Under the leadership of Associate Vice President for Public Safety Greg Mullen, Clemson University Police Department (CUPD) continues to make great strides toward enhancing safety for a growing campus community.
The latest example came last week in the form of donated items designed to boost law enforcement’s efforts in mass casualty or traumatic events. TacMed Solutions, a local company who works directly with military and first responders, provided Mullen’s team with four multi-purpose backpacks containing personal trauma kits and other life-saving accessories.
“This is the next step in terms of all the things we’ve been doing to address threats of targeted violence,” Mullen said. “A few years ago, we began installing trauma kits inside of University facilities through a collaboration with student government and our Fire & Emergency Medical Services (CUFD) team. Last year, we partnered with CUFD to teach ‘Stop the Bleed’ classes to staff, faculty and students across campus. Now, thanks to this donation, we’re getting bags carrying several trauma kits so that if we are ever in a situation with multiple casualties, officers can provide them to victims to apply self-care. It allows us to accelerate what we’re doing and provide more options to help people survive in difficult situations.”
A couple of years ago, CUPD joined Fire & EMS and several mutual aid partners in a campus exercise to test its effectiveness in rescue task force operations. The backpacks provided to CUPD are perfectly suited to aid such an event. Each bag contains eight trauma kits in the center of the bag, complete with tourniquets, bandages, gauze, animated pictures and bilingual instructions. They also contain side compartments including additional bandages and pads to apply to wounds. Moving forward, the packs will be located inside the vehicles of patrol supervisors to use in the event of an emergency.
The items were donated not only to CUPD, but also Clemson City Police. Brian McMahan, Mid-Atlantic sales representative for TacMed, said the packs add another touch to life-saving capabilities.
“We wanted to be able to give back to the local community,” McMahan said. “Clemson has been so progressive and this adds to it and puts the University and community on the tip of the spear when it comes to safety.”