#and cops always have a tendancy to be like this sheriff and cops

[ravynfyre]

Hey, um, I was wondering if I could ask you something about firefighting?

Bc I saw on a post you're a firefighter. But if you don't want to answer that's fine!

So i've been thinking about being a firefighter. Not sure exactly, but it might be something I could do.

But I'm definitely anti-police (I'm not sure if there's a better word for that). Anyways, I don't know where you stand on the police or government or whatever, and it's not my business, but all I want to know is if you have to work a lot with the police? Like are you helping the police out at every scene you're at, or is it more incidental contact?

Sorry if this is a bad question!

My ask box is always open for any questions. And this one is a good one. A doozy, but a good one. It gives me something of a somber giggle, actually - giggle, because 1) EVERYONE knows that Firefighters and Cops hate each other! (LOL, not really, but there's usually a "friendly" rivalry) and 2) apparently my radical tendancies apparently haven't translated to tumblr as well as they have on facebook, because if they had, you wouldn't have been so worried to ask me this. Somber, because this is a very good, and somewhat serious, question.

First, let me preface this entire explanation with a couple of things. My father, when I was a young child, was a sheriff's deputy. I grew up in a LEO (law enforcement officer) household. That was a lot of what inspired me to want to get into emergency services. It was another event in second grade that decided me for the big red trucks, rather than the gun-toting thugs. (and here is where you should start seeing my... radical nature). Also, I have many friends from both my youth, and my adult years, who are police officers or other law enforcement officers now, and I love them deeply.

HOWEVER COMMA!

Putting the rest of this under a cut because it is likely to get long, and... potentially unpleasant.

So, this takes some explaining and personal info. Apologies for the TL;DR. For many, MANY years, I was extremely pro LEO. I was VERY pro cop. I was thin blue line and all that bullshit. My dad was a LEO, my friends are LEOs, I worked with LEOs a LOT, not only as a firefighter, but also especially as a search and rescue K9 handler and trainer. I assited (and still do) on a lot of human remains searches, and many, *many* of those are of "suspicious natures", which means that we will be working at the behest of, and closely with, law enforcement agencies on those searches. Cops are our friends, right? I mean, if you didn't do anything wrong, you shouldn't have anything to worry about, right?

RIGHT?!

Yeeeaaahhh. So.

About a decade ago, I was injured severely while on duty as a firefighter. I had been a firefighter since 1999, so I had been around the block a few times. I had also become deeply entrenched in the... the... the *mindset* of the emergency services world. I thought I was a pretty forgiving, intelligent, compassionate person. But after the doctors spent almost 2 years trying to put me back together again, and then the city came back and said that, unless they could guarantee that I would "get better enought to come back to work", that they were just not going to pay for any more treatment or testing... I had to face facts and take a disability retirement.

Now, quite suddenly, I was one of those "gubmint freeloaders" the guys at the firehouse liked to bitch about.

As a whole, firefighting, as a *union profession*, tends to be Democratic leaning. However, depending on what part of the country you are in, and just how much of your department is made of former military guys... can REALLY skew a department to the much more conservative side. And as a woman, I felt pretty pressured to conform in some ways, because it wold be that much less friction I would have to deal with for a full third of my life. (My department has a 24 hours on/48 hours off schedule)

I live in a pretty conservative area of the country, and at least 1/3rd of my old department are former military. It also really didn't help that, while our town was very conservative, the largest city in the state, and the city that gets the lion's share of tax revenue support, is very, very liberal. So there's a lot of very intense polarization. All of this is to say that my department was pretty conservative, and I learned to be conservative to help me survive in a pretty hostile environment.

Until I left, that is. And then, having become someone who lived with chronic pain that could not be treated, learning to live like a lot of my former patients did, and learning just how shitty the world is to anyone who isn't healthy, hale, whole, and "normal"... really opened my eyes.

And then shit like Philando Castile happened. Breonna Taylor. Oh, there's plenty more where they came from, and quite a few that happened way earlier than they did, but those are the names that stick in my head the easiest, because there's so fucking many people who have been killed by cops that it's impossible to remember them all.

What the fuck does that say about our nation, huh?

I stated to actually think about the many times I had to interact with cops on scenes over the decade+ of my career... started to objectively re-ealuate MY behavior during my incredibly short 1.5 years as a full time security guardshortly after I left the fire service. Started to think critically about "law enforcement" in the US as a whole...

