CITY HALL — Inspired by the life-saving tactics of two police officers who are combat veterans, a powerful alderman and former police officer is proposing that the Police Department be equipped with a special blood-clotting gauze designed to treat war wounds.
Ald. Edward Burke (14th) said Wednesday that he would sponsor a plan to equip Chicago Police officers with QuikClot Combat Gauze kits.
Burke cited the recent efforts of South Chicago District officers Alejandro Cabral and Juan Zuniga, who successfully treated a 24-year-old man shot in the stomach with the gauze, designed to quicken blood clotting in a wound.
The shooting took place, Cabral said, at a gas station in a dangerous area near 84th Street and Mackinaw Avenue.
"This person had been shot," Cabral said at a City Hall news conference Wednesday. "It was raining, it was hot, it was muggy." Initial attempts to stop the bleeding, he added, were unsuccessful.
As Zuniga, a Navy veteran, "provided security," Cabral said he treated the victim with a combat-level gauze he had in a kit he'd bought with his police allowance. According to Cabral, he'd worked with the gauze while anArmy combat medic in Afghanistan, and had been reminded of it in a recent update course on treating wounds.
Cabral said he'd bought the kit "in case I ever needed it," and that both he and his partner, Zuniga, had been shot at on duty. Although neither had ever been hit, he added, "There's always that possibility."
The gauze, he said, stopped the bleeding in the shooting victim before paramedics arrived to treat him further. The victim survived after being treated at a hospital.
Cabral said he now believes the kits are "something that we need" as police officers.
Burke agreed. "Making such a product available to all officers would help to protect their lives in the performance of their duties," Burke said. "We believe it is worthwhile for the Chicago Police Department to offer it to personnel who wish to carry it with them on the streets."
Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11th), co-sponsor of the resolution, said officers should be given the choice whether they want to carry the gauze.
Cabral estimated the cost of the gauze at a little less than $50, and the entire kit at just more than $100.
Burke said that could potentially be paid through federal grants obtained through the Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
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