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This video is all over the net. I am sure you have seen it by now. There are many comments that the kid was treated badly, or somehow the cops were wrong. Most of this criticism centers around one of two points:

1 That the kid was having his First Amendment rights violated. : This is incorrect. If anything, this kid was violating the rights of the others who wanted to speak by monopolizing the session. He was not asking questions, he was making a speech. If he wants to make speeches, he is allowed to do so, just not on someone else’s dime or during someone else’s meeting. I am sure the school will let him reserve a space and make speeches. Remember that the right to free speech is not a guarantee that people will listen, nor does it confer the right to disrupt the peace.

2 That the kid did not need to be tazed. This guy was given the lawful order to leave. He refused. The cops then tried to escort him out. He wiggled free. They tried to escort more forcibly. He resisted. They tazed him. I thought that was an appropriate escalation of force.

Too many people in this country think that the cops are not allowed to “boss them around,” or that free speech means being able to disrupt or annoy others. They also think that the cops are not allowed to touch them unless they have a weapon.

The police are there to do a job, its called keeping the peace. If you breach that peace, they are going to order you to leave. If you refuse, you are going to be arrested. Resist, and you will be forced to go.

This article attempts to use statistics in a misleading manner to support a preconcieved notion that “assault weapons” are killing our police officers. A look at the truth shows this to be a lie. To date, there have been 127 police officers killed in the line of duty, according to the “Officer Down Memorial.”

Of those 127 officers, 58 (46%) were killed in vehicle accidents, 2 fell due to a bomb, 3 drowned, 5 through medical causes, one was killed by a tornado, one by a toxic exposure, one from a yellow jacket sting, and one when a pine tree fell on his car after the tree was struck by lightning.

Of the 55 (43%) officers killed by gunfire, 9 (7%) were killed by rifles, 33 (26%) by handguns or shotguns, and in 13 (9%) of the shootings, the type of weapon was not identified in the report, only being listed as “gun, unknown.”

Two of those killed by rifles were mistakenly shot by other police officers, three were shot by “hunting rifles,” one by an M1 Garand (which was not listed as an assault weapon by the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban), and the others were listed as simply “Rifle.” Not one mention of an “Assault weapon” as a single cause of death.

Three officers were shot with their own or another officer’s weapon that had been taken from the officer by the suspect. The only cop killed by an assault weapon was the one last weekend. That is right, as tragic as it is, this was the only case of a cop being killed with an “assault weapon” this year.

In short, more cops were killed by (take your pick) cars, bombs, water, tornados, lightning, pine trees, other cops, or yellow jackets, than were killed by “Assault Weapons.” But then, none of those causes fit the press’ leftist, antigun agenda, do they?

A hat tip to Kim, for alerting me to this article.

Several years ago, I ran across this article, and I have always taken offense by the assertions there. In it, he makes some claims that I would like to refute:

1 He claims we have cushy jobs, inpart because of our “easy” 24 on and 48 off schedule. If you add those hours up, you will find out that those hours equal a 56 hour workweek, and we don’t get overtime at 40 hours like most jobs. We work every day of the year, including holidays. Unlike most jobs, we don’t get weekends, Christmas, New Years, Easter, or any other holiday off.

He also claims that most firefighters run less than 5 calls per day. He is dead wrong, unless he is including rural, volunteer departments in that calculations. I have run as many as 26 calls in a shift before. Sure, there are slow days, but don’t we all have slow days at work? In my last two work days, I ran 3 structure fires (a total of 10 hours), one car fire, one fatal auto accident (we were there for 6 hours- assisting with the investigation), two heart attacks, one dead child (who collapsed playing basketball), one child with meningitis, 2 women experiencing a cardiac event, one diabetic emergency, one man in CHF, and 4 more medical emergencies. Plus, vehicle and equipment maintenance, and a minimum of 3 hours of training per day. Busy enough for you? Sure, we run fewer than 4 fires a day, but fires are less than 20% of our call load. EMS is getting us more and more calls every year.

2 He claims that firefighting isn’t dangerous, because the number of deaths has fallen. I can tell you this- I have had to attend the funerals of 8 firefighters that I know, killed in the line of duty. 2 in a fire, 2 struck by cars, 3 heart attacks, and one by cancer (caused by an on the job exposure). Nearly every firefighter that I know with more than 10 years on the job has been injured in the line of duty. It will happen if you work long enough. The only reason the number of deaths has fallen, is because we have worked hard to make it happen, and we are finally getting the safer building codes we have asked for. We still deal with hepatitis, HIV, and other communicable diseases every day.

