Not too sure what to make of this....
Either way, I don't think that was the time or place to arrest rescue personel.

 

I call that type of Leo the Barney Fife patrol

 

That is the stupidest thing I think i've ever seen. When you are on the scene of an accident like that you need to block the lanes just like the firefighters did. Those big fire trucks offer a whole lot of protection from oncoming traffic.

..

 

Hazelwood officer fined $18,000 for arresting firefighter on emergency call

(KMOV) -- A police officer in Hazelwood will have to pay thousands of dollars for getting into it with a firefighter while he was trying to help an accident victim.


News 4 obtained police video that shows the Hazelwood police officer arresting a fire captain while he's trying to move an injured driver.
Officer Todd Greeves wanted a fire truck moved to open up another lane of traffic.
The Robertson Fire Protection District Captain wanted the truck there to protect emergency workers.

Officer Greeves has been ordered to pay $18,000.


His attorney says he's disappointed and that his client's conduct was not malicious in any way.

 

Another fine example of an LEO out of control. Seriously did this guy get any training before becoming a police officer? Abuse of power, someone ought to put that "officer" in cuffs and see how he likes it.

People like him give all the good LEO's out there a bad name.

Let the dang firefighters do their job.

 

Which is exactly why I got out of law enforcement. Unfortunately, there are a lot of officers who have the "Because I can" syndrome. An $18,000 fine for that officer is a good start, but termination of his employment on top of it would have been more fitting.

chaikwa.

 

Termination, without any possibility of becoming an LEO anywhere else would be even more fitting. $18,000........who gets that money? The injured person who was denied medical and extraction attention that they were in need of? I think that person would have a very good civil case against the officer and the county/state/locale where the officer was employed! Iam thankful for the LEO's that are out there, but like said before, it only takes one like that to lose respect for the entire profession.

 

Stupid move by the officer. If he was any good at his job he would have backed off a bit to with the lights on to provide warning to drivers and set up pylons for saftey and then to provide room for the fire team if needed. All of which would have involved using the second lane.

I see leo make silly mistakes everyday, They seem to be getting complacent to highway saftey and proper driver training training. However you can't train for common sense.

 

Ahhhhhhhhh...................now let me play a bit of devil's advocate here. Where lies the root cause for these types of incidents to happen?

I can't speak for you folks South of the border, but I can for Canadian police agencies. Let's take a look at who they are hiring for these positions. For many years, up until recently when a crisis arose due to the shortage of applicants, many police agencies did their hiring based on a political spectrum of representation of populous, not based on whether the person as mentally and physically able to do the job - regardless on their ethnic or gender background. They are finding that they're having issues with these officers in the program because of it.

Now, they can't even get enough applicants. They've gone so far as to contact past deferred applicants during those years of political prowess requesting them to reapply and saying that they'll push their recruitment through on faster pace. What they're finding is those folks have moved on and have told them to pound sand for their previous questionable hiring practices.

In the opinion of quite a few people I know, with myself included.......they cooked their own goose because the word has spread. Who in this world is going to sacrifice a life they've been building for half the salary they're currently making. Many were willing to make that sacrifice when they were younger and build on it to specialize. It's not going to happen now.

 

I can't tell you how many times we have argued with State Police when we arrive on scene of a mva, they want us to move apparatus to allow traffic to flow. There is always a power struggle, they want traffic to move and we want to secure the accident scene so we can work without getting hit by someone that is to busy watching us work while they are driving by. The absolute bottom line is this, when the Fire department arrives on scene they AUTOMATICALLY assume command and control of the ENTIRE incident and the police dept on scene fall under that command structure, wether they like it or not. The only exception to this is if its a fatality and CSI is brought on scene then the F/D releases command back to the P/D, then the F/D falls under their command structure. Things have been changing in my state recently, a new multi agency unified command structure is being implemented and all F/D and P/D's are being trained to use it, seems to be working well.

Tim

 

That's not just in Massachusetts Tim, it's nationwide, (or supposed to be!), and also what we've been teaching at NFA/Emmitsburg for a little over a year now and falls under the ICS 1-9.

chaikwa.

 

in some states, state patrol is supposed to take command of any haz-mat job that occurs on a state highway or state property. in conjunction with the epa, they are supposed to implement a plan to minimize the possibility of long term contamination of water, soil, etc. other than the immediate extrication of trapped/injured individuals, the fire dept is supposed to defer to state patrol for a plan of action, as even an attempt to contain/extinguish the resulting fire, can make the situation worse. i think more agencies are becomming better in using the ics- unfortunately, the lack of a unified command at the wtc, made the loss of life for fire personnel worse than it needed to be.

 

You're right when you say "in some states..." The whole point of the unified command was to give uniformity, (go figure!), throughout ALL the states. Unfortunately, some states have what they think are better ideas, so it's far from unified.

 

Scott whats happenign there is that in a lot of states, KS for example, the rural counties and communities dont have the funding or access to teh training and equipment available at teh state level. also many of th smaller volunteer depts simply have too high a turn over rate to keep enough certifed FF's let alone trained HazMat or EMD personell.
In that scenerio, the state officers who have been trained are incident scene commanders. On teh surface it apears to be the old PDvsFF pwer thing, but actually its for good reason.

 

You make a good point about the turn-over rate, I didn't think about that. But the training is free and will come to the location to make sure everyone gets it.

I predict the old PDvsFF power struggle is going to soon be a thing of the past, mainly because I see regionalization and consolidation of both police and fire becoming more popular nationwide in the very near future. More of a 'Public Safety' department rather than seperated police and fire.

Remember... you heard it here first!

chaikwa.