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Police car stops
As I was passing through a neighboring departments district I noticed that a police officer was conducting a car stop right on the apron of a working firehouse blocking both bay doors
I bring this up because out of all of the places you could stop a car, the ramp of a working firehouse seemed a bad choice for officer and firefighter safety
I understand officer safety concerns and know a thousand and one things can go wrong during traffic stops with one of them being the fire company needing to go on a call and ending up in a life threating situation.
I was just curious if this has happened to anyone and how did you handle it?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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Too many variables here. If you were just passing through can you confirm how long this stop was going on? Is it possible the car and cop just went there and the officer may have said to move out of the way of the doors after you passed by? When you say "working firehouse" do you mean one that is staffed with personnel inside, or is this a volunteer station with on call personnel?
I can honestly say I never seen a cop make a stop on a firehouse apron, if they did, they would give clearance from the doors. If they didn't and there was a call, then you tell them to move. If it was noticed before a call, we would simply tell the cop to move out of the way of the doors. We wouyld then notify the police supervisor to send a reminder to officers to be cognizent of where they conduct a traffic stop.The only game changer would be if this was a felony stop, guns drawn etc, but doesn't sound like it in this case.
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But I don't think the cop could control where the vehicle they're stopping decides to pull over
Actually they can. Most police cruisers have a PA system and can instruct the driver to pull into say a parking lot etc. In this type of case, they can tell a driver to move beyond the doors.
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Permalink Reply by Don Catenacci on
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I would guess if the doors open and the firetrucks have their red lights on the cop would move.
Mountains out of mole hills Brother.
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Permalink Reply by ashfire on
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At one time we have had county and state units sitting on our ramp conducting speed and DUI stops years back during what was call Operation Spider.
The officer would run radar or watch for movements that would indicate speeding or DUI driving on the road our station sits on because it was a target road for those types of things. If they got a hit they would pop off our ramp and nail them. In someway the patrol cars blended in with our station. Since then since we have a middle and elementary school across from our station, the county has installed speed cameras in the area.
Since the drivers know those cameras are there, they do keep their speed down when they come past our station at all hours close to 25MPH. The speed was 35MPH but drivers were coming by at interstate speeds.
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Permalink Reply by Russ on
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John: no variables at all-(in my opinion). It does not mater if it was a paid or volunteer house or if the stop had just occurred or was wrapping up or was going on for 20 minutes because the "location" of the stop (in my opinion) was a poor choice...(FYI-it was a paid firehouse, a 3 bay drive through with an county EMS unit in there with them)...and my point of the post was my opinion that the location was "poor choice" for the officer to select from a standpoint of emergency response possibility and officer safety.
plenty of cops get hurt and killed on traffic stops and a momentary distraction could be disasterous for the officer
a volunteer house getting a run would bring a bunch of folks to the firehouse to find this going on and if the stop goes bad everyone would be in danger.
In the case of this house which is pretty busy and their bay doors have no windows, it would have been a bit of a surprise for the unknowing crew to be put in this situation suddenly
the point of the post was not to create a stir but in the multitude of things that have occurred on the job just ask if this had happened to anyone before
I earned certification as a reserve law enforcement officer here in florida and because of what I learned in the academy, I would have like some of the other posters have said, used the PA to direct them around the corner
I was just curious if anyone else had ever been surprised by something like this
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Permalink Reply by Ethan Foster on
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Real traffic stops don't occur like the show "Bait Car", officers don't get to disable the car and make it stop wherever they want to. With that said, and many others have said it, I'm sure if the doors came up the police officer would move.
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