Officer Ed

Thank you, Seth my friend, for posting this. I knew that you had faced adversity in your life, but I didn't know the depth of it. Like you, I also lost the career I loved due to an injury. In my case, it was as a police officer and the injury was incurred in the line-of-duty. I then started an online business selling emergency vehicle equipment. Regardless, EMTBravo is a great site and an asset to firefighters (I was once a "volly", as they're called on the site). I still enjoy reading the posts and the comments. Take care. Ed www.dash-flash.com

Bah! That's the 2nd time I was chumped on April 1 this year!

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As with all emergency lighting products, most are assembled in America using some off-shore components. Even Whelen uses Chinese LEDs. I don't think there are any emergency vehicle warning devices that have 100% U.S.-made components. Not because we wouldn't like to use them, but because no one in the U.S. makes them. Our Nightblaster™ off-road/work/scene light, for example, uses USA-made 3-watt Cree® LEDs. The cases and circuit boards were engineered in the U.S. and are manufactured to our specifications by a contract factory in Asia. That said, there are high-quality Chinese components and there are crap Chinese components and cheap knockoffs. Just because something is made in China does not automatically mean it is crap. The Dash-Flash® brand of emergency lights is very high quality with a failure rate of less than 1% and will stand up to any other name-brand product. I hope this answers your question. Ed

Happy Birthday, my friend! May you have many. many more!

I don't trust ANYTHING I read in the media, except maybe the weather report. Today's media is little more than entertainment, not "news." They intentionally withhold facts, twist the truth, and outright lie in order to sensationalize incidents and create controversy. As they say on XFiles, "the truth is out there." But you'll rarely get it from the "mainstream" media.

Cool looking car! I like it!

1. Garner was not put in a "choke hold." That terminology is only used by the lying, sensationalizing media. He was put in a "carotid neck hold", which many police officers are trained in. The neck hold does NOT "choke" the suspect or restrict the airway at all. The neck hold is an alternative to using a baton or punching a resisting suspect and it has prevented thousands of injuries to suspects and officers. 2. Garner was morbidly obese and had asthma. He may have been on drugs. He overstressed his body by resisting arrest and fighting with the police. THAT caused him to suffer a heart attack, not anything the officer did. 3. He kept repeating "I can't breath" because he was having a heart attack, not because of anything the officer did. The media is sleazy. They will change facts, omit facts, and outright LIE to sensationalize stories like this. Look at all the omissions and lies they initially made in the Trayvon Martin case. It's almost like they are trying to incite race riots and violence against the police.

This entire incident is just another case of lying media sensationalism. The FACTS are: The officer did NOT put Garner in a "choke hold." He put him in a NECK RESTRAINT. Most officers are trained in the use of manual neck restraints. The restraint, or "neck hold" does NOT "choke" the suspect or restrict the airway in any way. The arm is positioned such that the airway is in the "crook" of the elbow and has an inch or two of room. Any pressure is applied to the sides of the neck only. Garner was morbidly obese. He had asthma. He was quite likely on drugs. He died of a heart attack when he over-stressed his body by resisting arrest and fighting with police. Garner was hardly "murdered", as many NY blacks are claiming. He basically killed himself by making the conscious decision to fight with police despite his medical conditions. It's just a shame that so many gullible readers fell for the sensationalism.

K9s are great "tools"! From patrol dogs, to narcotics and bomb dogs, to accelerant/arson dogs, they greatly enhance our ability to serve the public.

Thank God. Contrary to popular opinion, it's not domestic violence calls that are the most dangerous for police officers, it's traffic stops. Drivers assault or shoot the officers; or other impaired drivers crash into them. I try to get motorists to pull as far off the road as possible and I always do a "passenger-side approach."

You'd be hard-pressed to find ANYONE who would be worse than the clown we have in the Whitehouse now. Maybe Nancy Pelosi........

The GOP doesn't claim Christie. He's a RINO and RINOs are closer to Democrats than to Republicans.

ARE they certified peace officers?

We'd be on the Bottom Ten.

