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Posted on 06/16/2009 1:10:08 PM PDT by Eddings
OKLAHOMA CITY — The paramedic who scuffled with an Oklahoma highway police officer while a patient waited inside the ambulance says the trooper should lose his badge.
Maurice White Jr. said Tuesday on the CBS "Early Show" that trooper Daniel Martin was in a state of rage when he stopped his ambulance and totally disregarded the patient's safety.
Martin stopped the ambulance May 24 for failing to yield.
White says he got out of the ambulance to tell the trooper they were taking a patient to the hospital. The argument quickly escalated into a scuffle and Martin put White in a choke hold.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
No links? We should just take your word for it?
Basically this is occuring in rural Oklahoma outside of Tulsa and nowhere. It's an 8 county area consisting of The Creek Nation reservation and various governmental bodies with overlapping jurisdictions.
The story is that the Creek Nation ambulance was taking a patient to the community hospital. There was little or no traffic on the highway, few driveways or civilian entrances along the way, and NO REASON AT ALL to turn on the lights and siren.
A state trooper responding to a call was barreling along the highway and came upon an ambulance just behind an automobile. He had his lights and siren on. The car pulled to the side to let the trooper pass, as did the ambulance, but ahead of the car.
The ambulance requires 22% more stop time than any vehicle of the same weight and configuration AND it was far larger than the car. No question the ambulance could not have just pulled off behind the car. However, we are talking about 6 seconds of travel time from the moment the patrol car was clearly in the view of the car ahead (and the ambulance) and the time the trooper got even with the ambulance ~ by that time the ambulance was off on the side of the road.
For a variety of unexplained reasons the trooper decided to write up a ticket on the ambulance driver and to choke the EMT.
We have a pool going ~ will the trooper be canned, or will he be promoted.
It's dollars to doughnuts!
I saw a cop that loves the power the badge provides.
They way he grabbed that EMT by the neck, he thought he was untouchable.
The ambulance is NOT REQUIRED to have lights and sirens going at the discretion of the EMT. There was a patient on board and virtually no one on the highway. They were progressing ahead at the speed limit. Several Freepers tracked down OK law on the matter. Everything was kosher from the standpoint of the ambulance driver.
I’ve seen the full video and I believe the office should be fired. (Along with the DA who refused to press charges against the rouge cop)
But he didn't.
When you lick jackboots, how does it taste?
Fact is the evidence is the ambulance driver followed all required procedures and laws ~ the Prosecutor refuses to move ahead on the trooper's complaint in fact.
You can call up the cop's own video and do the timing yourself.
The EMT was beligerent and looking for a fight.
“I saw a cop that loves the power the badge provides.
They way he grabbed that EMT by the neck, he thought he was untouchable.”
Agreed. I like to side with the LEO’s, but this one doesn’t deserve it.
I think you need to read up on the details of this incident, including the statements from both of the troopers who were on the scene. The only video I’ve seen is the dashcam video, and between than and reading all the information available, it’s clear that the trooper was totally out of control and had no business stopping the ambulance at all. It’s also clear from the second trooper’s statement that he couldn’t figure out why the ambulance had been stopped either.
And there’s some very weird suppression going on of the little fact that the offending trooper’s wife was in his patrol car throughout this whole saga. It’s been mentioned in just enough places to confirm it’s really true, but there’s never any explanation at all of what she was doing there. Her presence is not at all irrelevant to the story, because the paramedic initially thought the trooper must be stopping the ambulance because the woman in his patrol car needed urgent medical assistance.
I don't know what part of Police Academy teaches them to choke ambulance drivers.
Another example of our country is in trouble. You have to wonder what happened to "protect & serve"?
BS, he's on administrative leave pending an investigation. They let them decide if it is voluntary are involuntary.
well, that sheds a whole new light on things....I wondered why the medic stepped out of his rig.
In fact, if the cop had arrested the driver and hauled him away the EMT would not have been able to take the patient to the hospital since hopping in the seat and driving away is considered "abandonment of the patient under care".
So, yeah, even if there'd been a violation, which there hadn't been (according to the cop's own video), the correct course of action was to allow the EMT to proceed ahead to the hospital with his patient. That hospital is quite near the place the cop stopped the ambulance anyway. He could have followed behind, and all would have been well.
The cop, though, is reported to have had his WIFE in his car in violation of state rules.
A link to the paramedics report on the incident.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/content.newsok.com/documents/j12emtnarrative1.pdf
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