"Law enforcement" in this country is deeply, DEEPLY flawed. Go ahead and @ me if you want (not you, anon... but the folks out there who are going to read this and approach this from the same place *I* was only 10 years ago) but fuck off and give it a REAL HARD THINK: why do cops need military equipment to use on civilians? What the fuck reason should cops be getting surplus APCs for? And if they can't use them responsibly, then why the fuck are we giving them "non-lethal weapons" that they have been intentionally trained to use in a LETHAL MANNER?

I love my friends who are cops. But I *hate* that they are cops. Because I firmly believe that if you have 1 bad cop in a department of 100 good cops, then you have 101 bad cops. Because if you participate and support a system that not only does not stop and prevent malfeasance, but actually seems to condone, support, and encourage it? Then you are as to blame for the bad actors as the bad actors are, themselves, even if you keep your conduct on the up and up at all times.

However, the biggest problem with these systems in this nation is that... those who are in law enforcement who notice the bad actors, and attempt to do something about them, are actively driven out by everyone else for "not backing their brothers". So it isn't quite as simple as saying that all cops are bastards... even if they basically are. It's HARD, if not down right DEADLY, to be a radical in quasi-military organization... and, apparently, thinking that everyone deserves their day in court, and that people shouldn't just be murdered because they were "too much trouble", is a radical idea in our nation's law enforcement community.

So. All of that to say that, yeah, I grok where you are coming from. Now, on to actually answer your question.

Whether or not you interact with LEOs a lot really depends on 1) the type of department you work on, 2) the size of the city/county/district you work in, and 3) the specific protocols of your department and the LE departments near you.

I worked in a small city - only 100k people - and 70% of our calls were medical in nature. MOST of our medical calls did NOT require a LEO - we don't need a cop underfoot when we're working a heart attack or a fell-off-a-ladder type call. BUT, any car wreck? Any suspicious injury? Any report of death? Yeah, we're going to have a cop nearby. If there is any possibility of a serious crime having been committed, then it's the LEO's scene and they "allow" us to work it. That being said, if there's a risk of life safety for the patient, WE would "allow" the cop to work our scene, in practice. Except for, you know, things where the bad guy is still on scene. Then the cops always go first. That's protocol, and quite frankly, if anyone is going to catch a stray bullet, I don't want it to be my crew. LEO's got a vest. Let them be the blue canary.

In a smaller department, in a city with fewer cops (their budget was always literally TEN TIMES what Fire's was, despite us having twice the number of folks and twelve fucking stations, compared to their ONE), in a volunteer department, or one that runs mostly country type calls, you would likely run with LEOs a LOT less. But assume that any criminal call and any car wreck will have a cop involved. That being said, typically, it will be fire fire company officer - captain or lieutenant, meaning - that will actually interact with the cop(s) on scene, rather than the rank and file firefighters.

THAT being said, however... if you plan on going into firefighting as a full time career... Keep your radical ideas under your hat. ESPECIALLY for the first five years. Unless your crew is extremely liberal, just keep your mouth shut about jackbooted thugs and "excessive force"... because emergency services is *dangerous*, and someone doesn't have to be actively gunning for you, for you to get very badly hurt on the job. As for dealing with interacting with LEOs while on duty... like I said, it's usually going to be the company officer, and if you DO need to deal with one, just be calm, courteous, and succinct. You don't have to like someone to do your job.

Especially for a firefighter. Because we can't just decide NOT to use or skills on a patient because the individual happened to murder their spouse before they tried to kill themself. We can't decide NOT to cut the drunk driver that just killed a whole family out of their car. We can't NOT rescue the arsonist from their own fire because they miscalculated.

Long story short... LEOs will be around if you're working as a firefighter. But not in your pocket. Don't let dealing with LEOs be the thing that decides you against becomming a firefighter. They shouldn't get to win that fight. But don't go running around burning all their thin blue line flags, either. If you doubt your own ability to maintain a professional work demeanor around a LEO, just because they are a LEO, then, yeah, working in emergency services is not for you. Because the cops won't be the only unpleasant people you will have to work with. A LEO could be the only thing standing between you and a psycho using a 357 magnum as a chili spoon. (in nothing but his stained tidy whiteys, at that. Yeah, shit can get reeeaaal wild sometimes).

Most importantly, though... don't let your career harden your heart - no matter WHAT you go into.