Tourniquets donated by the Portland, Oregon-based Spirit of Blue Foundation have saved the lives of 20 Hawaii Island residents since the Hawaii Police Department began officially incorporating the life-saving tools in 2020.
On Thursday, Executive Director Ryan Smith of the national organization visited police headquarters in Hilo to present an oversized check in the amount of $38,188.16 representing the value of 492 tourniquets and their holsters to police, in addition to a new defensive tactics training suit that the foundation has provided to HPD since 2020.
“We are extremely grateful to Spirit of Blue for providing this critical life-saving equipment to Hawaii Police Department,” said Police Chief Benjamin Moszkowicz in a release. “I’m proud to say that thanks to Spirit of Blue’s life-saving gift, a tourniquet is now standard equipment on the duty belt of each and every officer in Hawaii Police Department.”
Volunteer Hawaii Police Chaplain Renee Godoy saw the need for the life-saving tool following incidents in 2018 and 2019 in which officers used their own personal tourniquets. Godoy applied on behalf of HPD for a Spirit of Blue Foundation grant in 2020 to obtain 442 tourniquets and holsters for the department.
Medics applied a tourniquet in one incident involving an officer wounded in a shootout, and in another, they saved a juvenile female’s life after a fatal head-on collision.
In July 2020, HPD was one of only 35 agencies nationwide to receive a Spirit of Blue grant. The foundation also replaces any supplied tourniquet with a new one if it was used to save a life.
Lieutenant Ryan Pagan, a 2020 sergeant, quickly used the recently received tourniquets to save a stabbing victim in Puna.
Since the start of the tourniquet program in 2020, Hawaii Police Department officers have saved the lives of 20 people involved in stabbings, shootings, traffic collisions and animal attacks.
In 2024, Spirit of Blue donated an additional 50 tourniquets for newly trained officers.
“Spirit of Blue has granted nearly 8,000 tourniquets since we added them to our grant program in 2014,” stated Smith, Spirit of Blue’s executive director. “No other agency has had more saves, nationwide, with tourniquets we granted than the Hawaii Police Department. We never could have known the impact these tools would have made on the island, all thanks to the training and quick thinking of officers who rose to the occasion to help someone else desperately in need.”
The Spirit of Blue Foundation provides grants for safety equipment to law enforcement agencies in all 50 states.