3 He claims Firefighters are adrenaline junkies. I will give him that one. So what? All that means is that we like our jobs. Does that take anything away from what we do?

4 Then he goes on to complain that we have large funerals when firefighters are killed in the line of duty. “It’s just the firefighters doing their thing,” he complains. Can you believe that anyone would be so callous? I have never read or heard about a firefighter funeral that will shut a city down for a few days, it is more like a few hours. Big turnouts, pageantry and long processions are a tradition in the fire service. The funeral ceremony is not a propaganda scheme, it is a close knit community saying goodbye to one of their own.

He then continues his tirade by complaining that we as a profession are a selfish interest group.

A search of this author’s work finds him slamming realtors as well. He appears to have a hard on for firefighters. Maybe one slept with his wife, or could it be that left wing journalists hate men in male-type jobs. Not metrosexual enough for them. Everything they write is tied into the Agenda.

Have you ever seen this video? These guys really screwed up. This was a dangerous and amateurish effort on the part of these firefighters. There are numerous problems that I saw there. Lets review the worst of them.

1 The incident commander apparently failed to recognize that the building was lost. He still had crews operating inside the building during most of the film. Why expose crews to this potential collapse hazard to try and save a building that is already a goner?

2 The building had already self ventilated through the roof, and these guys are still breaking windows. Why?

3 The exposure building on side D (the right) was burning for quite awhile before anyone did anything about it. Have these guys ever heard of exposure control?

4 The ladder that was lying against the building, being exposed to direct flame, was later used as a roof access on the second building. Then the firefighters (and I use the term loosely) compound it by being on the roof without a roof ladder.

The list goes on. In the comments section for the incident, firefighters accuse critics of being “monday morning quarterbacks” and say that if we weren’t there, we cannot criticize. Ridiculous. We kill 100 firefighters a year, and it is time we stop. Lets stop making excuses, and fix this.

I saw this on Tam’s website yesterday. There is a discussion going on over there about bad cops.

Then today, from the Orlando Sentinel, comes this story. This cop was caught planning to rob a man he thought was a drug dealer. It turns out the intended victim was an undercover officer. The bad cop was a school resource officer. You know, trusted not only as a cop, but trusted to watch over our kids.

Whenever I see someone caught committing a felony, I have to wonder what they have done in the past that they HAVEN’T been caught doing. After all, I most felons don’t start as felons. Besides, odds are the criminal doesn’t get caught the first time.

Working in the fire department, I know quite a few police officers professionally. On a personal level, the street I live on is almost all cops and firemen. Heck, I went to school with a fair number of my brothers in blue.

Even with “professional courtesy” I have been shaken down twice in the last 10 years by bad cops. I have seen cops do it to others. I can only guess at how often it happens to those without a badge.

There are a lot of good cops out there. There is a minority that is bad. I cannot prove it, but I think that the number of bad cops runs at least 10%. Now that is certainly a minority, but it is enough to give citizens a bad taste for the law. All of us in public safety need to remember that the next time we want voters to approve more tax money for our departments.

To the good guys: Don’t let the dirtbags give you a black eye. Turn them in.

On this very day 6 years ago, 343 firefighters died. I have wondered how many of them entered those buildings, knowing that they would not exit. They went in anyway, in the hope that they could save some lives.

I have an envelope in my locker, as many firefighters do. Contained in that envelope is a series of letters, written to various friends and family. There are messages in there for each person. Instructions, goodbyes, all of the things we would like our family to hear or to know, should the unthinkable happen. Those letters were VERY difficult to write. When my locker gets cleaned out and the contents given to my family, those letters keep my family from feeling guilty or ashamed if they forgot to say how they felt.

I was at work myself that morning, going about my daily routine. If the time comes that I am forced to make that decision, I hope that I have the courage to make the right decision, and no matter how things turn out, that my decision is the right one.

Right for me, for my family, and for the people I have sworn to protect.

I have been working for 30 straight hours. I am on the second half of a 48 hour shift. Today, my EMT partner also happens to be one of my paramedic students. Since the class just had their midterms, I tell him that he can run the calls today, and I will only step in if he needs help.

