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Street Fight, Scene Safety
What would your crew do?
Video below is of Los Angeles firefighters breaking up a fight,
LOS ANGELES - Three men and a woman were involved in a drunken brawl on the sidewalk while people watched. LAFD 13's was in route to a unrelated call when the ambulance stopped to investigate the fight. as soon as they arrived they called for LAPD back-up just as their engine compant showed up to help. A total of 6 LAFD personal stopped the fight as LAPD arrived. LAPD arrested two of the males and let one male and the female go. Uncertain at this time what started the fight. At some point in the video you see one of the men hit the female....but you will also see the female kicking one of the men whiles he's down just moments after.
What would your crew do if faced with a similar situation?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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Let's be honest, what was the unrelated call they were responding to in the first place? That call should and would take precedence over stopping to break something up. Now if other rigs were responding to that other call and made the determination that rigs don't need to continue in, then by all means I would see the members of my crew breaking up a fight.
If the other call is not being mitigated yet, then this would be something I and likely other members of my crew would radio in to dispatch and PD sent to the scene. In fact I recall one time we actually did do this. The ambulance I was driving and my partner were responding for a non-priority call and came across a dispute (no physical altercation at that point). We stopped the ambulance, turned on the lights and told the people to leave the area. We notified dispatch to send PD, and then proceeded to our call.
In reality, it all depends on the circumstances involved. I disagree with stopping to break up a fight if already dispatched and responding to a more serious call (fire, PNB, trauma, etc) but depending on the circumstances, who knows? Besides, one can see in the video the engine drives on by with the ambulance then slowing down and stopping at the scene first, then the engine comes back. This leads me to believe the rigs were responding to a call and were cancelled en route and had the chance to stop and check things out and break up this fight.
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