Negligence, Incompetence, Abuse

Many times personnel from fire departments, police departments, EMS, and other law enforcement agencies develop a "I can do no wrong" persona. This of course not reality. These are employees of an agency charged with public protection or intervention and are held to documentable standards of performance and conduct. As such there is agency liability for the conduct and actions of these personnel as well as individual liability.

Finding the Negligence

Usually the findings of incompetence have been documented somewhere before within the fire or police agency. Even though some departments purposely limit discipline reports or documentation because of liability litigation there is many times a trail to be found. It might be in locations that require in-depth examination of the personnel involved or equipment records.

Ambulance accident resulting in the death of the patient.
Poorly maintained tires suspected.

Finding the Evidence

The agency itself (police, fire, etc.) will sometimes assume that it's errors will not be discovered. After all, it is very difficult unless you have a comprehensive record or knowledge of everything that happened. Not only must you know what to look for but what to request or supeona from the public agency records.

Another example of this is understanding the 911 radio language used in the profession which can make transcripts of emergency radio traffic recordings difficult (don't rely solely on agency supplied transcripts - get the tapes).

A sharp and experienced insurance company investigstor or adjuster may notice errors or discrepancies. Sometimes not. Even so, there are companies that would rather pay the claim that litigate with a governement agency if the loss is not immense.

This is possibly not acceptable to the person(s) harmed by the incident if they knew that their losses were preventable if the emergency agency would have performed to expectations or even minimum standards.

Example Cases

Consider the fire chief that was promoted right from the lower ranks. His application went through a loophole whereby the "required supervisory experience" was his previous job as an assistant manager of the produce department of a supermarket. Would this person be qualified for making command decisions?

A newly promoted fire officer orders the truck to respond code-red (lights and siren) to a location to check response times (a direct violation of state law). No corrective action by the department is done however the complaint is well known to all personnel. Later it is discovered that an accident at an intersection that the truck drove through resulted in 2 injured persons. If it weren't for the fire truck illegally driving through the intersection and changing the traffic signal lighting system parameters (using an Opticom™ traffic system) the accident never would have occurred.

A paramedic was tired and accidently gave the wrong drug dosage to a patient causing further harm and a condition requiring extensive life saving efforts to reverse the error. The written record showed the appropriate dose. However, the auto-defib that was running actually recorded the conversation (unknown to the paramedic). On that tape was evidence of the wrong dosage being delivered.

What about the police officer that was driving 80 in a 35 and crashing his car after causing an accident in the intersection 300 yards prior? Witnesses estimates of speed through the intersection ranged from 70-50. Impact speed determined to be in excess of 70 mph. The officer's personnel records show him having 3 previous notations in his personnel file for excessive speed. All evidence of excessive speed and failure to use due care for the public as well as violating department policy for speeds through a controlled intersection.

A command officer is on duty and gets into a friends (another fire department officer) new sportscar as the driver and then causes a wreck by erratic driving and inability to control the car properly. The command officer then attempts to leave the scene for fear of reprisals. The police investigation record fails to note an on-duty fire department official as part of the accident and it is handled as any public party accident.

A volunteer firefighter is driving his own vehicle to a callout of the fire station. He is driving 15+ mph over the speed limit and passes another motor vehicle doing the speed limit on a public road. An oncoming car has to swerve to avoid collision and injures the passenger. Volunteers cannot exceed the speed limit under the law and the driver is liable due to negligence. Further invetsigation reveals that this volunteer had been reprimanded twice before by the fire chief. The fire department failed to take appropriate corrective action that would have prevented the actions by the individual.

A police officer stops a vehicle for a traffic stop. It is determined later during the investigation that it is the husband of the woman he (the officer) is having an affair with. The officer verbally abuses the husband and threatens to kill him. Such abuse is an obvious abuse of position.

A fire department officer gives an order to direct the hose streams through an open window causing the fire to spread throughout the entire house (rather than properly giving orders that would have contained the fire to 1 small room!). A direct violation of standard practices and policies which uniformly resulted in the loss of the entire home and all it's contents. The officer's training records reveals extremely poor performance prior to this and other incident records confirm poor skills. The fire department is liable for allowing the employee performance failures to go uncorrected.

A sexual encounter between a 35-year-old firefighter and a 16-year-old girl in a fire station results in no charges being filed if he resigns. The Prosecutor's office later decides to review its decision not to file criminal charges against former firefighter.

The examples above are but a few generic situations but could be revised any number of ways to represent situations that arise across the state and the nation. Many times the agencies might want to avoid embarrassment but more likely they want to avoid liability and high cost litigation!

You have rights!
If you feel you've been harmed or caused loss by negligence or conduct unbecoming the employees position then the situation should be reviewed to see if you can regain losses or be compensated as allowed under the law.