Suffolk police officer to the rescue -- again

A veteran Suffolk County police officer helped resuscitate a woman Tuesday in Huntington -- the third time in the past two weeks that he has helped save a victim in distress.

"These are common events that are taking place in the county on a daily basis," Suffolk County Police Officer James Garside said Wednesday afternoon as he stood beside his patrol car behind the Second Precinct station house on Park Avenue.

Garside, 42, is a member of the department's Medical Crisis Action Team. He said all of the cases he had worked on recently involved quick action by everyone.

"If you look at all these circumstances, there was an early call to 911. There was a bystander CPR that was initiated. Officers arrived within minutes with an AED [portable defibrillator] and I too arrived within minutes with advanced cardiac life support equipment," he said.

His high-tech medical bag contains equipment to start intravenous medication and a tubular device to provide air directly to the lungs.

Garside, responding to a 911 call of a woman in cardiac arrest, was able to resuscitate the 46-year-old victim Tuesday evening in Huntington, police said. The woman, whose identity was not released, was taken by the Huntington Community First Aid Squad to Huntington Hospital in critical condition.

On Jan. 19 police said Garside was part of a team that helped save a 23-year-old apparent overdose victim found slumped in car outside a Brentwood restaurant with a needle in his arm. On Jan. 24, he helped revive a heart attack victim found on a sidewalk in Huntington Station.

Garside, whose father, also James, is a retired one-star chief from the Nassau County Police Department, has been assigned to the Second Precinct since graduating from the Police Academy in 1993.

"I found that the most rewarding work was in patrol," he said. "It has the greatest variety -- from criminal calls to traffic enforcement to aided cases, lifesaving calls."

He said that he did traffic enforcement when not responding to medical emergencies and had made more than 100 drunken driving arrests during his 19 years on the force.