Divemedic

I told you so

Just ten days ago, I posted that Washington, DC was using firefighters as an unarmed reserve police force. I said at the time that it was a bad idea that would not work. Turns out, I was correct.

At least three people were injured in four shootings in the District over a 24-hour period Sunday and Monday, according to fire and police officials.
Two locations that officials responded to for reports of shootings were just blocks from corners where D.C. firefighters have been stationed as crime deterrents.

By Divemedic, ago

Paid administrative leave and the Constituion

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows that I am not shy about pointing out when cops have overstepped their bounds. I am not a cop basher, I just call em like I see em, bashing them when they screw up and I support them when they deserve to be supported. This is one of those times.

Whenever a cop does something stupid or controversial, he is placed on paid administrative leave pending investigation, and many people are quick to scream “paid vacation” and “cover up” because they feel that the cop is getting away with the act. The truth is actually quite different.

Since a cop is potentially going to be deprived of something (his job) by a government agency, he or she in entitled to the same rights and protections as an other person in this nation, and as many are quick to point out, cops are civilians the same as the rest of us, and need to be treated in the same way. This means that the government agency, his or her employer, cannot deprive him of his liberty or property without due process of law. When I studied for my degree in Public Safety Administration, we had to take classes on Administrative Law. I will excerpt some of my class materials/papers below, and attempt to explain:

The Fifth Amendment to the U. S, Constitution states “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” Originally this amendment was construed to be applicable only to the federal government. Later, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified to provide “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” The Fourteenth Amendment clearly applies to municipalities as well. City of Mobile v, Bouldin, 446 U.S. 55 (1950). Further, Section 1983 of Title 42 of the U.S. Code prohibits any person from depriving another of his or her civil rights under color of state law. Section 1983 covers municipal actions as well.

Here we are concerned about a public employee (cop) who is called by the employer to answer for some transgression and punished. The employee appeals, claiming that the public employer violated the employee’s rights by depriving him or her of property (in this instance, the job) without extending due process of law, and deprived the employee of liberty (in this instance, his or her good name in the community) without providing due process of law. A public employee with a constitutionally protected property interest in that employment must be afforded the process prior to termination. Cleveland Bd. Of  Educ, v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532,105 S.Ct 148 (1985).

Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions address these questions: Board of Regents V. Roth, 408 U.S. 564 (1972); Perry v. Sinderman, 408 U.S. 593 (1972). The decisions in Roth and Sinderman involved tenured teachers who were fired and who subsequently claimed violation of due process as to their property and liberty rights. These decisions were applicable to all public employees, whether tenured or non-tenured. The court held that a public employee has a property interest protected by due process if he or she could show a “legitimate claim of entitlement” to the job – a contract, or tenure, or even oral or implied understandings – creating a reasonable expectation of continued employment.

A recent decision in the third circuit, Schmidt v. Creedon, F.3d (3rd Cir. 2011) (pdf) makes clear that absent extraordinary circumstances, prior to suspending a police officer for any reason, a police department must provide the officer with notice and a hearing. A good explanation can be found here.

So when you hear that a cop has been suspended pending investigation, it isn’t a Union that is protecting him, it is the same Constitution that protects everyone.

By Divemedic, ago

Mortgages and politicians

More evidence that politicians of all parties are corrupt and lacking in morals. This article shows that the Republicans in general, and attorney general Pam Bondi in particular, were taking bribes campaign contributions from the mortgage industry in exchange for overlooking the fact that the banks were committing fraud and forging legal paperwork, so that they could steal foreclose people’s homes.

If you look at campaign contributions to Bondi, a certain address comes up a lot: 601 Riverside Avenue in Jacksonville. It’s the home of Lender Processing Services, its subsidiaries, and the company it recently spun off from, Fidelity National Financial.
Altogether, those companies gave $6,500 to Bondi’s campaign directly. They also gave $78,000 to the Republican Party of Florida – which was itself a major funder of Bondi’s campaign
Finally, Lender Processing Services recently hired a new senior vice president for government affairs – Joe Jacquot, who until recently was an assistant attorney general for Bondi.

In exchange for these “contributions,” Bondi fired the attorneys who were investigating claims that the banks were “creating” documents out of thin air and using them as evidence in foreclosure proceedings.

People were signing documents with fake names. They didn’t have the required witnesses. And they weren’t reading the documents they were signing.

Even though they were sworn statements, that the signing party has personal knowledge of the facts. So much for investigating.

