Good Samaritan Backfire • Hacker News Board

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#131

Post by bronson » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 8:56 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #125

pdonis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your expectations of what would happen (which align with my own) have no bearing on what is right or wrong. I wasn't talking about expectations about what would actually happen. I was talking about your claims about what was right or wrong, with which I disagree. See below. "pandering to the ego of a bystander" (is that what they're calling politeness these days)? In the particular context under discussion (a cop who…

> Just saying "Move" to the bystander if he wants him out of the way is not impoliteness; it's prudence in a situation that, to the cop, is not yet under control. > [reordered to address two points at once] An accident scene is not a non-urgent situation. There is a conceivable circumstance under which taking a second to explain/pander would be the less prudent road: the bystander is interfering so egregiously with t…

> ... [if] the bystander is interfering so egregiously with the EMTs that the extra second poses a plausible risk to the patient

Dude, you need to take a CPR class or something. Emergency response is HARD. If you're the EMT, you don't know if the patient has a ruptured soft organ, low blood pressure, or clotting problems, ICP, arrhythmia, etc etc etc. In five seconds they can go from lucid to passed out and then what seemed like a routine stop gets deadly serious and you're in trouble.

You need to work fast but you need to work ultra smart. One missed sign or wrong move could ruin a patient's life.

The whole time you're working you're trying to keep tons small bits of information in your head (ask about allergies, ask about illness, ask about prescriptions, ask about family history, any Battle's sign, how was cap reflow? Any heart problems? is the patient losing orientation? more neck soreness, did I miss a C-spine hairline? I need to move her shoulders but it might cripple her. if I could just get some friggin ROOM here. Can I ignore the bruise on the thigh? Did I hear wheezing? ... etc ).

Now do this when you have drunk people milling about, talking back to the police right over you.

My point, because you don't seem to get it: every accident scene is an urgent situation until the patient has been transported. Every interference is egregious. Every. last. one.

You seem to think that cops and EMTs have superhuman abilities to diagnose patients, psychoanalyze bystanders, and predict the future, all while while chatting amiably and stroking egos. It's bizarre.

(I did ski patrol for a few years so I got a taste of what EMTs do every day. I am in awe.)

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#132

Post by bronson » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 9:12 PM UTC

glenra wrote: post #103

pdonis wrote: post #79

There is some bad advice at the end of this: recommending Lyft as an alternative to calling 911. First of all, Lyft doesn't exist in most places; not everybody lives in San Francisco. Second, moving people who have had an accident without proper medical knowledge and procedures and equipment can often make their condition worse. The author does say there are exceptions to his "don't call 911" rule, but he says "they…

Clearly in this case for him calling 911 was a mistake, because it made him more likely to be mildly beaten up, arrested, and thrown in jail. The outcome of this particular situation revealed that calling 911 has a bigger potential downside than he had previously fully considered; it's a public service to share that information. Calling lyft, uber, or any other cab-type service probably would have worked fine in this…

No. Trying to use his "How to Make Friends and Influence People" social engineering talents on the cops was his mistake. Calling them was the right thing to do.

EMTs often need cops in urban situations because douchenozzle bystanders (not just this guy) want to get involved in the situation. It's bizarre.

I really hope that, if anyone is ever injured in your presence, especially if they lose consciousness AT ALL, you'll call 911 and not Lyft. WTF.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#133

Post by pdonis » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 10:52 PM UTC

bronson wrote: post #131

jjoonathan wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just saying "Move" to the bystander if he wants him out of the way is not impoliteness; it's prudence in a situation that, to the cop, is not yet under control. > [reordered to address two points at once] An accident scene is not a non-urgent situation. There is a conceivable circumstance under which taking a second to explain/pander would be the less prudent road: the bystander is interfering so egregiously with t…

> ... [if] the bystander is interfering so egregiously with the EMTs that the extra second poses a plausible risk to the patient Dude, you need to take a CPR class or something. Emergency response is HARD. If you're the EMT, you don't know if the patient has a ruptured soft organ, low blood pressure, or clotting problems, ICP, arrhythmia, etc etc etc. In five seconds they can go from lucid to passed out and then what…

I need to move her shoulders but it might cripple her.

