On Being a Cop and EMT

One of my Dear Readers (I call ’em Dear Readers in an effort not to sound too derivative of the LawDog) has asked for my help in an essay she is writing.

It seems that Melissa is aiming for the Public Safety Career Trifecta – she is already an EMT and firefighter, and now she wants to be a cop. Here’s wishing her luck in that endeavor. You could do worse than follow the same career path as the LawDog.

Now normally I’d refuse to do her research for her, but being as how her request is more in the nature of an interview than a request for plagiarism by proxy, so I decided the least I could do is answer her question, which is the main topic of her essay:

“What similarities do you see in EMS and law enforcement? What commonalities do they share as far as duties, public perception, pay and the like?”

I was going to reply to my Dear Reader in a private e-mail, but then I thought that the rest of my readers may have some salient comments to add. A number of the folks who drop by the blog have experience as both EMT and LEO. Mr Fixit is a Dallas firefighter and paramedic. Matt G. has done his share of first response in his capacity as a LEO. The LawDog has already completed the career trifecta. DW knows how to put wet stuff on hot stuff, dry stuff on red sticky stuff, plus he’s a glow worm too. A good friend from Boston is a long-time paramedic and reserve police officer, and hopefully he will weigh in with his comments. All of them, and others, may have some valuable perspective to add.

Remember, if you steal ideas from one person, they call it plagiarism. If you steal from many, it’s called research.

Making a comparison between law enforcement and EMS requires that first EMS needs to be defined, and that is a thorny task indeed. Those of us in EMS cannot often agree on exactly what we are. The best definition I can provide is that EMS is a unique blend of public safety and health care. It is neither fish nor fowl nor good red meat. And the taste varies from city to city.

As for my answer to your question, I see a number of similarities between law enforcement and EMS. In fact EMS may share more commonalities with law enforcement than with firefighting, despite the fact that a great many fire departments provide EMS.

In EMS systems that practice Systems Status Management (or as I like to call it, Systemic SadoMasochism), the medic unit is not tied to a fixed location. Rather they tend to be fluidly deployed, in areas of anticipated high call volumes. In this way, we are far more like cops than firefighters, who typically spend their time between calls at a fixed location like a fire station. EMTs and cops may spend the vast majority of their shift sitting in their units on a street corner somewhere, or driving back and forth.

In many systems, EMS uniforms are very similar to what cops wear. I am uncomfortable wearing such. I prefer to be distinct from the police in manner and dress, no matter how closely I may identify with them in general attitude and worldview. Being distinct from cops affords me the opportunity to portray myself as a neutral. Many of the patients I have to deal with distrust the police, either from good reason (because they are thugs, and the enemy of a thug is the man who would stop the thuggery), or because they have been societally conditioned to do so. Many of the law abiding distrust the police as well, for reasons mostly imagined but magnified by the actions of a tiny fraction of cops. One bad apple can waft its stench over the entire barrel. I want to look different from cops. Hell, at some places I’ve worked, I wanted to look different from my own co-workers.

One way I see a kinship between cops and EMTs is in their dealing with the public. In many cases, we would not willingly associate with the vast majority of people we see in our shifts, yet we must gain their trust and extract some good information from them. Cops already work at a disadvantage because often their relationship with their interview subject is adversarial by its very nature. In my job as an EMT, I often use this to my advantage:

“Hey Bro, I ain’t the effinpoleece. You can trust me. So tell me what I need to know.”

My friend Gary summed up our differences and our similarities rather nicely:

A good EMT or medic is a lot like a good detective. Not the dopey ones you see on TV, but real ones. Unlike TV, real interrogations are actually interviews. In both professions we are trying to get people to tell us intimate or even embarrassing things about themselves. We have a slight advantage in that we are usually not in an adversarial relationship. We truly do want the information so we can help the patient.

AD has a very easy manner and people will open up to him. Same with good detectives.

As important as a medic or EMTs medical skills may be, their people skills might even be more so.

Fire departments have a very well-defined command hierarchy, as does law enforcement. EMS (as practiced outside of fire departments, anyway) typically does not have as rigid a command structure – a fact which has both advantages and disadvantages.

In the environment in which cops and EMTs practice, individual judgement, personal initiative, and creative problem solving are at a premium. Not so with fire suppression. I’m not saying firefighters aren’t capable of independent thought, but there is little place for improvisation on the fireground. On an EMS call however, improvisation is necessary more often than not. I know of a number of instances in some of the more dysfunctional fire departments where a paramedic’s treatment decision was overridden by a higher ranking firefighter with far less medical training. I don’t need to elaborate on the stupidity of such acts, nor will I paint all fire departments with the same brush. But it happens.

Now, I’m not saying that the presence of a Stuporvisor doesn’t occasionally muddle things in law enforcement and EMS, but most of the
time, they are not present at the scene, so the EMT and the cop practice with a fair degree of autonomy. Not so with firefighters. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Well Melissa, hopefully that will get you started. Not much in the way of substance here, but it should give you the germ of an idea or two. Hopefully, the rest of my readers will weigh in on the subject with their comments.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

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