LIMA — In 18 years on the Allen County Sheriff’s SWAT team, Todd Mohler said he’s thankful there’s never been anyone shot or seriously injured.
But handling 35 to 40 raids a year, on average, Mohler knows the dangers and the possibility always are present. On Monday the veteran sergeant and about 10 other members of the SWAT team received advanced training to manage gunshot wounds by learning how to control bleeding and open an airway.
“I hope to never have to use this,” Mohler said.
The SWAT team has four paramedics and at least one goes on every raid. Teaching a team member how to apply a tourniquet in less than 30 seconds, and drilling over and over on the technique means care for a wounded officer would start immediately rather than a minute later for a paramedic to be brought in, if it were safe enough.
That difference can save a life, said Jeb Sheidler, the trauma program manager at Lima Memorial Health System where the training was offered free of charge. Sheidler, who taught the officers, also is a volunteer medic for the SWAT team.
“Somebody can bleed to death in three minutes from an extremity wound,” Sheidler said. “This is above and beyond their normal training. It’s something I felt was really important. It’s a skill that they can use before we would even get to them.”
The training, called Tactical Casualty Care, is an eight-hour course designed off the military model developed and perfected during the last 15 years as American troops fought in the Middle East. It was developed for U.S. Special Forces who often dealt with gunshot wounds and other potentially fatal injuries, he said.
Army Rangers were the first to receive the training and the number of deaths decreased by eight times, Sheidler said.
The concept is built on stopping bleeding, maintaining an open airway and getting to emergency care as fast as possible. Controlling bleeding is done through the use of a tourniquet or by direct pressure or even packing a wound, Sheidler said.
While SWAT officers hope to never have to use the training on a fellow officer and while odds have been in their favor does not mean the training will not be used. Officers deal with the public on nearly a daily basis handling car crashes and other ways people are seriously injured. The training can be used by the first officer on the scene to stop a person in a car crash from bleeding to death, Sheidler said.
For that reason the Sheriff’s Office has plans to train all its deputies in the near future, Sheidler said.
“If they are on patrol and come across a motor vehicle crash and find someone who has an extremity hemorrhage they can put a tourniquet on,” he said.
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