Most mental health transports here where I live are done by paramedics, because mental illness isn't something that should generally be managed by police. On some occasions you'll have police and paramedics attend an emergency, but if it's a health issue, paramedics are best trained to handle that situation and transport that person.
Its the opposite, here. Police are called “blue canaries” by paramedics/emts/firefighters... because healthcare workers are not even allowed to enter a scene until it’s deemed safe by police first. Nor can EMTs/Paramedics transport anyone who is at all deemed a risk to themselves or anyone else.
Conversely? Police aren’t allowed to transport anyone who is knowingly sick/ill.
CLEARLY situations evolve. Paramedics and EMTs are attacked in transit by their patients, and Cops are puked on, bled on, etc.
And there’s the exact same response to each.
Police are assaulted? So what? 3rd time today. Next call.
Healthcare workers are exposed to a biohazard? So what? 3rd time today. Next call.
But flip it around?
Police are exposed to a biohazard?
Healthcare worker is violently assaulted?
Yep. There goes the rest of your week. :banghead:
There’s almost always wiggle room. A nurse can have her face smashed repeatedly against a table by a patient threatening to kill them; get her nose set, ribs taped, and return to work 20 minutes later... and a cop can get puked on or bled on and just change her uniform and go back on the streets. Because people hide/cover up things that f*ck up their days or theor careers in the normal course of business all the time.
But in a state of emergency? One of two things usually happen; all rules out the window, or rules and regulations clamp down like crazy.
The second one is what’s happening here (locally, can’t speak for nationally). It’s no longer going to f*ck up your day if you bend the rules, and it’s not going to f*ck up your career, either. It’s going to end it. Because whenever the higher ups clamp down, any kind of direct disobedience is stomped on hard and fast, and that person made an example of as a reminder to the rest. No wiggle room for individual judgement calls, or service record (although an appeals process a few years down the road MIGHT see differently, it’s still a few years blackballed in your field).
Paramedics can’t help police out with a little shot of Shhhh once a prerson is subdued to help ensure safe transport, and police can’t help paramedics out by even helping corral, much less subdue, or transporting anyone suspected of ANY kind of illness.
The unions are already up in arms against each other... the nurses union and police union never get on (although more of them are married to each other than any other allied field, not exactly sure what that says?), so the friction is the worst there (each somehow thinks the occupational hazards of their own job should be accepted as normal by the other, even though they’re almost diametrically opposed; assaulted? So what? // Exposed? Hello!Aren’t you practicing universal precautions? Put on your big girl panties.) but whilst that acrimony will undoubtley fight it out in the courtroom of public opinion, our hospitals are all private, so who gets their funding cut in payback next year will be down to police and fire. Sigh. Politics. I hate f*cking politics. It’s all so stupidly predicitble and petty. Mistakes were made, others were blamed.
