SUDDENLY, AMBULANCE DRIVERS ARE BEING HELD TO DIFFERENT STANDARDS of driving conduct.
In Oklahoma a Creek Nation ambulance was carrying a patient to the hospital when the Highway Patrol pulled it over. It seems that the policeman had become infuriated because the ambulance hadn’t pulled over to let the police car by that was responding to a call.
The patient’s son was also there and he began video recording the incident including the part where the patrolman got into a physical scuffle with the paramedic – while the patient was in the ambulance.
STATter911 has the full story including the video of the altercation HERE.
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MEANWHILE, THE CITY OF OTTAWA, ONTARIO, is proving to be an “equal opportunity ticket-writer” issuing $11,000 in red-light camera fines against ambulances, fire trucks and police cars. And the agencies paid them.
The Ottawa Citizen is reporting:
Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act exempts emergency vehicles with lights and sirens activated from having to wait at red lights provided they come to a full stop first and proceed only when it is safe to do so.
But more than 60 times since last year, police cars, fire trucks and ambulances speeding to calls have been dinged for not coming to full stops at the 10 red-light cameras rotated around 19 city intersections. The resulting $11,000 in traffic tickets was recouped from the three services’ operating budgets.
One of those $180 tickets, to the Ottawa Paramedic Service, was based on a photo showing a police escort blocking the intersection and waving the 5,500-kilogram ambulance through the red light.
The Ottawa Police Officers Association is mounting a public campaign to fight the numbed bureaucracy that is causing this spectacle.
Read the entire article HERE.
