I love this job!!

[becksdad]

James - Excellent post! I'm glad you stuck around. This post clarifies a lot of things. I do apologize if any of my posts offended, or were bad form. I think sometimes we get carried away.

With the new information, that whole seizure deal makes a lot more sense. I can certainly envision this happening. And just so you know, this thread has ultimately given me pause to think about a few things. One of the things that occured to me is that in one of my posts, I said something like "if the information you are getting doesn't fit, its probably not accurate". I should have added "or you're not getting the whole picture". We didn't have the whole picture, and most of us didn't ask, and that was wrong. I respect how you ultimately handled this situation, and the fact that you didn't let this drive you away.

We also once had a scene that LE declared secure, and when we walked up to the door of this residence, we walked into a hostage situation! I'll save the details of that situation for another time, but I can certainly envision that happening to you guys also. I'm glad you stuck around James.

[becksdad]

Hey James, I just caught the fact that you wanted to hear of any situations similar to yours about scene safety. I alluded to it in my previous post, but had to go.

Anyway, we were dispatched to an assault in progress - adult beating a child with a cane in the hallway of an apartment building. Well, we beat LE to the scene, so we staged a few blocks away and waited for their response. LE arrived moments after we did, went in, and within a few minutes dispatch informed us that LE declared the scene secure. So up we go, pulling in front of the police vehicles. We get our stretcher and bags out of the truck, go up to the building. We can see the Sheriff's Deputies standing in the ground floor hallway. Something doesn't seem quite right, we thought they would be inside the residence. There were 3 cop cars, and 3 Deputies outside - so nobody was inside.

As we get close to the apartment, we see Deputies knocking on the door REALLY freaking hard, and shouting through the door trying to get a response. A neighbor came out and informed everyone that there were 3 children inside, the father was a nutcase who regularly threatened the children with harm, including death. At this point, we asked one of the deputies to accompany us around the corner, and pretty much lambasted him about declaring a secure scene. They had no answer to that, we informed them we were leaving to stage in a safe area again. We did just that, a few blocks away again, in a position that would have no chance of being exposed to gunfire if it came to that.

When the scene was AGAIN declared secure, about an hour later, we did see a guy cuffed, laying face down on the ground. During the hour we waited, of course, quite a few more LEO's responded. We found out that the nutcase had barracaded himself and his kids inside the apartment, threatening to kill the kids and /or himself if anybody came in. I don't know the whole sequence of events, but LE ended up busting through the door, and dragged the guy out. The kids eneded up being uninjured except for some minor abrasions and bruises. The apartment was a disgusting mess, there was barely any food in the place. There were even human feces on the floor in a few spots. The kids obviously were placed with DCF (Dept./ Children and Families) that night.

I guess the moral to the story is whenever a scene is dangerous, don't go in, if it becomes dangerous after you arrive, get the heck out. I take our efforts at patient care very seriously, I try to be the best I can be, and I try to be a strong advocate for my patients. But you know, there is NOTHING more important than my safety and my partners safety. The patient will usually still be there when you do get in. And we help no one if we end up becoming patients ourselves.