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Boston College Patrol Officer Kevin Browne relied on his New York City police training and years of first-responder experience when he helped save the life of a BC student who was seriously injured in a hit-and-run incident in December 2009.
The two-year veteran of the Boston College Police Department was honored last month by the Massachusetts Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators for his role in providing immediate medical treatment to the accident victim and the eventual apprehension of the alleged hit-and-run driver.
Browne was one of eight campus police officers across the state to be saluted by the association at the group’s annual awards luncheon held at Northeastern University’s Henderson House facility in Weston.
“It’s a great award to get,” says Browne. “But anyone who was on shift that night could have received the award. It really should have been presented to the whole shift. Without every one of those guys, it might have never worked out the way it did.”
“Officer Browne’s efforts resulted in the quick delivery of emergency first aid to the victim and speedy identification of the suspect,” said Director of Public Safety and Chief of Police John King. “We are pleased that MACLEA has chosen to recognize Officer Browne for his professionalism.”
Browne, a Long Island native, is a graduate of the New York City Police Academy and spent the better part of two-and-a-half years as a patrol officer in South Brooklyn. “That’s a pretty high-crime area,” he notes. “They send a lot of rookies out there to ‘get their feet wet’ and you get them ‘wet’ pretty fast. It’s a great place to learn.”
Browne says he responded to numerous trauma and violent crime incidents during his time with NYPD, and that on-scene training paid off when he moved to the Boston area in 2008 to be nearer to his fianceé and, later that year, to join the BC Police force.
Late on the snowy night of Dec. 9, 2009, Browne had just finished his shift’s roll call and was driving in a cruiser near More Hall, “when I saw a vehicle turn off of Commonwealth Avenue and come toward the St. Ignatius Gate at a pretty quick rate of speed. Then I heard a ‘bang.’ I didn’t know what he had hit until I saw someone lying on the ground.
“I rolled down the More Hall driveway, calling in a description of the car and calling for an ambulance,” he recalls. “When I jumped out, I could see that the girl was in bad shape. She had a very serious head injury. I started first aid immediately.
“Thank God that Don Reed, one of our EMTs, came right along and assisted me. I was really happy to see him. There’s no better relief than to have someone back you up when you’re on an island.”
Browne’s broadcast description of the vehicle involved in the incident was heard by Patrol Officer Miguel Bueno, who was working a detail in Corcoran Commons. Minutes later, Bueno spotted the car in the parking lot behind Robsham Theater and apprehended the driver, who was not a BC student.
“Some people thought that the girl was not going to make it,” Browne says. “But the next day we heard that she had made it through the night, and a week later, we heard that she would be coming back to school. We were pretty excited about that.”
Browne says he has never been contacted by the student or her family.
“This job can be extremely monotonous, and it doesn’t matter if you are at the campus level or city or state or whatever,” Browne says. “But when you least expect it, something crazy happens. You pretty much go into an autopilot mode and your mind traces right back to your training. You act as your training tells you.
“It really doesn’t affect you until you go home the next day, and maybe you are lying in bed and start to think about it,” he says. “That’s when it hits you. But that’s the job — right?”