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?
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