Defunding the Police -- EMS
Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2020 1:57 am
Today, in case of a medical emergency, we take for granted that dialing 911 will result in the arrival of trained paramedics who administer emergency medicine in our homes, on our streets, and during transport to the hospital. Before there were paramedics, transporting accident victims to hospitals was often performed by local police. The injured were placed in the back of police cars or in paddy wagons, the officers climbed into the front seat, and off they went to the local hospital. With the rise of automobile use in the U.S. came a rise in automobile accidents, which became recognized in the '60s as a national crisis.
The first EMS system in the U.S. was organized by Freedom House, an organization of black men and women in Pittsburgh. Freedom House was created to serve the residents of a black, impoverished area of Pittsburgh called "the hill." Relations between the police force and residents of the hill were acrimonious, and residents could not rely on the police to transport injured persons from the hill to hospitals. So Freedom House organized its own ambulance corps, providing not only transportation for the sick and injured, but trained its members in CPR and other medical techniques so that victims could receive medical care enroute to the hospital. Instead of victims rattling around alone in the back of a paddy wagon, one of the "paramedics" rode with the victim, administering medical care. Freedom House came to deliver cutting edge emergency medicine, and its program was exported to other cities.
Early on, the police department appeared to view this as an affront and encroachment on their territory. But it became obvious very quickly that the Freedom House ambulances were saving lives in a way that the police department could not. Today, it would seem strange to police putting accident victims in the back of a paddy wagon for transport or having only police respond to a 911 call about a medical emergency.
This was an early example of what "defunding the police" means. It took a task that society had placed on police officers and shifted it to paramedics who were in a position to reduce deaths in a way that the police could not. And that's what it still means today. Society has dumped a bunch of unpleasant tasks onto police departments because it was easy to do so. And so we have the same people who are trained to take out hard core criminals in a firefight assigned to deal with family conflicts, mental health issues, and unruly first graders. Meanwhile, we imprison a larger percentage of our population than almost every (might even be every right now) country in the world.
Defunding the police means investing less in tanks and riot weapons for police departments and investing more in alternative ways addressing some of these problems other than sending in armed men and women trained to kill at the first sign of possible threat. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you have a gun, everything looks like a target.
The Freedom House ambulances were taken over by the city under a mayor that was not exactly friendly to black residents. Most of black paramedics were either not offered jobs or were laid off in favor of young white men from the suburbs. You can read a short article about the Freedom House paramedics here. https://www.emsworld.com/article/122257 ... edom-house And my favorite podcast, 99% invisible, did an excellent story on them you can listen to here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ ... e-service/
The first EMS system in the U.S. was organized by Freedom House, an organization of black men and women in Pittsburgh. Freedom House was created to serve the residents of a black, impoverished area of Pittsburgh called "the hill." Relations between the police force and residents of the hill were acrimonious, and residents could not rely on the police to transport injured persons from the hill to hospitals. So Freedom House organized its own ambulance corps, providing not only transportation for the sick and injured, but trained its members in CPR and other medical techniques so that victims could receive medical care enroute to the hospital. Instead of victims rattling around alone in the back of a paddy wagon, one of the "paramedics" rode with the victim, administering medical care. Freedom House came to deliver cutting edge emergency medicine, and its program was exported to other cities.
Early on, the police department appeared to view this as an affront and encroachment on their territory. But it became obvious very quickly that the Freedom House ambulances were saving lives in a way that the police department could not. Today, it would seem strange to police putting accident victims in the back of a paddy wagon for transport or having only police respond to a 911 call about a medical emergency.
This was an early example of what "defunding the police" means. It took a task that society had placed on police officers and shifted it to paramedics who were in a position to reduce deaths in a way that the police could not. And that's what it still means today. Society has dumped a bunch of unpleasant tasks onto police departments because it was easy to do so. And so we have the same people who are trained to take out hard core criminals in a firefight assigned to deal with family conflicts, mental health issues, and unruly first graders. Meanwhile, we imprison a larger percentage of our population than almost every (might even be every right now) country in the world.
Defunding the police means investing less in tanks and riot weapons for police departments and investing more in alternative ways addressing some of these problems other than sending in armed men and women trained to kill at the first sign of possible threat. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you have a gun, everything looks like a target.
The Freedom House ambulances were taken over by the city under a mayor that was not exactly friendly to black residents. Most of black paramedics were either not offered jobs or were laid off in favor of young white men from the suburbs. You can read a short article about the Freedom House paramedics here. https://www.emsworld.com/article/122257 ... edom-house And my favorite podcast, 99% invisible, did an excellent story on them you can listen to here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ ... e-service/