This brings up another point that struck me about the situation as described in the article. The author's friend was "supporting the back" of the injured woman: why? Why not just let her lie still, with something soft under her head, and something else under her feet to keep them elevated, until the EMTs got there? The fact that one bystander was holding the woman up might in itself have struck the cops (and the firemen) as unusual, not to mention a possible cause of damage to the patient.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#134

Post by jjoonathan » Tue, Apr 01, 2014, 2:03 AM UTC

nemo wrote: post #126

jjoonathan wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how about we call it "oversensitized" or "embrittled" instead of "hardened"? They are far more fitting terms for what you just described. Not only is the "Colonel Jessup hypothesis" total baloney (note how the deputy at the end saw what happened as the mark of a rookie), but accepting it glorifies moral failure and belittles the efforts of officers who have managed to develop a thick hide along with the integrit…

"Hardened" was the first term that jumped to mind, though the more I thought about this, and after reading the police report, the more I understand the police's motives and generally agree with their response (it might be they were too harsh physically, but they had good reason to be physical, and the guy fully deserved to be arrested). While I feel bad for the guy for getting himself into trouble, we had a situation…

> and after reading the police report, the more I understand the police's motives and generally agree with their response

Wow. Are you and I reading the same report? I'm able to understand the police's motives, but that's the problem. It was reasonable for them to clear bystanders away from the EMTs, but it was unreasonable for them to resort to physical force so quickly after encountering hesitation that a) posed no threat to the EMTs and b) could have been easily addressed without violence. I don't think police SOP should be "1) make demand, 2) attack civilian that hesitates due to objections with demand." Some situations allow time for rational conversation, this was one of them, and the police rejected that possibility (which had a lower likelihood of resulting in bodies flying into the EMT's workspace) in favor of using force.

Sgt. Espinoza used Woosley's passive insistence on getting his phone back, which explicitly did not interfere with the wellbeing of the patient or the actions of the EMTs, as a justification for employing violent compliance techniques. If Sgt E doubted W's ability to get his phone back without interfering (not unreasonable), he should have volunteered to do it on W's behalf rather than violently subduing him for what to me looks like entirely reasonable hesitation (reasonable in the moral sense, not in the maximize-probability-of-avoiding-arrest sense).

Partensky's case is more difficult to assess without a video recording. It's conceivable that P's hesitation justified violent escalation (as opposed to a more rational but slower approach with higher P(success)) but I doubt it.

> This is more a case of a drunk fool getting himself in trouble by acting like an entitled clown and not complying with the officers' requests to give the first responders space to work.

It took two to tangle, and I believe the police were unambiguously in the wrong, whatever you think of W and P.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#135

Post by tibiapejagala » Tue, Apr 01, 2014, 9:31 AM UTC

diminoten wrote: post #19

> She turned to me and abruptly said that I was not needed as a witness and should leave immediately. "I then walked home." should have been the next line, and I'm fairly sure the author knows it. That doesn't excuse what the officers did, but it's not "being a good Samaritan" that backfired. Being nosy is the part that didn't end well. I'm not even sure the use of force wasn't justified - even in this immensely bias…

Yeah, she was asking for it.

Oh, sorry, this isn't victim-blaming.net? My mistake.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#136

Post by cpach » Tue, Apr 01, 2014, 6:23 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #130

cpach wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're hinting at. Do you have any specific articles/books to recommend on this subject?

I liked Moskos "Cop In The Hood", as a quick easy read; a lot of the rest of what I've read are cop blog posts or policy papers. Two good example of problematic management techniques: * All-car patrols, where police officers are either locked into their squad cars or, if out of the car and not eating lunch, in some kind of scuffle, so that their only contact with the locals is bad. * Triage coverage, where units from…

Interesting! Apparently I don’t read enough police blogs :) I’ve put the book on my ”to read” list.

Re: Good Samaritan Backfire

#137

Post by nemo » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 2:29 AM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #134

nemo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hardened" was the first term that jumped to mind, though the more I thought about this, and after reading the police report, the more I understand the police's motives and generally agree with their response (it might be they were too harsh physically, but they had good reason to be physical, and the guy fully deserved to be arrested). While I feel bad for the guy for getting himself into trouble, we had a situation…

> and after reading the police report, the more I understand the police's motives and generally agree with their response Wow. Are you and I reading the same report? I'm able to understand the police's motives, but that's the problem. It was reasonable for them to clear bystanders away from the EMTs, but it was unreasonable for them to resort to physical force so quickly after encountering hesitation that a) posed no…

Woosley's behavior wasn't solely passive resistance according to the report. He was resistant until the cops tried to move him (reasonably), at which point he flipped. The cops put the drunk guy freaking out in an arm lock at that point. Could they have handled things more ideally? Probably, but they didn't do anything particularly wrong given what they were dealing with.

Parentsky was a drunk guy insisting he was a medic and pushing his way past the cops. He was told by the police and EMTs to get clear of the scene. The guy was buzzed and acting like a complete fool, trying to push his way through the cops when they blocked him. There was a scuffle, one of the cops got a minor injury from the scuffle, and Parentsky was cuffed. Then when he was in jail he acted like a drunk fool and started screaming.

If they were sober I'd probably look at it differently, but having dealt with enough drunk idiots, I recognize that they don't generally respond to reasoning. The cops were dealing with a couple drunk guys interfering with the EMTs doing their job. I think they handled the situation as best as they could given what they were dealing with.

Parentsky's bizarre self-justification sounds like a stringing of excuses and railing over narcissistic injury.