Anti-Terrorist Ambulances?
Should we turn EMTs into vigilantes?
No fooling, there is actually an academic journal called Homeland Security Affairs, published by the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. (Does anybody else out there think that lame word "homeland" suggests we're guarding some gated condo development?) A scholarly paper in a recent issue discusses the suggestion that the government use emergency medical service personnel--paramedics, EMTs, and first responders--as "intelligence sensors." The paper also calls EMS personnel potential "information collectors" and a variety of other euphemisms for what might seem to mean unsworn deputy sheriffs.
I'm an EMS volunteer in a small semi-rural New York community, so somebody forwarded the paper to me, suggesting that those of us manning our town's three ambulances 24 hours a day could soon be asked to add "amateur cop" to our job descriptions.
Why on earth do the homeland defenders think we'd be any good at that?
Because we get to see things that nobody else does.
When somebody calls an ambulance, that person is usually too rattled to sanitize the scene before we get there. (Our small EMS corps' response time is typically from five to eight minutes.) If there's bomb-making paraphernalia in the kitchen, it'll probably still be there when we huff up the front steps with our fat medical duffels. If there are suspiciously swarthy people and women in hijabs, they'll be more concerned with the convulsing child than whether we notice them. If there's a Taliban banner in the living room, nobody will think to put it away. If the meth lab is cooking, nobody will have time to shut it down and hide the beakers and burners. If there are half a dozen doubtful migrants living in a single bedroom, they'll all be peeking fearfully through the door while we do our work.
The Homeland Security Affairs paper also points out that EMS people have an excellent opportunity to spot "trait indicators such as race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin." (Isn't that called profiling?)
There's nothing wrong with a canny EMT noting the obvious presence of an Al-Qaeda cell in a Queens apartment or a Des Moines double-wide, but that doesn't require an act of Congress or the turning of thousands of EMS people into brownshirts.
Empowering and encouraging people who do EMS work to report, without real training, whatever they individually decide looks fishy is not a good idea. Some EMTs would love the assignment--the ones who swagger around with stethoscopes around their necks, lots of insignia on their uniforms, and are the first to tell you what jerks real MDs are. Others want nothing to do with ratting people out because maybe we don't agree with their lifestyle or we see terrorists under every bed.
Citizens spying on citizens has been an intrinsic part of political systems in some other cultures, but it rarely has succeeded in this country, although certainly vigilantism has blackened some of the darker chapters of our history. It's bad enough that bin Laden has turned us into a nation of people willing to take off our shoes, strip out our belts, let down our hair, and--soon--walk through body-imaging machines, but the hysteria has to stop somewhere.
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"Does anybody else out there think that lame word "homeland" suggests we're guarding some gated condo development?"
I don't know about you, but every time I hear the word 'homeland', I think of how the Nazis called Germany the 'Fatherland.' It gives me the creeps.
Secondly, I think it's a bad idea to treat medical staff as pseudo-police. It's not their job. Their job is to save people, not rat out illegal immigrants, etc. It's a conflict of interest.
If this comes to pass, people who have reason to avoid the law, will not call for an ambulance. If they can't trust the EMTs to remain neutral whatever the situation, they won't call them, they'll let the person die first. And it probably won't be a terrorist dying either, it will wind up being children and other innocents who will suffer.
You're completely right, the hysteria has got to stop. Before it's too late.
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." --Charles Mackay
Posted by: tracker1312 | December 12, 2007 at 11:44 AM
Very perceptive of you. That is, in fact, exactly one of the problems that the homeland-security journal paper raises--that people will stop calling EMS if they suspect they're going to be sniffing around for anything illegal. Even scarier, the paper ponders whether serious criminals--drug dealers, say--might literally lure EMTs into ambushes, since all it would take is a simple 911 call.
Posted by: stepwilk | December 13, 2007 at 10:20 AM
As the author of the aforementioned journal article, I encourage the public to debate whether EMS and fire personnel should provide information to intelligence fusion centers. In this article, I did not blindly advocate the use of EMS and fire personnel in this capacity. Rather, I asserted that these emergency responders may be used to identify indicators of terrorism, based upon the following well-defined parameters: 1) responders should not use trait-based indicators (racial profiling), instead they should rely on site or incident-based indicators of terrorism; 2) protected medical information should not be shared, even if allowed by state and federal laws; 3) a written protocol for information collection should be developed. That protocol should assure that medical and personal privacy is protected; 4) responders should receive appropriate training on legal considerations, privacy, and indicators of terrorism; and, 5) all participating organizations should require legal review and consider community input before instituting such a program.
Worldwide, EMS and Fire personnel have proven themselves valuable assets in preventing terrorist attacks. In 1995, in a plot known as Bojinka, fire personnel, while at a fire scene, identified numerous bombs. Reporting this information to authorities prevented mid-air bombings over the Pacific Ocean. In June 2007, EMS personnel responding to a call at the Tiger Tiger nightclub in London reported the a smoking Mercedes, which was later determined to contain an IED.
Again, thank you for the debate on this issue. Please feel free to contact me with comments at mgpetrie@nps.edu. Michael Petrie
Posted by: mpetrie | December 14, 2007 at 12:51 PM
As I wrote, I'm not saying that first responders shouldn't report an obvious bomb or smoking Mercedes (as in the incidents you mention), my problem is with the wholescale conversion of basically untrained individuals into a quasi-security force. Granted you say they should be "trained," but look at what is already happening to travelers at the hands of supposedly trained TSA personnel who all too often exert their authority with too few limits.
Professional EMS work--I'm just an unpaid volunteer--is, quite frankly, an incredibly underpaid and demanding line of work, and I suspect it is all too often undertaken by people who are compensated by the sense of power, the uniforms, the trappings of authority. As your paper points out, only 20 percent of the 125 EMS personnel sampled during one presentation of your paper said they would willingly participate in such a program. I suspect that among that 20 percent are the individuals who would particularly enjoy, for all the wrong reasons, being "deputized."
Posted by: stepwilk | December 16, 2007 at 08:47 AM