It’s OK, it was just legal technicalities, anyway:

By Divemedic, ago

End of an era

As I sit here at my computer, I just heard the twin sonic booms of the space shuttle coming in for the last time. Normally, I am not really happy about government spending money on things like this, but I must admit that the little boy in me likes to watch the space program, and I always have. I watched so many launches from the space center with my Dad, and it is a memory from my childhood that I treasure.

I saw a couple of the moonshots when I was a small child. I was there for the launch of Apollo/Soyuz, and I remember that I was upset that it was the last launch of the manned program. I remember being happy when we returned to space in 1981, and now watching that last shuttle is a bit sad. I leave you with a few pictures.

By Divemedic, ago

DUI checkpoints are not really for DUI

I know that the articles that I am posting are a little old, but this one is revealing about the purpose of DUI checkpoints. These checkpoints are nominally put in place to “keep us safe” from drunk drivers. During the 2009 July 4th weekend in Gainseville, there were 1,131 vehicles stopped at the DUI checkpoint. How many DUI arrests were made? None. However, there were:

2 arrests for outstanding warrants
7 arrests for felony charges (6 of those for drugs)
1 arrest for misdemeanor charges
104 traffic tickets
20 warnings were written

In other words, 1% of the people stopped were arrested, and about 10% of them got tickets, and increased the coffers of the state treasury. These checkpoints are not about safety, they are about making an end run around the Constitution.

The police are not there to make us safe, they are there to take our money. I must admit that I have been the victim of a robbery once (when I was 19, the robber got $23) and I have been the victim of burglary twice (the burglars got a total of less than $500 worth of stuff).

The police have gotten far more than that from me, just in tickets, not counting the taxes I must pay to support them. How is an armed man stealing my money at gun point not stealing from me, simply because he wears a badge? Don’t tell me that if I wasn’t speeding that I wouldn’t get a ticket. There are enough laws out there that a cop can write you a ticket for nearly anything, and regardless of what they will have you believe, they DO have quotas, and they win prizes for writing tickets and busting people for DUI. Those prizes are in the form of cash awards and free vacations.

By Divemedic, ago

Welcome to the police state

The Florida Highway Patrol, like many other police agencies, uses a system called the Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) system. This system consists of cameras that can be mounted on patrol cars, like this:

or they can be mounted in fixed locations, like this:

They are connected to a computer network that automatically alerts authorities when a “plate of interest” passes by the camera. The plates that are captured are displayed on the car’s computer screen, and look like this:

According to the website of the manufacturer, each car equipped with this system can scan 5,000 license plates during an average police officer’s shift. The reason this is being sold to departments? Read on:

Long Beach police used two ALPR-equipped vehicles to search for parking scofflaws. In 30 days, they located and impounded more than 300 vehicles – collecting over $200,000 in delinquent fines and impound fees. A study done for the City of Seattle showed that parking ticket collection rates across municipalities vary from 71% to 87%, with 80% being the median – that’s a million dollars or more of uncollected revenue in each city. Searching for parking ticket violators isn’t the most productive use of an officer’s time, so locating serial violators has been left to chance: the officer would have to find the car as part of a routine plate check or another traffic stop.
With an ALPR system, the police vehicle only has to pass the violator – whether parked or in traffic – and ALPR will alert the officer. A quick drive through a large parking lot will often locate several serial violators, whose cars can be towed or clamped until the fines are paid. The end result is fewer scofflaws getting away with nonpayment of fines.

Sure, money is the reason they get the system, but there is also the more sinister applications:

Besides alerting the officer when he passes a vehicle of interest, an ALPR system equipped with GPS can quietly note the time and location the vehicle was passed. This data is then loaded into PIPS’ Back Office System Software (BOSS®) and then mined and cross-referenced to keep tabs on known drug dealers, terrorist suspects, organized crime figures, or crime patterns…Areas such as airports, seaports, water treatment facilities, nuclear power plants – even schools – are targets for both criminals and terrorists. ALPR can assist with protecting such facilities by watching for known persons of interest (such as registered sex offenders), unauthorized vehicles, or simply vehicles that show up too frequently.

The founding fathers of this nation would be thrilled.

By Divemedic, ago

It’s like they are trying to lose

Obama the President is turning out to be unpopular, and he is being torn up in the polls by “unnamed Republican.” The presidential race has not even begun yet, and the Republicans are virtually guaranteed a win. Then they go and say stupid, shit that makes people not want to vote for them. Like this:

Asked if his view could lead any community to stand up in opposition to a proposed mosque, Cain replied, “They could say that.” He pointed to opposition to the planned mosque in Murfreesboro, Tenn., as an example.
“Let’s go back to the fundamental issue that the people are basically saying that they are objecting to,” Cain said. “They are objecting to the fact that Islam is both religion and (a) set of laws, Shariah law. That’s the difference between any one of our other traditional religions where it’s just about religious purposes.”

