Posted on 06/16/2009 1:10:08 PM PDT by Eddings
IMO doesn’t look too good for the officer. But did the ambulance driver flip him off or something? Can’t see that part.
There is an entire videotape. It shows the police car coming up on the ambulance that is running without lights, and which doesn’t seem to notice the police car. We can see (because we are watching a video and sitting comfortably in our chairs) that the reason the ambulance doesn’t pull over is because there is a car in front which is pulling over, but I’m not sure the officer driving would have been able to see that, just the ambulance pulling slightly to the LEFT, blocking the police car.
Then, after another second or two, the ambulance pulls over a bit, but not completely off the road and doesn’t stop, and the police car passes by driving into the other lane.
You can’t see any indication of a gesture by the driver though.
I think the cop way overreacted, but I don’t think the claim of the officer that the ambulance didn’t pull over is ludicrous from the officer’s perspective. When you are driving at high speeds, you have adrenaline and percieve things differently.
If your house were burning down and this cop were lurking around tackling firement I'm sure you'd come to understand what this is about.
No.
Didn't you suspect that this is a very rare case ~ a novelty ~ and that's why it's getting so much attention?
It's like this almost never happens ~ even the other patrolman sent out to assist officer Neckvein couldn't figure out what the problem was that this guy had to stop an ambulance.
Get with the picture ~ OTHER COP ~ on the scene ~ knew this just wasn't correct procedure.
It's like they are real special and all of us civilians out there want them to get here when we need them, and not be stopped on our way to more advanced medical care.
The ambulance was not speeding, and was not using it’s lights and sirens. So they were not trying to get to the hospital as fast as they could. And the EMT actions at the stop were not conducive to getting to the hospital either.
If, when the police pulled up behind them, the ambulance had simply turned on their lights and siren, I bet the cop would have not bothered to pull them over. We’ll never know.
In once sense, this is all about race. The officer is white, the EMT is black. It fits the profile, complete with the son of the patient taping the altercation.
I was unaware that the patient was black when I wrote my post. So I thought the other people coming to the ambulance were people who lived on the street where the ambulance was pulled over, and it seemed odd they would all confront the police like that.
And they were all black. So I said they were black. It was a statement of fact, and a valid observation.
as I said to another freeper, I hope we have not gotten to where even on a conservative site you can’t make observations, factual ones, without people calling you a racist.
I would note that the driver appeared to be white.
Remember those K9 dogs some cops are all ga-ga about ~ even to the point of making them the sacred and untouchable animal totem of all policedom?
Well, the EMT is even more sacrosanct and protected. The same laws that make firing on the police a no-no also protect OTHER first responders ~ e.g. firemen and EMTs. This EMT is ranked higher than a police dog on the scale of things that are used to evaluate first responders ~ cop should have known that!
Impeding an officer in the performance of his duties. With you out of the car, he has to watch to make sure you don’t sneak up on him, or pull a weapon, or do anything else that would cause him harm.
That means you distract him from his job, which impedes him.
The cop overreacted, but that doesn’t mean everybody else did the right thing.
They take 22% more distance to stop than other vehicles of the same configuration and weight due to that instability.
They take an awful lot more distance to stop than a car.
You can read all about these things on the net. Time to start looking it up.
He didn’t overrule the “decision” of the EMT. And I’m pretty sure being an EMT doesn’t give you the legal right to break the law, so whatever authority the EMT has isn’t absolute.
You really can't come up with anything to justify this guy's behavior.
You did know the Prosecutor has refused to accept the patrolman's charges against the EMT.
If the patient needed to get to the hospital, if they had simply turned on the lights and siren, I doubt the police would have pulled them over, and they would have gotten to the hospital quicker.
In the son’s video, you can hear the patient yelling at the son. It is my hope that the patient was stable and not in any danger at that point, because I can’t imagine the EMT jumping out to confront the officer if she wasn’t.
Not every ambulance ride is going to be low level flight with sirens and lights blazing.
As an example, I was in an auto accident and ended up with a pretty nasty neck injury. The EMTs handled me like a a crate of eggs being gentle in getting me out of the car, immobilized and loaded in the ambulance.
As far as the ride to the hospital went, they had the lights on but no siren and drove the interstate service road about 30 MPH and even slower when they could see bumps. I really appreciated their care as bumps in the road hurt like hell and I felt every single one of them.
The situation escalated, but at no time did the EMT act as if there was a life-or-death situation in the ambulance. When the EMT first said he had a patient in the ambulance that needed care, the cop told him to get back in the ambulance, and the EMT did not, which would have suggested to the cop that the patient did not need care.
I don’t get this idea that the EMT is above the law. If my house was burning down, I wouldn’t expect the fireman to leave my house to go into the street and confront a police officer.
When you come this late to a thread, it helps to read on before you open fire. Please see post #51. I was wrong.
Just like a track commander (TC) in the military, beyond the designated ground guide, anyone else wanting to communicate anything to the driver has to go through the TC and if they don't the TC gets to shoot them (depending on time and circumstances of course).
So too with the EMT ~ he's in charge of the entire vehicle. The cop already had been trained to go through the EMT. He chose to beat up on the EMT. I think it's going to go bad for the trooper.
I have no doubt that a sane police officer would never pull over an ambulance. I still believe the officer had no idea there was anybody in the ambulance until after he pulled it over — because there were no lights and sirens.
The officer’s body motion looked like “surprise” when the EMT jumped out of the back of the ambulance.
Now, imagine if, instead of what happened, the EMT jumping out of the ambulance had a weapon and shot the officer. It happens to officers, and they are trained to watch for things when pulling people over.
But yes, this is a strange and interesting case, which is why it is fun to discuss it and debate different points of view.
It is unfortunate in my mind that people take these threads as if we are actually deciding the fate of the players, rather than engaging in idle speculation and mental gymnastics for our own benefit.
Because if we’d realize that we are independent of the real world here, we’d have much more intellectually satisfying discussions, and not have as many people calling each other names.
I imagine if everybody in the thread were defending the cop, I’d probably discuss the reasons why the EMT was right, because it would advance the debate. I was ready to be against the cop until I saw most people were already taking that position.
I’ve been on the other side of the argument in other threads.
For the record, knowing only what I know now, I would not push to fire the cop. If there were other incidents of violent behavior, or if he had pulled his weapon and shot someone, I’d feel differently.
I do believe that there are cases where cops have overreacted because their spouses were in the car. The last case we discussed like this at FR was the sheriff in Texas who had his wife in his car and pulled over a van, and when the van drove away narrowly missing hitting him, he shot at the van as it drove away and injured a passenger. In that case, the van had illegals in it and most people sided with the cop, but I said it was reasonable to question why he shot the passenger.
Good guys.
If a cop had stopped them for going too slow just because they didn't have their lights and sirens on and delayed my kid's trip to the hospital I imagined I'd had to sue Fairfax county for millions of bucks.
We did have a cop stop us for improper entry onto a major thoroughfare back just before the birth of my oldest.
Cop was a real prick ~ I called the National Park Service as soon as we got out of there and told them the baby was on the way and this guy stopped us and wrote a ticket so I wanted them to take his horse away or I'd sue.
He was molested by the Department, the ticket was torn up, and I was called repeatedly by their main guy about "how is the baby doing".
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