the news conference, officer Austin Huckabee, who has served in the Army, recalled using his own tourniquet in 2013 to save the life of a man who had slit his wrists in a suicide attempt. Based on his military experience, Huckabee, said: “I recognized he did not have a long time before going into cardiac arrest.''

Other major cities, including Los Angeles, Dallas and Philadelphia, have equipped their police forces with similar emergency medical tools. The move reflects the need for additional security measures in the wake of events with mass injuries.

rebecca.heliot@chron.com