Compare and Contrast

EMS World Magazine links to a hit piece investigative report from those hacks responsible journalists at ABC11 in Raleigh-Durham, NC, on the number of thugs, wife-beaters, drug-addicts, drunk drivers and other petty criminals working on ambulances in North Carolina.

And what did they find?
 

But an I-Team review of disciplinary records for paramedics and EMTs across North Carolina for the past five years uncovered alleged behavior that may leave some wondering exactly who is in that ambulance coming to help.

We found multiple reports of misconduct in four key categories:

• Cheating on exams
• Criminal activity
• Drug and alcohol problems
• Misconduct on the job

The list of criminal charges that caused paramedics and EMTs to be stripped of their credentials includes:

• Felony death by vehicle and driving while impaired
• Felony indecent liberties with a child
• Sexual exploitation of a minor
• Child abuse
• Felony embezzlement
• Identity theft and credit card fraud

Clearly, if those paragons of journalistic integrity and investigative diligence at ABC11 are to be believed, North Carolina EMS systems are a hotbed of criminal activity. Buried deep in the article is the real number of disciplinary actions against EMT's in North Carolina: 40 out of 38,000.

That's 40 out of 38,000, over a period of eleven years.

That's 0.1% of North Carolina EMS personnel disciplined over 11 years.

I think it would be instructive if we looked at some other professions in whom we place a great deal of trust, and see what their rate of arrests and convictions are.

Let's have a look, shall we?

In one study of 535 people:

• 29 were accused of spousal abuse.
• 7 were arrested for fraud.
• 19 have been accused of writing bad checks.
• 17 have bankrupted at least two businesses.
• 3 have been arrested for assault.
• 71 have credit reports so bad they can't qualify for a credit card.
• 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges.
• 8 have been arrested for shoplifting.
• 21 are current defendants in lawsuits.
• In 1998 alone, 84 were stopped for drunk driving, but released after they claimed immunity.

And who was this den of hooligans, thugs and miscreants? The United States Congress, that's who.

I guess Mark Twain was right when he described Congress as the only distinct American criminal class.

Of another group of 606 people, 15, or 2.48%, were arrested or convicted of felonies.

Those 606 people were Michael Bloomberg's group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns. However, since Bloomberg is famous for listing people as members of his group who have explicitly stated that they have never joined and do not support MAIG, those 15 may be members of a significantly smaller pool of people.

Let's compare this wretched hive of scum and villainy group of stalwart defenders against gun violence against their sworn enemies, those evil gun totin' rednecks:

… the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security has been issuing Handgun Carry Permits since October 1996 (before then, individual county sheriffs handled them), and between then and the end of 2010, they have issued somewhere around 393686 permits (including four years’ worth of county sheriff renewals, and all duplications, free permits (how do you score those?), and new resident permits, but not counting overall renewals, for obvious reasons). In that same time period, only 4248 permits have had to be revoked due to court orders, administrative revocations, and felony convictions. As such, over the course of 14 years and change, the handgun carry permit holders of Tennessee have only had a failure rate of around 1.08%.

On the other hand, if we take the Mayors Against Illegal Guns members’ statistics (15 convictions over 5 years) and extrapolate them over 14 years, we find that they have had a failure rate of around 7% even. Amusingly, this indicates that MAIG members are 6.5 times more likely to break the law than TN HCP holders.

So much for the scourge of gun violence, it's time we put an end to the scourge of activist mayors.

I wonder, if we ran criminal background checks of all credentialed journalists and media personalities in North Carolina since 2001, how many arrests would we find? Perhaps substantially more than 0.1%?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?