Trust me, I know what its about. IF I get a fountain drink on duty, and thats a big if, I always buy other things. If I get a discount at a restaurant the waitress always gets the difference in tip.
But it is funny when command staff is complaining about free sodas while they are accepting free 10k dollar Super Bowl tickets. They even went so far as the next year’s annual training they had a video on a group of cops (I think from Florida) who became a home invasion crew and ended up murdering a home owner during a botched robbery. They then tied the free sodas to the video. Literally: Free soda -----> Armed robbery ------> Murder.
And there you go, that is why many of them offer free/discounts, to increase the frequency of the police stopping in.
Not a bad idea from their perspective, but it becomes an issue when the Mom and Pop down the road that doesn’t give out free/discounted stuff never has a unit roll through the lot or stop to check and see if there have been any problems it becomes an issue of us not doing our jobs.
You also have to remember everyone loves freaking firemen and paramedics.
Seriously - why is this? I’m probably opening myself up to some haterade, but I don’t care. Maybe someone can answer…
Parademics are barely community college grads who sleep in ambulances all night long, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a structure fire that FD responded to that wasn’t a total loss. They’re always bitching about pay and retirement, but they sit in a firehouse at least 50% of their entire shift? The rest of the time is spent washing their trucks, blocking off unecessarily large amounts of roadway for minor vehicle accidents, and taking homeless people to the hospital.
Normal exceptions go out to corpsmen and other types of warfighters…but I have too many FD and EMS friends and they annoy the shit out of me. They all drive big pickup trucks and wear FD shirts allllllll the time. Talk about how “dangerous” their job is, but half of their stories start off with “So we were staged waiting for LE to clear the scene and then…”
It’s because they don’t violate anyone’s civil liberties, they rescue cute little kittens from tree tops, they look good in tight fitting t-shirts, and they make beefcake calendars.
LE work can be dangerous if you let it or are a total sissycake.
Or it can be a laugh riot
Or it can make you the most emo, saddest bunny in the briar patch where even emo goth chicks be all “cheer up emo kid”
But yeah…FD folks stop wearing your shirts out in public. And stop buying red POVs.
Pretty much the truth. Most police don’t intentionally violate people’s civil liberties, but I honestly believe many are not effectively trained/educated to a point of totally understanding the Constitutional aspect of what we do.
Fire unions and insurance companies effectively hold cities hostage to mandated coverage that assumes we still have fires like we did in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. Bargaining units hold on to the antiquated ‘Kelly days’ concept because that is the way it has always been and allows them to have second jobs/careers. Building codes, smoke detectors, and improvements in appliances such as water heaters, furnaces and stoves, have dramatically reduced the number of structure fires, yet we still build and staff fire stations like Mother O’Leary’s cow kicked the lantern over yesterday.
Aside from good natured ribbing, and a deep seated conviction that we could do things more efficiently, firefighters do have to practice and maintain a lot of knowledge/skills which they don’t often use. When I talk to officers about active shooter situations, I always suggest that they get their forced entry training and equipment lists (understand these are patrol guys not SWAT) from the fire guys.
Having said that, Eurodriver, IMO you are a little out of line with this ‘Parademics are barely community college grads who sleep in ambulances all night long’ First they don’t sleep in the ambulances, they have a station, just like firemen. Aside from the community college thing they have this thing called state/national boards that they have to pass, in addition they have annual CEU requirements. Depending on medical protocols, paramedics in some areas can administer damn near any drug you’d find in an ER without orders. IMHO the average paramedic is a little more involved in their vocation than the average joe.
I’ve been a volunteer firefighter (plus I taught the Engineer Firefighter course for the USAR a couple times - what a cluster) and an EMT - definitely not a hose dragger by nature. The EMS stuff had to many ‘my wife has a tummy ache’ at 2:00AM for me to get excited about it as a career, I was interested in being able to apply emergency care beyond basic first aid in cases where I arrived on scene and didn’t have police business that had a higher priority.
Conceptually, except in large urban areas, I’ve always thought that the DPS concept would be a winner, you have a driver/engineer and a fire officer on duty at each station, they respond the equipment to the scene, get things going and the fire officer directs responding DPS officers in battling the blaze - if there is one. Usually, if a rescue is needed, the DPS guys could be on scene bunkered up and entering before the apparatus got there. There were actually three dedicated DPS’s in my state at one time, but they have fallen by the wayside, fire guys don’t want to be cops and cops don’t want to be fire guys. Too bad.
Financially incentivizing the LE institution is a bad thing. How did all that civil forfeiture stuff work out? Not sure how objective departments will be if they realize their officers can get them more $$ by claiming rewards. Who is going to go after the thugs without bounties on their heads??
Rewards are offered for folks doing things OUTSIDE their normal activities. LEO catch criminals so there would be nothing out of the ordinary happening.
It sounds like you hang around buffs, even firefighters laugh at them.
To answer your question about the house/building being a total loss, its because your only noticing the spectacular fires. Youre not seeing the fires contained to 1 room and its contents, youre not noticing the car fire with possible extension to homes.
Youre not noticing the ones that get stopped, because they get stopped.
To address the sleeping all night long thing…idk where you are, but here you’re guaranteed 10 ems runs a day and you cannot predict the time.
In our jurisdiction the ambulance almost always beats the fire unit to the scene, they run out of the hospital and one station on the other end of town.
Our fire guys definitely don’t sit in their station all day. I’ve also been on scene helping traffic control on several fI respect for traffic control and they do indeed save a lot of houses/structures.
Here our EMS are part of the fire department and is run by fire fighters. That does make a pretty good chance of the responding fire truck having a paramedic on board. Also around here from my experience they don’t dispatch the ambulance before the fire truck very often. Probably to many calls to do thay.
Here EMS does not have a station unless they are fire EMS. They sleep in the truck. And fire EMS is an even bigger waste of money because now you have a fire Ambulance and private ambulance going to every call. This is a county ordnance.
Add to that, that most calls (my own buddies who do this for a living have given me percentages as high as 90%) are for homeless guys wanting free rides to the hospital and old people who have “hand pain” (you must remember I live in Florida…) and the other 9.999% are mild car accidents…that results in things like my buddies being “upset” that they only make it to about one call a month that legitimately require an ambulance to transport. It just makes me wonder why they are so proud to wear the fd shirts, and why people go freaking ape shit over them.
Maybe I’m jealous. I’d like to be loved by everyone for doing nothing
It doesn’t matter how many mopes play the system. A kid getting his granpa back is worth it.
I could say “Gee…we don’t have war everyday. All soldiers do is marry fat dependants and play GI Joe all day”.
But then, I would sound like a total jackass. I would also sound like a real jackass for telling an EMT that his Hep he caught from a messy and violent patient was cool because he sat on his ass all day.
See that? It’s Maggies Drawers and they’re in your lane, Euro.