Our first call of the morning goes rather smoothly, it is a woman complaining of vertigo. She has a history of it, and it is a pretty easy call. Our second call of the day did not go quite the same way.

It came in as a non-emergency call for a man who has not eaten in three days. When we arrive, I let my partner enter first. I hear him talking to the patient as I get the stretcher ready. As soon as I finish that task, I enter the room. The patient is cyanotic, he is tripoding, and he has one word dyspnea. He is covered in sweat. I have seen this look before, and a patient that has it never does well. My partner is busy asking about his eating habits and is oblivious to the state his patient is in.

I tell him we need to be moving to the truck. When we get there, the patient has no lung sounds at the bases, and almost no lung sounds at the apexes. He is begging us to sit him up. His SaO2 is 88%. He has COPD is normally on home oxygen, but he says he took it off so he could smoke a cigarette.

He is struggling to breathe, and I cannot believe that he will be conscious for long. I call for backup as we hook him up to the CPAP machine. My partner secures an IV, and as the backup arrives, I tell one of them to get in front and drive us to the closest hospital. The patient balks. He says that he doesn’t want to go THERE, he wants to go to another one almost 10 minutes further. I tell him that I am not going to bypass a perfectly good hospital with a patient who is about to die. He tries to argue, but not being able to breathe cuts him off from too much protesting.

When we get to the hospital 3 minutes later, he is barely responsive. I am trying to keep his airway open, as he breathes 40 times a minute. At least his SaO2 is now 99%. I tell the nurse what is going on, and she tries to tell me that because I put a COPD patient on CPAP I knocked out his respiratory drive. I gave her a stupid look. Right about the time I was warming up to my answer,the charge nurse (who was a street medic himself) saved me from the disciplinary action that was soon to follow my remarks by taking over for nurse clueless.

CPAP is indicated in the treatment of pulmonary edema, especially in the presence of COPD or CHF. In the short amount of time that EMS has contact with COPD patients, oxygen is not going to knock out the respiratory drive of the patient. This was indicated by his respiratory rate of 40.

and the next time my partner sees “the look” he won’t get tunnel vision, and he will know what is coming. That is how we learn, folks.

It appears as if I am not alone in my disdain for searches by stores.

I went to Best Buy and bought a new HDTV. I got a 50″ Plasma, a table to put it on, and a surround sound system for it. I was replacing my 6 year old rear projection HDTV. The new set looks great, but that is not the point.

The Best Buy in south Orlando is set up so that when you leave the registers, you approach the exit from a direction that is completely different from people who are exiting the store that haven’t bought anything. That is, if you are leaving the store from that direction, you had to have passed through the check out.

After leaving the check out, there is a guy that stands there and always wants to look at your receipt. Now, this isn’t just Best Buy. Most stores around here now do this, and it annoys me. It is like the store is saying “We think you are a criminal.”

So, about a year ago, I stopped doing it. When they ask for my receipt, I ignore them and just keep walking. I do not steal, and my stuff is in a bag that has your store’s name on it. You have no reason to search me, so I am not going to allow it. If they don’t like it, I don’t care. I am not breaking the law, you have no reasonable suspicion that I am, and you are not going to search me. The simple fact that I am leaving your store with merchandise does not mean that I stole it. After all, the whole point of you even having a store, is having people leave it with merchandise. I bet hundreds of people leave that store every day with merchandise.

The guard at the store, and the woman next to him, yelled at my back as I left the store. The guy telling me to stop, and the woman calling me a rude jerk. Funny thing is, no one considers it rude to accuse you of stealing and demand that you be searched.

What is wrong with this country that we think this behavior is acceptable and necessary?

On Friday, my son announced that he was ready to leave the nest. He moved out on Sunday. I am torn about this for a number of reasons.

I am glad that he is now ready to face the world. He finished his AS, he has a good job as a Firefighter/EMT, and he makes decent money for a 20 year old (he turns 20 in November) He started Paramedic school last month, and I am flattered that he is following in my footsteps. It makes me proud that he is doing so well. I know he can’t stay forever, and he must live his own life.

I am going to miss him terribly. We do so much together. We go places, we hang out, we play video games. My life and my home are going to be a little emptier without him around.

I hope he remembers to visit his old man. Next step is being a grandfather. Man, I am getting old.