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Over zealous Trooper? What do you think
Ok first off I am not bashing law enforcement I have lots of respect for those guys but here is the situation. I was at home listening to the pager and a Dept. close to us was dispatched out to the interstate for chest pain. Thier jurisdiction borders Nebraska but the interstate is atleast 4 miles in to Iowa. Well the patient called 911 from his cell phone, the call went to Nebraska who transfered it to our dispatch. For some reason a Trooper from Nebraska entered into Iowa, located the patient and then cancelled the ambulance and transported the patient to a Nebraska hospital which was about 15 minutes further than the hospital that the responding dept. normally transports to. here is some geography for you, interstate 680 enters Iowa and connects to i 29 about 4 miles into Iowa. the patient was located at the 63 mile marker of i 29 south bound. The 63 mile marker is 3 miles north of i 680. So in all a Nebraska trooper entered 7 miles into Iowa where he has no jurisdiction and cancelled an ambulance and transported the patient himself. the responding Dept was enroute and only three miles away from the scene when the trooper cancelled them. What are your thoughts on this?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jeff on
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Do you know what the patient was having difficulty with? If it was a serious problem or there was a possible threat towards the ambulance crew then I dont see a problem with the trooper leaving his jurisdicition. He was just trying to help. Maybe he was the closest officer in the area? But I dont think he had the right to call off the ambulance. Espcially if the ambulance was only 3 miles away. They should of continued to the scene anyway. I dont see how the tooper would think he could make the determination to transport a patient and call off the ambulance. Weather the patient was stable or not they are better off in the hands of an ambulance crew...
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Permalink Reply by jerry baldwin on
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it was a risky decesion at best. i would hope that trooper did what he thought was best at the time, as it is always easiest to judge after the fact and when the emergency is over. as the old saying goes, hindsight relly is 20/20. what i do know is that those emts or parameds are better trained to deal with this type of emergency and i wonder if this trooper knew that they were as close as they in fact were? like i said, it was a risky call, and if something went wrong i can potentially see legal problems arising from his actions. i am glad that it was not me in that situation. stay safe and God bless.
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Permalink Reply by Aussie_Wildfire on
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You have in the USA NIIMS-ICS-IEMS - firescope. Yet the communication system lets a trooper do what he thought was right when the communication system should have told him that help was 3 miles away
Question WHO HAS Authority to be IC of the scene
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on
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I'm with you Caleb. I think the Trooper was a touch over-zealous. If the patient condition deteriorated what aid could the Trooper have given? Wait on scene for the ambulance to arrive, it was only minutes away.
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Permalink Reply by lutan1 on
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Careful Tony, many (not all!) CFA brigades are very quick to cancel VICSES Rescue whne they're in fact needed. What gives them that authority or training to make that call? Is there a difference? No....
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Caleb your line: However, it is BS to call off an ambulance in their own jurisdiction. It is their call, I say let them have the say in whether they need to be there or not.
I think we need Nicholas j. Walton to say why it did not happen.
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Permalink Reply by Fire Capt. 1304 on
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Reading some of the replies I remembered some details that I left out.
#1 to jeff- The patient was having chest pain but was alert and talking to dispatch on the phone, There was no threat to the ambulance crew, and they wanted to meet with the trooper on the interstate because they were going to pass each other going the opposite direction but the trooper left the scene and refused to meet the ambulance along the way.
#2 The trooper was aware that the ambulance was only three miles away because dispatch was relaying messages from the ambulance to him but he insisted they cancel.
I think part of the problem is the area that trooper is assigned to is a large metropolitan area with a large career department that has response times of five minutes or less and is'nt used to longer response times for volunteers although they were enroute in less than 10 minutes.
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Permalink Reply by Dennis Brown on
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well i agree with most of the post but this should have been the emt & paramedic oic of the call to make the the choice what if the patient coded while the officer was transporting and is it poss that the trooper did not know he was over the line in this case and i think in most states police can cross the lines in emergencys.
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Permalink Reply by Brian Dumser on
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Bad decision on the Trooper's part. Even if the Trooper is a trained paramedic, he can't do much to help the patient while he's driving his patrol car to the hospital! Not to mention that he wasn't even in his own jurisdiction. Piss poor decision making! Hopefully it all works out and the patient wasn't put in jeopardy by the Trooper's actions. I also hope that someone in the Trooper's chain of command points out the mistake so it won't happen again. I'm sure his intentions were good, but it could have gone terribly wrong! Stay safe!
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Permalink Reply by Eric on
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If I were the trooper: Scene security and patient status would've been my first priorities. As I see it, those are the duties of law enforcement officials on fire/e.m.s. scenes anyway. Securing the patient from any danger as well as safeguarding the ability of the emergency response groups that are en route, to do their job, while checking to see what the patient's status is, are what the trooper (again, just my opinion) should've been focusing on. There are too many clips where vehicles are pulled over and one of them is struck by a passing vehicle. My question is whether or not the patient was someone that the trroper knows or not? As far as protocal goes, it shouldn't matter, but there are meny people out there who might arrive on scene to something like this, realize that someone they know has called 911, think it'd be better to go ahead and transport them themselves. I am not defending that action, I am just wondering if this is the case. I would be very upset to be the responding e.m.s. agency, and be turned away by law enforcement. As with any situation and as it has been posted already, what if the patient's status did deteriorate? This is why SOP's and SOG's are in place. I know that in my village, even if the police department arrives on scene, confirms for example that a fire alarm is going off because of burned food, our department still responds as they would. Our incident commander will dictate what priority level or whether to cancel response upon confirming the officer's report. That being said, our police department has the Chief of a relatively local fire department working for them and even when he arrives, our incident commander will make the call. The police officer/Chief of the other department is smart and is very good at what he does, but that is how our system works. The agency whose response is directly related to the type of incident should have command of that incident. It is pretty tough to be able to command an incident that you should be in command of, when another type of agency is allowed to cancel your response. I am not saying right or wrong either way, I just wanted to share my opinion as I see it.
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Permalink Reply by Will2745 on
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If i am reading this correctly, the trooper was not only out of his jurdistion but out of his state...He had no authority whatsoever in the matter...He should be reprimanded by his superiors..Has his commander been notified of this situation?
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Permalink Reply by Paul Montpetit on
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I think the Trooper must be nuts....Flaming, certifiable,playing in his own poop,talking to walls,thorazine shuffling,2 PC,out to luch.....He is taking a possible Cardiac call in his patrol car and cancelling EMS...?? DUH...can you spell LAWSUIT..?? This is a good one to stay out of....that is why we have County and State Emergeny Services...the should be made aware of this one as well as the troopers supervisor....Acts like this;although well intended show a desire to commit career suicide......Stay safe...always remember to keep the faith.....Paul (Be nice we need our "Blue Canaries" out there helping us)
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