US cops v US ambo's

i was watching one of those cop car chase tv shows which happened to be about US coppers and 2 things occured to me

US cops seem to have no respect for public saftey and the ambos must HATE the coppers

The first was because out of the 10 or so car chases on the show not once did the police say "this is to dangerious, lets just back off and let them go". Thats exactly what would happen here when people are driving recklessly, the police HQ montors any chase constantly and if it gets to dangerious they just call it off, they can all ways track them down latter.

The second point relates specifically to how the coppers arested one person in paticular. Slaming people face down into the dirt after a high speed crash is bad enough (and quite likly to kill even if they are running on adrenilin), however after this car had compleatly flipped over this one passanger was trapped in the back so the moron cop comes up, smashes the back window and pulls the guy out of the upside down car. If i was the ambo rocking up to that case i would be blood FURIOUS, you cant extract someone UNINJURED who is upside down without at least 4-5 people (a fire truck basically) because they have to be surported all the way down. If they have spinal injuries it gets even more difficult.

One last point, a cop left his keys in his car and walked to the front of the car he was detaining and the suspect jumps into the cops car and reverses off. So what is the first reaction of the cop?

He pulls his gun and starts shooting at the guy. Since when did stealing a cop car become a legitimate use of deadly force?
reminded me of a post i made here about the sceen in oceans 11 where the guy runs out of the casino with the cash so the security guards shoot him in the back. Mad (i think) said that would be concidered murder in the US. Well aparently not

 

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What's an ambo?

Anyway, US cops do stop car chases if they are too dangerous, if they go through a crowded area, or if the speed is very high. Mostly they just want to catch the person. Even if the perp crashes, the first responsibility of the police is to secure them. Someone willing to use deadly force, in the form of their vehicle (or a cop's vehicle), should be subdued as soon as possible. Car chases often end in shootouts. If they are injured, that's just tough. I'm sure exceptions are made if there are serious injuries like amputation.

Security guards would not be allowed to shoot people in the back. They wouldn't be allowed to shoot people in the front either, unless it was in self defense.

 

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someone who is hanging upside down in a crumpled car is no threat.

Someone who pinched a cop car and is going backwards at low speed, who is not armed and who is HANDCUFFED for christ sake, is NOT a big enough threat to warrent deadly force.

 

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oh and these chaces were going through residential streets at speeds of 110 Mph (not Km\h, M\h though 110 km\h is BLOODY fast to go through residential streets anyway)

dangerious enough to warrent calling a chase off do you think? (epecially as they had the god dam helicopter and he only speed up when they decided to actually follow him with a car

edit to add:

ambo is short for ambulance officer (ie a paramedic)

 

Someone hanging upside down can still shoot a gun.

Someone in control of a cop car can use it as a deadly weapon, it's as dangerous as a gun.

 

So you're using a tv cop show as if it's what happens in real life??? And thus you're condemning all American cops for what you saw on a tv show???

Baron Max

 

LOL, I thought that as well.

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As Baron said, Asguard, it was a TV show! Anyway, the issue of high speed chases is hotly debated here in the States, with a lot of jurisdictions actually outlawing the practice entirely. Others only allow high speed chases under certain conditions (type of roadway, imminent threat or type of crime committed by the driver, etc.). The trend is for more and more areas to not permit high speed chases at all, except under extreme, extenuating circumstances...

 

I've always wondered about a high speed chase in a city large enough to have a police helicopter. With one of those to follow the car, why bother with the high speed chase?

 

the first point i would like to make is that you weren't at the scene so you have no idea what transpired other than what the broadcasting station wanted you to see.
as to the arrest, did this speeder go blasting through school zones and residential districts doing 80MPH?

the main point to keep in mind is that you weren't there.

maybe because the cop car had firearms in it?
a car can indeed be viewed as a deadly weapon, and seeing as the person refused to stop the first time mitigates the cops actions.

