The Ojeda family members, Michael, Carmen and Michael Ojeda Jr. arrived at City Hall yesterday ready to claim justice for their 11-year-old daughter, Briana, who died of an asthma attack back in August of 2010.
And they received just that after the City Council unanimously passed two measures that City Council Member Stephen Levin (Downtown Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Boerum Hill) sponsored requiring police to notate and have CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) training in case it is needed.
In Briana case, she was playing outside when she suffered a sudden asthma attack. Her mother, Carmen, attempted to rush her to the hospital but was pulled over by an officer when he caught her driving the wrong direction down a one-way street. The officer tried to write Ojeda a ticket when Briana fell into cardiac arrest. She needed CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) but the office refused when Carmen asked for his help, citing lack of CPR education. As a result, Briana later died in the hospital due to not receiving the life saving procedure in time.
The officer said he didn’t know how to perform CPR and this is when the Ojedas decided to become proponents for officer training in emergency service situations. They knew that they wanted to prevent any other family from suffering the loss of a family member due to lack of police officer training.
There are two parts to Briana’s Law. The first, Introduction 83, requires city’s police department to submit reports on the CPR training of its officers. The second, is Resolution 1181, backing Assembly Member Felix Ortiz’ (Sunset Park, Red Hook) proposed state bill that requires police in every municipality statewide to be retrained in administering CPR every two years.
Ortiz’ measure has initially received push back due to the fiscal implication that would burden the city and state budget’s to allocate money toward properly re-training police officers in CPR.
“In order to save lives, New York’s finest must receive the highest quality training in life-saving CPR and AED skills,” said Levin. “These are commonsense measures that would help to improve the chance of survival for victims of cardiac arrest. They ensure that first responders are well-equipped to respond with speed and skill so that they can continue to protect and serve New Yorkers.”
Ortiz said the City Council’s passage of the measures will give his statewide bill, A4364A, the momentum needed to see it through the senate in the upcoming legislative session.
“It is imperative that police officers are adequately trained in the administration of CPR,” said Ortiz. “This easy to learn procedure has been proven to save lives in emergency situations and could have helped save the life of Briana Ojeda and others. The fact that the Police Academy had to reassign a CPR instructor after an officer recently testified he didn’t feel confident in his CPR abilities proves the point that NYPD CPR training is inadequate.”
The thinking behind the measures are that police officers are usually the first responders on the scene of an emergency and as a result can be the one’s who potentially perform life-saving CPR. The chances of survival double and sometimes even triple if CPR is administered within the first couple minutes of a cardiac arrest.
“Actually my mother had CPR done to her by a fireman. That was many years ago because she too suffered from asthma, and when he came she wasn’t breathing,” said Michael Ojeda, who went on to praise the live-saving skills of the emergency responder. “He brought her back, I can remember.
