The Truth About “Public Safety”, Part 10: Oil and Water

by James O. Page, publisher and editor of JEMS (Journal of Emergency Medical Services) - from JEMS magazine, February 1993

If there were a hall of fame for city and town managers, the most prominent occupants would be those who had succeeded in merging fire and police departments into “public safety” agencies. The general idea behind these agencies is to operate fire apparatus with one or two people and have police officers meet them at the scenes of fires. The police officers are then expected to don protective gear and join in the battle.

In the 1960s, after the idea of merging public safety agencies was implemented in some California and Illinois communities, the top city administrators in those places were highly exalted at annual conventions of their colleagues. From then on, they would be best known as people who had succeeded in creating public safety departments.

Back in those days, public safety departments probably made some sense. In most places, paid “firemen” didn’t really have much to do; it was mostly a matter of waiting for fires to happen, with some training and maintenance work thrown in. Most city and town managers viewed the fire department as a dysfunctional sponge, spawning all kinds of problems while soaking up a large percentage of the city or town budget.

When the fire and police agencies were consolidated as a public safety agency, the police chief almost inevitably became the boss of both organizations. And the oil-and-water differences between cops and firefighters soon became evident.

In some places, paid firefighters were cross-trained, issued firearms and assigned to spend part of their time on police patrol duties. (Several have told me they’d much rather have entered a burning building than approach an armed felon.) And in most places, police officers received training in fire suppression. But despite that training, an uncommon number of “public safety officers” seemed to opt for directing traffic a safe distance from the fire.

Enter EMS. In less than a decade, the fire service was transformed. No longer a resting-up place between moonlighting jobs, first response and rescue-ambulance calls surpassed other fire and emergency events by a factor of three or more in most locales. (IMFD.org note: We tried to get the city to allow us to provide rescue and medical first response service - for free. The city refused - as recently as 2004 [remember 2004?]). So, for city managers who were intent on consolidating fire and police agencies, EMS complicated things.

Nonetheless, we all yearn for fame and the admiration of our professional colleagues. And in the pursuit, some local officials have continued to press for the consolidation of fire and police (and now EMS) into one “public safety” agency.

One recent example is a resort community with a population that ranges from 3,000 to nearly 100,000 depending on the season. The first step for this community was to take the town’s ambulance out of service and contract a private company 15 miles away for service. Police officers were then trained as ALS first responders, and their car trunks were stocked with the necessary equipment.

After three years, predictable effects have appeared. For example, let’s say that while in the middle of a suspected drunk deriver’s sobriety test, a police officer gets a call for a person having difficulty breathing. Does he let the drunk driver go (and risk liability if the driver kills or injures someone down the road), or does he delay the response to the difficulty breathing call?

On at least one occasion in this community, oxygen was needed by a patient in respiratory distress. The public safety officer waded through the various pieces of equipment in the trunk of his car until he found the oxygen equipment at the bottom. When he turned it on, the bottle was empty. In another case, the shifting of heavy equipment in a patrol car’s trunk caused a defibrillator/monitor’s screen to break.

Let’s face it. Crime and disregard for the law have reached epidemic proportions throughout North America. Police officers have too much to do already without the surgical alterations of governmental Frankensteins.

First response is an essential part of the chain of survival. In fact, in most life-threatening situations, the most critical intervention is prompt and effective first response. It shouldn’t be compromised by outdated concepts that would try to merge dissimilar functions of local government.