Idiot:
Here in Florida, I can’t buy alcohol on Sunday until after noon.

Nationwide, your very own (Republican) party is opposed to gay marriage, because it will hurt the religious sanctity of marriage, what ever that means.

You want to know why many cannot relate to, or vote for, your party? Because you are a bunch of Bible thumping, in your face religious hypocrites who continually like to spout off about the Constitution, but only when it suits your purposes.

(As opposed to Democrats, who quote the parts of the Constitution THEY like, when it is convenient to their purposes, like flag burning and porn, but ignore it when they want to ban guns or redistribute my pay.)

By Divemedic, ago

The future of medicine

Just last week, I posted about how Obamacare was forcing health providers to find cheaper ways of treating patients. Well, here is one way. Minnesota is using paramedics, who are being called “mid level practitioners” to perform medical procedures previously reserved for medical professionals with higher levels of education and training, with doctors being available for television consultation and supervision.

This is happening despite the objections of Nursing associations, who have long opposed having paramedics being considered as their equals. Even though a paramedic has undergone the same amount of training (45 credit hours for nursing, versus 50 for Paramedic, both form the core for associate’s degrees), many in the nursing community have fought to keep them in the back of the bus. (However, this post is not intended to fight the nurse versus paramedic battle.)

The thing that this drives home is that our health care system is poorly organized and antiquated. There is no way that a doctor can know everything that a patient will need, and they have begun to specialize in fields, leaving general doctors hard to find. The amount of school that a person must attend takes a decade and leaves the new doctor with over a half of a million dollars in student loan debts. Doctors expect to earn large sums of money, so that they can be reimbursed for the decade of work that it took to become a doctor and so that they can repay the student loans.

Physician assistants and Nurse practitioners programs have addressed some of that, and there are many people trying to get into and complete these programs, but there are fewer of them than there are medical schools, and competition is fierce. There are just over 150 physician assistant schools in the United States, and they are producing less than 7400 licensed physician assistants a year. Not nearly enough when you consider that US medical schools produce 18,000 doctors each year, and that doesn’t count foreign medical schools, like the ones in the Caribbean or in India. Physician assistant schools are a 24-30 month long Master’s degree program, but the schools do not care what your bachelor’s degree was in, just that you have one.

So the gaps are being filled in with paramedics, who have a two year associate’s degree and likely make less than $15 an hour. I am a paramedic, and I can tell you that there are some good ones out there, and there are some bad ones, but paramedics do not know enough about general medicine, especially when they are right out of school, to do this job effectively. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be taught, because after all, physician assistants are trained in two years, but I don’t think this is the answer.

Now that doesn’t mean that our heath system doesn’t need an overhaul. I have long felt that it was ridiculous that I need a bachelor’s degree (it doesn’t matter in what- one doctor I know has a bachelor’s in golf) to attend medical school, or physician assistant school. Eliminating that requirement would cut the time and money needed to become a doctor or a physician assistant considerably.

As the shortage of medical professionals continues, pressure will mount for lower level providers (who make less money) to take on an increasing role in your health care, because Obamacare will pressure the medical profession into providing cheaper, but not necessarily better, health care.

By Divemedic, ago

A bad idea

The city of Washington, DC is using firefighters as an impromptu unarmed police force, deploying them to patrol high crime areas. So what happens is that the unarmed firefighters are increasingly looked upon as an extension of the police department.

The one thing that allows me to enter high crime areas is the knowledge that I am not a cop, and I am not there to bust anyone or take sides, I am just there to take you to the hospital. Once we as fire and EMS are viewed as the enemy, we will be treated like the enemy. An unarmed, relatively defenseless one. At least I can take comfort knowing that if my agency decides to enact a similar policy, I can legally be armed while doing so (even if it will likely get me fired.)

I would also like to point out that the program employs 14,000 people for six weeks, and was $30 over budget in 2008. That works out to $357 per week per worker that the project was over budget. The youths in this program work 16 hours per week. The full cost of the program is $55 million (including the $30 million overrun). That works out to $40.92 per hour per worker costs the taxpayer.

What are the taxpayers getting for that money? One of the jobs is that the kids are being paid to paint pictures on the sides of buildings using spray paint. We are paying these kids to paint graffiti, and demanding that firefighters then follow them around to make sure that they stay out of trouble.

By Divemedic, ago