England is the birthplace of Alice, the confused young lady who plunged down a rabbit hole and landed in an insane world where everything was illogical and backwards.  Everybody remembers the Queen of Hearts’ code of justice, “Sentence first, verdict afterwards!”

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll, the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), crafted a series of nonsensical stories for children’s amusement that have become classics in English literature of absurd actions and conclusions.  “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”  It appears that the entire nation has now converted into Wonderland as the government partakes a rapidly-expanding move into the same sort of absurdity.

This conversion has been going on for a while now, but the fire/rescue/ems universe has recently taken notice of this after the police department along with the Crown prosecuter filed criminal manslaughter charges against three Warwickshire fire officers who were in command positions at a fire that killed four firefighters in 2007 (see the Firegeezer report HERE).  Here are three dedicated fire officers doing their best at a difficult fire scene and they are facing imprisonment because somebody wants to deliver a sentence first.  The anguish that all the firefighters and officers underwent at the time isn’t enough.  The justice system wants to exert its own authority and has chosen to persecute these men in order to elevate themselves, the police and prosecuters, to the authoritarian position of unelected rulers.

This trip down the rabbit hole has just generated another attack against the country’s emergency services.  Yesterday police arrested a firefighter in Somerset and charged him with the death of a farmer who was trampled by his own cows after the sound of a passing fire engine’s siren spooked them.  The incident happened back in August and the family claims that  the animals were “distressed by the emergency lights and sounds” of the fire engine which was responding to a vehicle accident.  The 75-yr.-old farmer was herding his 100 cows from one field to another when about 70 of them turned in a panic and ran back to where they had just come from, trampling and fatally injuring the farmer.  (Reported in the Daily Mail HERE.) 

After a six-month investigation, the police arrested the 49-yr.-old firefighter on “suspicion of manslaughter by negligence,” the same pet charge used by the Warwickshire police.  It wasn’t reported if the firefighter charged was the driver or the officer of the rig.

It’s obvious now that there is a mindset in the UK justice system that firefighters who are doing their jobs should be targeted criminally when things don’t turn out as well as they had hoped.  If this practice continues, there will come a day when nobody chooses to serve in the fire brigades.  As in the U. S. and other countries, they are dependent on volunteers/paid-on-call ff’s to provide essential emergecy services.  But that’s not going to happen any more if this insane practice of criminalizing honest life-saving efforts continues.

‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ said Alice. ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the cat. ‘We’re all mad here.’

We’d better get our equipment checked out now before somebody files charges.  I need to get more coffee started.  We’ll meet back in the day room later (Members Only).

Update, Wednesday March 3:
We have an update for you today, and it just makes the prosecution’s actions even more “curiouser and curiouser” as our pal Alice used to day.

After we posted the article and linked to the story in the Daily Mail, the newspaper posted an updated version that had 4 new sentences inserted that weren’t there earlier.  They read:  ….as he and Richard moved the cows 100 yards along a country road a fire engine on its way to a 999 call approached from the opposite direction.    Richard, who was at the head of the herd, says the driver of the fire engine turned off the siren and lights as he approached.  However, after speaking to Richard he allegedly turned the siren and lights back on in an attempt to force his way through the cattle.  Harold, who was at the rear of the herd, had dismounted to try and calm the animals but he was trampled when they stampeded.

There’s no doubt that this makes it look even worse for the driver and officer of the fire engine, especially the officer.  But I’m wondering if that’s what it is designed to do?  Let’s look at a couple of things, first I would like to know why these four sentences were missing from the earlier edition.  Is the newspaper trying to stay on the police department’s good side by selectively releasing information?  Or more likely, is the prosecutor’s office only releasing some of the evidence?  Are they trying to subtly influence the jury pool?  By now, you have probably noticed that we have not been told any part of the firefighter’s side of the story.  Nothing.  We don’t even know which member of the fire brigade is being charged, let alone his version of the events.  Remember, this is six months later. 

The Devon and Somerset Fire Department has refused to comment, but somebody’s talking out there.  I am not so much concerned about the level of guilt in this case as I am about the motives of the prosecutors and police.  This growing practice of placing criminal charges against firefighters who are performing under emergency conditions is not good.