Police events: having a chat with an officer and recognizing leadership on the job

Staff reports
CLAREMONT— On Wednesday, Oct. 3 officers from the Claremont Police will be available at two community events and would like to invite all members of the public to each event.

Claremont Police officers will be at REMIX at 1 Pleasant Street from 9 a.m. to 1p.m. The Claremont Police is participating in the national police outreach program, Coffee with a Cop. A cup of coffee is a common bond. And it can help our officers build better relationships with the community that we serve.   There will be no speeches or specific topics. Just informal conversations about what matters to our community residents. We hope you can come over to REMIX at 1 Pleasant Street and have a cup of coffee on us and start a conversation.

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Claremont Police Department, McDonald’s and the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police have partnered to host a special event on Oct. 3, 2018 from 4 to 7 p.m. On this day we will have several members of the Claremont Police Department for you to meet and talk to. McDonald’s will be donating a percentage of the evening’s sales to the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police. McDonald’s will also recognize several officers throughout the state who go above and beyond in the line of duty as well as those officers who are highly invested in the community. I am extremely proud that our local McDonald’s will be recognizing Officer Michael Puksta at this event.

On April 12 Claremont Police, Claremont Fire Department, and Golden Cross Ambulance were dispatched to a medical call of someone having a hard time breathing and turning purple. Officer Puksta along with Lt. Stanley Andrewski and Officer Christopher Allen responded and found multiple people in the residence who were unresponsive and having issues breathing. When the police and other emergency responders arrived they attempted to find out what was causing the problems with the patients. It was soon discovered that there were multiple patients. Officer Puksta helped one man out of an area and then started talking to people to try and determine what had occurred. There was no obvious reason why the residents were acting the way they were. All units at the scene believed that this may be some sort of drug overdose or drug related issue and EMS started to treat this as a possible drug overdose of unknown origin. Officer Puksta located a person who gave him information about the power being out and the residents running a generator in the house. He confirmed immediately that this was true and alerted all emergency personnel that were on scene what he discovered and alerted them to the risk that they were now taking by being in the residence. The medical professionals and other emergency staff now directed their treatment focus on a possible carbon monoxide exposure which was soon confirmed to be the issue at hand. There were a total of five people in the residence that were treated for the carbon monoxide exposure. Due to the length of time the emergency personnel were in the residence investigating what was causing the problem a total of five emergency personnel were also treated for carbon monoxide exposure.

Thanks to Officer Puksta getting information from a person on scene and then promptly letting all the other emergency services personnel know what they were dealing with. They were all able to get out of the residence before they were overcome from the carbon monoxide gas. If the emergency units had continued to stay in the residence to treat the patients this could have quickly escalated into a much more serious incident than it already was. All residents and emergency responders were treated at our local hospital and have recovered from this incident.

This is only a one example of the professional service that Officer Puksta gives every day for the citizens of Claremont and anyone he interacts with. I am extremely proud of his actions and I am very excited that McDonald’s has chosen to acknowledge his actions. Officer Puksta will be presented with a Certificate of Achievement at 5 p.m. at this event.