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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?

 

 

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Posted by on May 18, 2012 • Filed under: The "They Think We're Stupid" Files
  • NC emt

    It’s NORTH CAROLINA not south channel 11 wtvd raleigh nc

  • Don Gwinn

    I couldn’t help but notice that they acknowledged in passing that the crimes they listed were all documented because they were used as grounds to decertify medics.  I’m no botanist, but when they take your license, I think you have to stop (legally) working as a medic.  I suppose you could find some sort of shadowy underground BLS emergency medicine ring or maybe sew up gangsters on the down-low, but I’m pretty sure the criminals who lose their licenses are not the ones getting the call to pick up grandma and take her to the ER to get that head cold looked at.

    I, myself, have never been convicted of a felony.  They say the third time’s the charm, but apparently not for that prosecutor.

  • Ambulance_Driver

    Thanks, Noah.

    I’m just a geographically/challenged redneck from Louisiana, whaddaya expect? ;)
    Kelly Grayson

  • http://www.wallsofthecity.net/ Linoge

    Thanks for the linkage!  

    It is, indeed, somewhat disappointing, though predictable, that some of the loudest screamers about potential law-breakers amongst a certain population are, themselves, guilty of breaking laws…  

  • Jeremiah

    Thanks for the post, as a paramedic in NC, I find this type of journalism pathetic and incompetent. But what else can you expect from journalist? The majority are exactly that.

  • Pingback: Miscreants and Criminals… « Freedom Is Just Another Word…

  • Sanford Frasier

    This is just ONE of the problems I have with (I call them eyes) cameras at MVAs! OK, so they’re reporting about the traffic on a particular road or highway BUT, they’re also looking for ANY excuse to “burn” us for doing our job! 
    If you look at the picture you’ll notice that it’s not about the roll over on the (for example) Long Island Expressway or the fender bender on the G W, NO, it’s the EMS worker DOING HIS JOB just WAITING for him/her to screw-up so they can get it on the six o’clock news!

  • Ambulance_Driver

    Red light cameras are not about safety anyway.

    They’re about revenue enhancement.

  • PARAMEDIC70002

    So basically the story proves, but doesn’t say, that the state EMS system WORKS to remove bad EMTs from the system. What a way to twist the facts!

  • Wyatt Earp

    There is probably a higher percentage of ABC employees with shady pasts…

  • Old_NFO

    Excellent points AD, and yeah, NOT a real good piece of reporting… one ‘might’ think they had an agenda there…

  • dbum

    This comparison lacks integrity. The violence of gun crimes is 1) not the same as the reason cited for the 1.08% failure rate. 2) Activist mayors are hardly responsible for about 10,000 homicides a year like guns are. That does not include suicides, a higher number. And our fair young country boasts the highest number of such deaths year after year, compared to any other industrialized country.

    As for the NC Medics, the Channel 11 piece gives the impression these folk show up, and then says they were stripped of their credentials. Sensational! I went to EMS World, and searched but didn’t locate the article mentioned. A lot of stories with negative implications though. So, next time link the actual article. However, the Channel 11 piece seemed rather lame, in that it did only use one example of a violent offender, and then the guy who misdiagnosed. I was shocked thought that their screening statute was only from 2009. No wonder EMS World had an article about the shortage of medics in NC!

    It seems then that the Channel 11 article might have focused on the need to screen better and the possible shortage of qualified medics, which is perhaps what this blog author could have pointed out. This blog turned into a screed, even mentioning bankrupting under the header of arrests and convictions of said Congress. Going bankrupt isn’t a crime in America. It’s a Constitutional right. Nor is not qualifying for a credit card a crime. Abuse and drunk driving are the bad ones in that list. How about we look at war profiteering and votes relative to armed conflict?

    I would agree that roughly 1% over an 11 year period is a decent number. I don’t think Congress could do that.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Scott-Brown/1525756291 Scott Brown

    Why “journalist” is a half step above child molester on the respect scale. 

  • Ambulance_Driver

    Wow.

    I had no idea that 10,000 guns a year are just up and murdering people!
    And all this time I thought it was the person committing the crime, and guns were simply tools they employed!
    And yes, by the statistics, the average member of MAIG is 7 times more likely to be convicted of a crime than your average TN concealed weapons permit holder. Those rates can easily be extrapolated for every other state with liberal CCW laws.
    But since you were impressed with the 0.1% disciplinary rate of NC medics, let me hit you with some more:
    There were 30,228 gun deaths in the USA in 2008. That number includes both suicides and deaths resulting from legal gun use such as law enforcement action of self-defense.
    By very conservative estimates, there are roughly 200 million guns in the USA, and 52 million gun owners.
    Using those numbers, 99.985% of guns in the USA killed ABSOLUTELY NO ONE in 2009, and 99.942% of gun owners used them to kill ABSOLUTELY NO ONE in 2008.
    Since the number of guns and gun owners is steadily rising and the rate of gun deaths is steadily declining, those numbers will be increasingly in our favor in the future.
    So much for your scourge of gun violence.

