Decades ago while during my 2.5 years as a police officer, I went to a shooting in a bar.
One guy wounded, sitting them clutching his shoulder, bleeding.
Another guy on the floor, gurgling, shot through the left eye and upper chest area. The guy on the ground was coughing blood and basically bleeding out.
I did NOT try and stop the blood loss, I did not try to clear his airway, I did not try mouth-to-mouth when he stopped breathing.
This bar was in a bad part of town and these criminals would have killed me if given a chance. There was no way I was going to a) turn my back on the crowd that gathered, b) try and save the life of a low-life violent criminal (found out later his record included several ag-assaults and rape, and c) not going to touch some guy with who-knows what diseases spewing forth from his wounds or in his fluids.
Cruel and heartless? Maybe. But I didn’t/don’t feel guilty about it at all.
Some thug was yelling at me; “Do something, do something! You are the pole-leece!”
I replied; “Yup, I am the police, I ain’t no doctor. If you want to help him I will tell you what to do.”
He ran out.
That’s crappy. When my Sister was a cop she saved a man choking on a hotdog and was given a award for it. She didn’t even think twice about doing it.
As for freezing up. What is she going to do in a real bad incident?
In 25 years as a firefighter I saw police officers attempting to do CPR on very few occasions. The last time... we showed up on scene and several officers were frantically doing ineffective CPR on a morbidly obese male. His hands were still handcuffed behind his back and there were several tazer barbs still embedded in his skin at various locations. After he was subdued the police left him face down in a hallway. It was several minutes before they realized that he had suffocated. At that time they realized that maybe their jobs were in jeopardy and the heroics started.
Ortiz is right ... I remember the world he speaks of - and the values that supported it...