By Linda Taaffe

Los Altos Police will began carrying portable defibrillators in their patrol cars this month as part of a new city program intended to quicken emergency response time for residents suffering heart failure.

Studies show that early defibrillation is key to saving a heart attack victim’s life, according to the American Heart Association, which has urged police, for years, to keep defibrillators in their patrol cars.

Los Altos Police Chief Don Johnson said the defibrillators are a major plus for the community.

Johnson said police are often the first ones on the scene because they are already out in the community patrolling.

He said the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s response time to a medical emergency is typically 4.5 minutes.

The Los Altos Police Department’s response time is usually half of that.

“Those two minutes mean lives,” Johnson said.

Each minute that elapses after someone’s collapse decreases the chance of successful defibrillation by 10 percent, according to reports from the American Heart Association.

In the United States, approximately 350,000 people die each year from heart disease.

Defibrillators shock the heart back into a regular heartbeat.

Through the city program, the police department will distribute a half dozen Automatic External Defibrillators in patrol cars during every shift, making the devices available 24 hours a day.

The Santa Clara County Fire Department is scheduled to complete the training program for all 30 of the police department’s sworn officers by the end of this week.

The Automatic External Defibrillator is a device about the size of a laptop computer that speaks to the user, indicating how to properly deliver the electrical shock needed to return a person’s heart back to its regular beat.

They are designed to be easy to use with minimal training, police said.