This morning, as I watched emergency personnel try to keep an apparent heart attack victim alive, several societal issues presented themselves in miniature.

To backtrack: as I exited a coffee place this morning I saw people gathering around an old Accord (?) stopped in the right lane of Manhattan Avenue in downtown Hermosa Beach, with two police cars pulling up behind it. My kids magnetically gravitated toward the crowd, and it took several minutes to extricate them. While there, I was told later that the car had simply come to a stop with the driver, an older man, in some trouble. The police cars suddenly left — turns out that at that exact moment one of their colleagues was being threatened by a dog.* I could not tell what state the driver was in at that point, but some passersby soon pulled him from the car and laid him on the sidewalk. One, reportedly a doctor, began administering CPR. Lifeguards from the nearby headquarters responded within several minutes and took over, then paramedics and a fire truck arrived. When they loaded the victim into an ambulance ten minutes later, he was breathing on his own.

Here’s what discouraging about the scene:

Police tribalism: the two police officers first at the scene appear to me to have left a man in medical distress to aid a colleague. Not to minimize the threat of a dog attack, but it seems like one should have stayed with the victim. A bystander was administering CPR to him within a minute of the cops’ departure.

Fear of Litigation: One woman next to us volunteered that while she knew CPR, she wouldn’t use it on a stranger, due to her fear of lawsuits.

Public obnoxiousness: Another onlooker, standing about fifteen feet from the six or so emergency personnel working on the victim, took the opportunity to declaim about police and fire overstaffing … loudly. “They sit around all day with nothing to do,” he declared, and “fifteen years ago they just would have sent an ambulance for this guy.” He may be right — stats show that due to progress in sprinklering and smoke alarms there are fewer and fewer structure fires each year, but my guess is fire department staffing has not changed at all — but bloviating about the topic within earshot of people trying to save another human’s life is not the time to make the case. In an earlier time I think this jerk would have known to hold his tongue. Now he just rants.

Bureaucracy in action: At least one person said that when they dialed 911 from their cell phone, they got a “please wait” recording. Not reassuring.

In short, the only good thing seems to be that the victim lived — with the help, it seems, of a doctor who wasn’t afraid of lawsuits and ‘lazy’ lifeguards and paramedics. The rest of this little Sunday morning incident was depressing.

—
* owned by a guy in a wheelchair who we had seen walking the largish dog while we parked our car. Apparently the dog pooped on the Strand — the beachside sidewalk — and the weelchair-bound owner refused a police officer’s request that he clean it up. Our eyewitness did not tell the story well, but it apparently involved the dog threatening the officer. At some point the dog’s owner was sprawled helplessly on the ground. It’s unclear whether that happened before or after the dog lunged at the cop.

I’ve asked the local paper to look into why both police officers who were first at the scene left to help their fellow officer with the dog.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 21st, 2005 at 10:16 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Off Topic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.