 

Well, if it's a city of any reasonable size, the criminals can get away easily in the back streets of residential areas, etc., where there's poor street lighting. And don't forget, in many, if not most, of those kinds of chases, the car is already stolen, so all the crims have to do is ditch the car and go walking off into into sunset and no one is the wiser.

Personally, I think the cops should have 105mm howitzers mounted on the patrol cars. Don't chase the crimials, just blow the fuckers straight into hell ...and don't bother with those silly-assed trials that'll just let them right back out of jail.

Baron Max

 

LOL, well I guess I could definitely kiss my stolen car good-bye then huh?

I also wondered why people being chased just didn't head for a mall. Very easy to blend in and get lost there.

 

I'm guessing they don't think of it. Odds are most crimes aren't meticulously planned out. Nothing confuses me more than people who commit crimes and don't plan it out. Like people who try to break into stores through roof top vents and don't take into account that they might not fit or they'll get stuck.

 

LOL, yeah. My husband had a classmate that tried to rob a bank at the drive thru. :wallbang:

 

I work at McDonalds part time and sometimes drunk people come through drive through. We just tell them to park at the end of the lot and the police show up a few minutes later and they have no idea how they were caught. :wallbang:

 

I was what you call an "ambo" about thirty years ago, and we always had good relations with the police. We worked together. However, I was on occasion frustrated by police when they handcuff someone seriously injured or dead. As you know it is difficult to treat someone who has been handcuffed...especially when they have five or six gun shots in them. I had to assure the cops he wasn't going to get up and run away with all the holes in him.

And sometimes they would jump in with the patient, shot gun in hand. I just found those occasions a little funny and sometimes a bit frustrating. But they were rare and far between....most of the time police always acted appropriately.

 

joe, i was getting a lecture from the medical director for the ambulance service and you could tell the frustration pooring off him when he told us about the way the cops restrain people, especially those detained under the mental health act. His exact words (as i rember them) were "it looks bad when the cops kneel in a persons back and then all of a sudden roll them over and start CPR".

To take your paticular comment hand cuffs would be a serious annoyance when trying to defib someone because they would provide a great pathway for the current to go AROUND the heart

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Yep, that was my main issue with cops....handcuffing seriously injured patients....guys with multiple bullet holes in them. The cops were not going to let them go...kind of funny when you think about it. The other issue is the psych restraints you mentioned....generally it was our responsibility to restrain those folks as needed. But whenever you had a group of rookie cops hit the streets, they would go overboard with the psych restraints...all the bag ladies would get treated to free meal and a bath at the local psych hospital and let back on the streets.

And as I said, the over restraint thing didn't happen very often. It was rare, most of the time the police were appropriate in their responses.

 

General thoughts on the topic

I'll just point out how silly I find it that police tapes should be shown as entertainment, yet somehow the precious cops should be held as beyond reproach for whatever actions those tapes reveal.

It's amazing to me that some people should be otherwise so intelligent, but unable to think through simple propositions when their alternative is arbitrary, petulant opposition.

That said, the issue is, of course, more complicated than any one wild-chase scene might suggest. Our general public view on crime and punishment tends to encourage escalation; Americans, despite their principles of justice, tend to believe if you've been arrested, you're guilty. And police relations with the public and other institutions of society vary from place to place. There are parts of the country where the EMTs would happily participate in a cover-up, and there are places where they will pitch a fit if the police don't let them do their jobs. In the long run, the average cop isn't nearly so spectacularly stupid as the great examples we laugh at on the latest wild-chase episode, but neither are they as pipsqueak clean as we're supposed to pretend. In the end, the best we have is far from the best we can do, but the alternative is either too complicated or expensive. I think you'll find American EMTs distributed all over the chart if you survey them on the question, but the best fit will run squarely through a range of more positive attitudes.

 

it depends on the circumstances but hancuffing is procedure and used to protect everyone on the scene. also you would probably end up suing the police if you bent over the suspect and ended up with a knife in your chest. then you would say 'well he should have been subdued'.