INDEPENDENCE, Ky. — More than 40 officers work at the Independence Police Department. Since November, the officers have shared life-saving equipment between shifts. With the arrival of a new shipment, they will not have to share anymore.
Those devices are known as AVIVE Connect automatic external defibrillators (AEDs), portable electronic devices designed to treat people experiencing sudden cardiac arrest. We stopped by the Independence Police Department on Wednesday as command staff labeled the new AEDs, which had arrived earlier this week.
"It does it all. It's super simple for officers who aren't medically trained," Buerger said.
The 6-year law enforcement veteran joined Independence police in June. She hasn't used an AED during her time with the department yet, but she has used one before. When she did, it helped her save a life.
WATCH: See how a community AED partnership helped a NKY police officer save a local man's life
It was November 2024. Buerger was an officer with the Alexandria Police Department. She was a few hours into her shift when a call came in for an unresponsive 30-year-old man who'd suffered a cardiac arrest.
"I get there, the girlfriend at the time was outside crying with 911 while her mom was inside doing compressions on him. They had little girls that were hysterical, too," Buerger said. "I ran inside the house and could immediately tell that his face was purple, his lips were purple. He had no pulse. He had no breaths. Her mom was doing good with compressions, but I knew he needed a little more."
Buerger wasn't trained on how to use an AED. Alexandria PD had only received three of the units two days earlier, but she said the device walked her through what she needed to do, and that less than a minute after opening it, she was able to deliver a shock to the victim, resuming a pulse until the ambulance arrived.
"(The medics) said the quick actions with the compressions from mom and the AED shock are what's going to make a difference. The sooner you can get both of those things in, the higher chance of survival is going to be, and then they come in with their bigger machines that have a bigger voltage, and they take over, and he was able to be stable and taken to the hospital," Buerger said.
The AED that Buerger used to save the man's life was one of 168 units deployed to 38 Northern Kentucky law enforcement agencies in November 2024. It was the culmination of the first phase of a project launched by the Rotary Clubs of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, in partnership with St. Elizabeth Healthcare and The Christ Hospital Health Network.
The idea to equip local men and women in blue began nearly two years earlier, in January 2023, when Steve King, then-president of the Rotary Club of Cincinnati, witnessed NFL player Damar Hamlin's on-field cardiac arrest. Days later, a scheduled meeting with the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office shifted from discussing drone programs to tackling the critical gap in immediate cardiac response and how law enforcement officers, often the first on scene, could play a pivotal role, AVIVE Solutions, maker of the AEDs, told us.
Josh Vogel, a member of Rotary and Project Heart Restart, reached out to Garren Colvin, CEO of St. Elizabeth Healthcare, for help meeting the sheriff's office's AED quantity requests. Within an hour, Colvin responded and later pledged support from St. Elizabeth. Christ Hospital joined the effort not long after.
"We got the phone call, and then from there it was off to the races, and we wanted to find any way to make it happen," Sameer Jafri said. "It was a no-brainer for us to say, 'Yeah, we'd love to be a part of this initiative that's being built by this really amazing coalition of organizations locally.'"
An AVIVE Connect AED typically costs close to $2,000. Jafri said his company worked with the local partners to ensure the units could be purchased at an affordable price.
"It was about how we could pull the funds across these various organizations to make that happen for our law enforcement agencies in Northern Kentucky," Jafri said. "Our connectivity of our product is really valuable and so we've been able to offer a solution to them with, I believe, multiple years of that."
We spoke with a cardiologist at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Edgewood on Wednesday to get a better understanding of how vital AEDs can be. Dr. Travis Huffman said every minute a cardiac arrest patient goes without compressions or a defibrillator can lower their chance of survival by 10%.
"Cardiac arrest results in the heart not working, right? And so, when we go into cardiac arrest, we lose blood supply to all of our vital organs and unless something is done to intervene upon it, ultimately it's going to result in death," Huffman said.
While the initial deployment ensured every law enforcement department in six Northern Kentucky counties received at least some AEDs, there's a new push to get those life-saving devices into the hands of every officer in the Tri-State.
Huffman said that would be critical.
"I think this is a reasonable goal. This adds another tool in their toolbox for all of these first responders. The more we can get these to those who are responding to emergencies right away, the more that they'll be used. The more success stories we'll have to share in the future," Huffman said. "Each life matters. One life at a time. If we save one life every year from getting these devices out into our police officers' hands, into our community's hands, then job well done. We've achieved our goal."
St. Elizabeth operates a hospital in southeast Indiana and is actively seeking funding to acquire approximately 100 additional devices for use across several counties and law enforcement agencies in that region. The same Rotary team involved in the Greater Cincinnati initiative is also engaged in efforts across southeast and central Kentucky and southwest Ohio, and they are building a blueprint from their work in Northern Kentucky to bring to Rotary clubs across the country.
"Law enforcement officers are by far and away most of the time first on scene to a cardiac arrest, and when we're addressing an emergency where time is our biggest enemy, right? — We want to get a shock to a patient as quickly as we can. — They can be the single most valuable stakeholder from a first responder standpoint that can get there as quickly as possible and help make an impact on outcomes throughout communities throughout the United States," Jafri said.
Buerger said she's excited for the future. As a cardiac arrest survivor herself, she said saving the man that fateful November day felt like a full-circle moment, one she hopes none of her colleagues will ever have to experience, but if they do, thanks to the AED program, they will know how to handle.
"Having that tool gives officers the peace of mind. Like you're running into a medical situation, you're not medically trained, but I have this AED that will help me, at least let me know what my next step is," Buerger said. "If it's going to read and it's going to say there's no pulse, there's no read, there's no shock advised, that just means that we have to take the next steps. But if it finds a pulse or advises shock, then we know that there's still a chance for this person, and we can start acting."