    Thanks for playing!

  • Bobball

    I’d be curious to see how journalists show up from a legal perspective…I think that would be fun…

  • Bobball

     @ AD…I think he’s talking about news cameras…not those other types. Sanford, I’d love to agree with you…but I can’t. The kind of behavior you describe does happen of course…but usually only after police, fire, EMS…have treated the local media like crap. Doesn’t make it right, but hey; karma. We work hard to have a good relationship with our local media outlets. We’re as transparent as we can be when mistakes are made, and we make a point of showing the good we do. We try to make sure our medics are at least polite to the media. In return, they tend to mostly leave us alone or keep us featured as “good guys”.

  • Ambulance_Driver

    And you didn’t convince me with your argument, either.

    Good thing this is America, where two people with such diametrically opposed viewpoints can agree to disagree.
    Thanks for commenting, Rob.

  • mpatk

    The problem isn’t limited to the traditional media anymore; now it’s any moron with a smartphone, a grudge (real or imagined), and access to upload to YouTube.

  • http://profiles.google.com/seorsa10 George McHugh

    Solid critique of a crappy article. Not sure I would start out my defense by comparing my profession to congress though.

  • Ambulance_Driver

    It’s perfect, though, because compared to Congress, every profession is a paragon of virtue. ;)

  • Bobball

    True. Actually, I’ve seen that long before smartphones or YouTube…a 35mm with a long lens works just fine. Again, it’s a matter of behaving professionally on the job…every time. Do that, and those grudge-holding folks? They won’t have anything on you.

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  • Daphneshepard

    I wonder if a study on the number of Paramedics that have committed suicide because of the horrific things we see in a day, at work.  These people have no idea what it’s like to deal with tragedy and continue to do the very best job you can do. I’ll take one of those criminals taking care of me, if it came down to it, rather than a journalist that wouldn’t get their hands dirty, even to steal my wallet.  Kiss my A$$.. 

  • http://parapupblog.com parapup

    As a paramedic in North Carolina, I can honestly say…represent, y’all!  I actually thought the statistics would be way worse.  They could only find one guy who can’t recognize a dead lady out of 38,000 people.  I’ve seen some of these folks in action, and it’s amazing some of them remember to breathe.  The vast majority of the people working out here in EMS are phenomenal, but the types of people attracted to high stress, high risk, low pay jobs like this can often be questionable at best. Furthermore, some of the people who have joined EMS have only done so because they couldn’t make the cut for police or fire.  So, in addition to the fact that we have thrill seeking people willing to work for virtually pennies, we have people that are less than thrilled about the fact that this isn’t their love.  Fantastic. Once in a while, someone who sucks at life is going to fall through the cracks. 

    I’m not terribly worried about the crime.  You’re can look at pretty much any group of people in any capacity and find crime.  When you take into consideration the fact that we stress our folks out, I’m truly surprised the numbers aren’t far, far higher.  We have people who work fucktons of overtime just to make ends meet. I know a dude who sleeps in his car in between shifts because it is pointless to go home. 

    How long does it take before all the pressures of normal life and trying to pay for it on an EMT salary, the job itself and the inherent dangers, the abuse and neglect an EMT has to deal with and internalize, and the actual exposure to the system abuse that is actively running this country into the proverbial toilet cause a person to just snap?  One’s gauge for violence could easily get completely thrown off just by exposure in this job.  When I first started as an EMT, I was concerned about the underlying cause of every assault call I ran.  Now, I see it as a totally normal part of my job.  I don’t think it would be too far of a stretch for someone that is already a little mentally unstable to have an altered threshold for violence in other capacities of life, like home life. 

    And drugs are quite often a coping mechanism.  I just had a random drug screening last Thursday, but I also happen to work in a system that has employee assistance programs in place.  There are plenty of places that don’t have either.  All the pressures of the job can easily manifest into a drug problem; we see this type of stuff on the streets every day, so who is to say that it doesn’t happen to EMTs? 

    I’d be curious to see if NC’s EMS system has worse statistics than anywhere else.  I highly doubt it.  It’s the same stuff everywhere, as I understand it. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/jdtestermanjr John Testerman

    Hey folks,

    If you have nothing better to do for a couple minutes, send WTVD an email. As a Paramedic in NC I am trying to blow up their email server with responses to this story. The addresses are : general.manager@abc11mail.com, and news.director@abc11mail.com. I just would like to let them know how much I appreciate the EMS Week press.

  • http://space4commerce.blogspot.com Brian Dunbar

    Your approval isn’t necessary to my sense of self-actualization, either.

    You’re spending a lot of time on this topic, however.

    Perhaps the whole ‘taking a free citizen to the funny bin against their will’ thing bothers you more than you realize.

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