Working the sixteen hours of clinical in an ambulance to get my EMT license brought back so many police memories, and with them I experienced the great contrast between the two roles. What follows is an examination of that contrast...
In policework, once you check out a car, you're gone- no one wants to see you back at the station unless you have an arrest or just need to use the head. As an EMT , you head back to the barn after every call, sit on a couch and watch TV, play on your laptop- no one cares. If you did that as a cop, you'd be written up for dereliction of duty and not 'covering your beat'.
In policework, if things get slow, you make your own activity; you pull over a junkie loser with an expired sticker or a leadfoot who just blew the red light; like as not he has warrants, you get to toss his car and take him to jail.
In the EMT world, you can't exactly bust out on Main Street and whack some guy up the side of the head to get a little action. Back at the break room you wait- sometimes for hours- being forced to endure puerile movies like Talledega Nights accompanied by the banter of twenty-something guys in all its fascinating glory. Conversation runs the gamut from what's in the refrigerator ( Susie made me pork chops today) to the new Blue Ray player and all its features, to the bonehead move some co-worker made last shift, to that FNG medic that no one will ride with because he wants to push drugs on every call.
In the cop world, no one gets in your space. You have a zone of impenetrability that extends around you like a cone, with an extra foot of leeway around the hip your gun is on. As an EMT, people's bodily fluids are your business, and you're rubbing assess and elbows with your partner as you clamber about the small space remaining in the back of the ambulance once the loaded stretcher is on, trying to reach the hospital radio, EKG mounted on the wall, blood pressure cuff, etc. Often you're enroute to the hospital while all this is going on, so you don't even have stability, lurching all over.
As an EMT, calls are brief. You may be asking people the most personal questions about their drug habits, what they've consumed or how many times they've puked in the last few hours - but it will be over very soon. Once you’re transporting to the hospital, there’s a limited exposure of about ten more minutes with the patient. You arrive, tuck them into a room, give the nurse your report, and boom you're done.
As a cop, once a call starts it tends to stretch out. Even a simple burglary report can require an hour and half, what with crime scene, inventory, photos, etc. and the report. If you’re transporting someone, that's an arrest, and when you reach the station the fun is just beginning. Now you have to empty the guy's pockets, take away shoes, belt, jewelry, inventory any money and separately inventory all property and clothing. Then you have to bang out an arrest report and perhaps finish a tow slip. Start to finish this takes at least two hours, especially if you need to wait for a tow for his car. Meanwhile the dispatcher is asking you to clear before your report is done- and often you must- so at the end of the night you may end up with seven half-done reports to finish. After a busy night, the briefing room is quiet as eight or more officers from the previous shift are banging out their reports so they can go home.
As a cop, it's practically your job to be gruff with people. All the hoopla about community policing aside, if you act to nice to people they're gonna walk all over you. You can be taciturn, rude, noncommittal, act like you don't even care- and its all seen as part of the persona and no one minds. You can make sick jokes and be extremely sarcastic, and still come across as a dedicated veteran officer.
From the EMT, people are expecting a bit of sympathy and hand holding. So what if they call the ambulance every week when they get drunk and can't walk home - they want to be mollycoddled just as much as the stroke victim or the multiple motor vehicle accident patient.
Something both roles have in common is a tendency to second guess people.
"Can you believe this guy called 911 for a transport and all he has is a headache? Why didn't he just ask his girlfriend to take him? Then again, he's frequent flier, you see all the calls to this address? Waste of the taxpayer's money.And of course he doesn't have any insurance."
"This guy has a record for B&E, assault, and dope, plus multiple motor vehicle infractions. He's going down."
I liked this a lot. Very well written, but what am I thinking . . . that is the norm. I sense that you might sometimes want to jump right back into that cop suit and haul some of those creeps off to the slammer. I'm glad you aren't doing that anymore. I prefer the kinder, gentler you that is now.
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