Twenty Hawaii Island residents are alive today due to Hawaii Police Department deploying tourniquets donated by the Spirit of Blue Foundation.
Ryan Smith, executive director of the Spirit of Blue Foundation, visited HPD headquarters in Hilo in March to present an oversized check from the national organization totaling $38,188.16 — symbolizing the donation value amount of 492 tourniquets, their holsters and 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. “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.”
A dozen of the officers who have saved lives using tourniquets attended the check presentation ceremony, as did volunteer Police Chaplain Renee Godoy, who helped facilitate the grant from the foundation.
Two critical incidents in 2018 and 2019 highlighted the need for tourniquets for the department.
In 2018, then-Officer Kevin Brodie was a member of HPD’s Special Response Team when it was activated to find the suspect who murdered Officer Bronson Kaliloa. During a July 20, 2019, shootout with the suspect, Brodie, now a lieutenant, applied a tourniquet to then-Sgt. Bryan Tina, who had been wounded by the suspect.
The following year on Nov. 10, 2019, multiple officers responded to a fatal head-on traffic collision on Queen Ka‘ahumanu Highway in North Kona.
Officer Patrick Robinson used his personal tourniquet to stop the bleeding of one of the severely injured juvenile females, saving her life.
Godoy applied on behalf of HPD for foundation grant in 2020 to obtain 442 tourniquets and holsters for the department, with an estimated value of $31,000. HPD was one of only 35 agencies nationwide to receive the Spirit of Blue grant in July 2020.
As soon as the department received the tourniquets in late August 2020, members of HPD’s Training Section, including then-Sgt. Ryan Pagan and Officer Wayne Kenison traveled around the island before and after their shifts, conducting training on how to use the tourniquets to personnel in every district on island.
Within days of starting to provide tourniquet training to his fellow officers, Pagan, who is now a lieutenant, used a tourniquet to save the life of a stabbing victim in Puna on Sept. 4, 2020.
Since the implementation of the tourniquet program in 2020, there have been 20 lives saved by HPD officers using tourniquets in various cases, ranging from animal attacks to assaults. In 2024, Spirit of Blue donated 50 additional tourniquets to outfit newly-trained officers.
To learn more about Spirit of Blue Foundation, vsit www.spiritofblue.org/.
