Related articles: Tucson cop killer ‘didn’t set out to kill’,
Officer Down: Officer Erik Hite
By David Teibel
The Tucson Citizen
TUCSON — Less than two weeks after the fatal shooting of Officer Erik Hite, Tucson police are getting a type of blood-staunching bandage used for years by the military.
The bandage is treated with a chemical that cauterizes wounds, spokesman Sgt. Fabian Pacheco said. It is to be carried in a pack in an officer’s pocket.
The addition of the bandage to officers’ safety equipment, however, is not connected to the shooting of Hite and two sheriff’s deputies during a crosstown pursuit June 1, he said.
Hite died June 2 from a gunshot wound to the head. The deputies were released from a hospital the day of the shooting.
“This does not come because of what happened to Officer Hite,” Pacheco said, referring to the bandage. “It is not intended for catastrophic injuries,” such as shots to the head or heart.
Pacheco said the bandages are expensive, but did not know their cost.
The Tucson Police Foundation is buying enough so each of the approximately 1,000 officers in the Police Department could have one.
The Tucson Police Foundation, formed in 2003, is an independent, nonprofit, charitable organization that works to support the Tucson Police Department and to foster public safety, according to its Web site.
Mike Feder, the foundation’s executive director, could not be reached Thursday.
But, in a news statement, the foundation said, its effort “will equip TPD officers with the same life-saving technology that is used on the battlefields of Iraq.”
“Saving lives at the scene is at the heart of this new program,” the statement read, “and it will soon become standard operating procedure among all TPD officers.”
While the bandages could be used to save an officer’s life, they also could be used to save an injured civilian, Pacheco said. “We’re certainly going to use it to save a citizen’s life.”.
The foundation got the safety program, to be discussed at a news conference Friday morning, under way about a month ago, after one officer was shot in the leg and another stabbed in the chest May 11 when they went to a domestic violence call.
The officers and a 17-year-old boy hit by return fire sustained non-life-threatening wounds. The boy, Travis O’Neal Hylton, was released from a hospital and jailed on charges of attempted murder.
In connection with the June 1 rampage, David Nickolas Delich, 25, has been charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault on law officers and discharging a firearm at a building.
Copyright 2008 The Tucson Citizen