Tactical Life Saver - Commited to Officer Safety 
- Saving Lives Through Research, Education & Training
POLICE TACTICAL LIFESAVER
“Tactical Combat Casualty Care for the Police Officer”
Course Description: The Tactical Lifesaver course is designed to improve the survivability of accidental and non-accidental life-threatening injuries encountered by SWAT, Patrol Officers and Corrections officers. The course is not designed to turn officers into medics, but rather to teach them time critical lifesaving skills and tactics in environments where EMT and Fire personnel typically won’t respond too such as active shooter incidents, SWAT operations, downed officer/officer rescue incidents and any other potential hot zones. This course can also provide life saving skills and tactics to rural and urban officers that don’t have quick EMS response times.
The Tactical Life Saver course will provide your officers with the following training:
- Goals of the Tactical Life Saver
- Priorities of the Tactical Life Saver
- Outfitting the Tactical Life Saver
- Remote Assessment Operations
- Tactical Officer Rescue Operations
- Situational Awareness
- Cognitive thinking in Combat Environments
- Training the Tactical Life Saver
- Airway Management
- Penetrating Chest Trauma
- Hemorrhage Control
- Hemostatic Agents
- Tourniquets
- Shock Management
- Spinal Fracture Recogni
- The Warrior Spirit
Through lecture, hands on practical’s and scenarios students will increase survivability in tactical situations through the use of the military’s combat proven, Tactical Combat Casualty Care.
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“First-aid kits credited with saving lives in Tucson shooting”
– Washington Post
By Sandhya Somashekhar and Sari Horwitz, Published: January 21, 2011
TUCSON - Some of the first deputies to arrive at the scene of the January 8th shooting rampage described a scene of "silent chaos" on Friday, and they added that the carnage probably would have been much worse without the help of a $99 first-aid kit that recently became standard-issue.
Pima County Sheriff's Department deputies said they were dispatched to what they believed was a routine shooting. But they arrived, they found a blood-drenched parking lot that looked more like the scene of a plane crash. Sgt. Gilberto Caudillo got on his radio and pleaded, "Send every ambulance you have out here."
"Innocent people looked like they were just massacred," Caudillo said Friday.
He was among about 10 sheriff's deputies who found themselves doing the duties of paramedics rather than police. In the six minutes before paramedics flooded the site, they had to stanch chest wounds, open injured airways, apply tourniquets and try to calm down victims and the blood-covered bystanders who tried to help.
"We told them, 'All the bad stuff is over, you're safe. We'll stay by your side,' “said Deputy Matthew Salmon.
In the end, 13 of those shot survived, while six did not. One of the injured, Rep. Gabrielle Gifford’s (D-Ariz.) was the last person still hospitalized until Friday morning, when she was discharged and transported to a rehabilitation facility in Texas.
Doctors and law enforcement officials told reporters here that the incident would have been much worse without a small brown kit devised by David Kleinman, a SWAT team medic who had become concerned about rising violence.
Kleinman cobbled together the Individual First Aid Kits out of simple items used by combat medics in Iraq and Afghanistan: an emergency bandage pioneered by the Israeli army; a strip of gauze that contains a substance which coagulates blood on contact; a tactical tourniquet; shears that are sturdy and sharp enough to slice off victims' clothing; and sealing material that works especially well on chest wounds.
The items in the kit were each inexpensive; the Israeli bandage, for example, cost only $6, but deputies reached for one "over and over at the scene," Kleinman said.
It is unusual for police officers to carry such medical equipment, but Capt. Byron Gwaltney, who coordinated the sheriff's office's response to the shooting, said it proved crucial in this case because the deputies were the first to arrive.
"It would have been a lot worse" without those tools, Gwaltney said. The deputies were trained to use the kit, in a program the Pima force called "First Five Minutes," six months ago.
The deputies who initially responded said they were not the ones who arrested the suspect, Jared Lee Loughner. Instead, their focus was conducting triage through the parking lot: figuring out who was dead, who was injured and who was simply a helpful person who had jumped in to help.
They used the tourniquets and gauze to stop the bleeding. They used a chest seal, also in the kit, to close bullet wounds. They used the shears in the kit to cut off the victims' clothes.
"When I look back, I don't know if we drowned out the moans to focus or if it was quiet," said Deputy Ryan Inglett, who treated several victims with combat gauze and assisted in CPR. "This is something I will never forget."
Consider the Tucson and Detroit incidents and ask yourself “is your agency prepared to deal with such an event”? Can your agency and its first responders handle a single life threatening injury to another officer or an innocent victim if medical personnel aren’t available?
In 1997 Los Angeles Police Officers responded to an active shooter incident in North Hollywood. Three civilians and nine officers were shot. The incident lasted 39 minutes and in the end seven civilians and eleven officers were shot and injured. The suspects shot 1100 rounds from fully automatic AK-47’s, fully automatic Bushmaster .223s and a .308 H&K semi-auto. Besides having a trouble neutralizing the threats officers were unable to get EMS to the injured officers and citizens.
In this situation, most EMS units won’t deploy to render aid in an unsecure environment. Even if this situation occurs during a swat operation a single TEMS operator wouldn’t be able to handle multiple casualties alone. What if the injured officers or innocent victims are cut off from TEMS personnel for some time?
The answer to this problem is “Tactical Life Saver” training otherwise known as “Tactical Combat Casualty Care” (TCCC). TCCC was developed by the military with great success on the battle field. Every combat soldier now gets this training in basic due to its life saving abilities and its simple use.
Tactical Combat Care Basics:
The most contributing cause of officer deaths is gunshot trauma. That being said, research indicates that most gunshot trauma victims have five minutes to be stabilized from life threatening injuries. After the first five minutes your chances of survival significantly decrease. That’s when tactical combat care training can save lives.
Military combat data indicates that most shooting victims with life threatening injuries die within the first five minutes. Research also indicates that if a shooting victim is alive when EMS arrives that he most likely will survive. This is another reason for “Tactical Life Saver” training. Treat the wounds and get the victim advanced medical care.
Tactical combat care training is designed to provide skills to an officer so that he may render life saving aid while remaining in the fight. This training will not turn officers into medics but it may allow an officer to stabilize an injured officer until medics arrive.
Keep your men alive, and provide the best professional response available to the people who count on us with their safety. The Tactical Life Saver course will prepare your officers for a Tucson incident, North Hollywood incident, Detroit incident or even an event not as large such as a simple leg laceration injury to an officer patrolling on a desolate section of your jurisdiction.
TLS takes pride in training officers with a goal to save lives through research, education and training.
