After a Brisbane jewellery store stabbing left a man brutally injured, one Queensland cop decided to change the way police respond to violent crimes.
In June 2015, Police Sergeant Dustin Osborne received a call about an armed robbery in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.
Ex-cop Dustin Osborne shares the story on Crime Insiders:
“Walked over to the front door of the jewellery store, and sort of looked through the window and this guy was completely covered in blood,” Osborne described.
Police noticed bloody footprints covered the shop floor. He soon realised the man covered in blood was the victim of the crime, and the owner of the store.
“I got him just to lay straight down on the ground. Cut his shirt off. I cut his pants off and he was peppered with stab wounds,” he said.
“I had no idea of what to do with someone who was critically ill.”
Osborne felt he was unequipped to assist the man medically, especially when police were first to the scene.
That’s when Osborne decided to design and implement QPol’s groundbreaking Tactical First Aid Program.
“At this point, I’ve been spending a lot of time going through trying to understand trauma, the physiology behind it, also looking at anatomy, where our major organs are,” he said.
“Then within a one-year period throughout all of Queensland, we trained over 10,000 police.”
The initiative has received global acclaim for its ability to train first responding police in critical medical intervention techniques.
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