I was not aware of the animosity between some regular FFs and volunteer FFs until I began to read these forums. Perhaps things are different "back east", but out here in the wild west, volunteer firefighters are required to have the exact same training and certifications that the full-timers do. We don't have volunteer firefighters in the metropolitan areas, but only in rural parts of the state. Without them, those areas would be completely without fire protection and first-responder medical care. I consider volunteers who give up so much of their time - and even put their lives on the line for the public - to be true heroes. We also have reserve police officers who attend the same police academies and get the same continuing training as regular officers. They do the same job...they just don't get paid and they don't do it full time. Now, having said the above, what I see as the only real difference between the volunteers and the full-timers like me (at least here in the west), is that we full-timers do this 10 hours a day, every day....and the volunteers do it maybe a couple of times a month. When you're doing a job every day, you're BOUND to be better at it than someone who only does it occasionally. But I think we should support the idea of the volunteers getting as much training as possible because when the fecal matter hits the air-movement device, we're both in the business of serving and protecting the public.

The right of WHOM shall not be abridged? "THE PEOPLE." What "people"? Law-abiding U.S. citizens. I think the words as written are clear enough, but for added emphasis: In the fairly recent SCOTUS decision in Washington, D.C. v. Heller: 1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes 2. Interpretation of the Second Amendment by scholars, courts and legislators, from immediately after its ratification through the late 19th century also supports the Court’s conclusion. 3. The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. 4. None of the Court’s precedents forecloses the Court’s interpretation. Neither United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, nor Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, refutes the individual-rights interpretation. United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, does not limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia purposes, but rather limits the type of weapon to which the right applies to those used by the militia, i.e., those in common use for lawful purposes. So, no "Consttitutional scholars" can legitimately "refute my statements thoroughly." Facts are facts and truth is truth. Neither are subject to "opinion.".

You're correct. The ACLU filed a class action lawsuit in the 80s on behalf of the mentally ill, alleging that the government had no right to institutionalize them against their will...even if it was to protect them. The SCOTUS agreed, and the doors to the institutions were thrown open. That was when the "homeless" problem began. Now, there must be proof that the person is a threat to themselves or to others for them to be institutionalized....and even then it's a revolving door. Clearly, more gun laws are not the answer. Every mass shooter was already breaking numerous gun laws, and almost all of them were already legally prohibited from possessing firearms. All of the shootings occurred in "Gun Free Zones." The fact is that gun laws merely serve to disarm the law-abiding and make it harder for them to defend themselves from the nutcases.

But let's not discuss gun laws.....because the 2nd amendment guarantees organized militia members may own them. How many militias are left in the U.S.? Oh, that's right......ZERO. No offense, but you're demonstrating a woeful misunderstanding of the 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment guarantees the right of every law-abiding citizen to keep and bear arms. It does not require membership in any sort of militia, organized or otherwise. I have been a Constitutional scholar for decades. Luckily, the authors of the Constitution were prolific writers and their letters are available for study and research to determine their intent. During the time of the writing of the 2nd Amendment, a militia was nothing more than ordinary citizens deciding to band together for some purpose, There WERE NO "organized" militias. However, this is a moot point because the 2nd Amendment doesn't say that to keep and bear arms citizens must be in a militia, it says citizens can keep and bear arms IN CASE they might wish to join a militia. Probably the 2nd most misunderstood term in the 2nd Amendment is "well regulated." The American left wants to claim that this means legal regulations. It doesn't. In the vernacular of the times, "well regulated" meant "well TRAINED."

You just hit the nail squarely on the head. These psychos want to BE somebody. They want to be known, remembered, to go down in history. So, when they see the media making household names out of other mass murderers, they see their chance to finally be famous. If the media would stop making these guys famous, the shootings would stop.

How about we just make schools "GUN FREE ZONES"? Oh, wait............

Even with all the anti-gun laws in Canada, nut cases can still kill people. Even as a U.S. police officer, I was not allowed to take a pistol into Canada.

Lucky, lucky! I know that firefighters go up on the roofs of house fires to "vent" the fire but, to me, the action seems more dangerous than it's worth. When a house is fully involved, it's going to be a total loss anyway so why not just do what you can do from outside the perimeter and protect nearby structures?

It's my understanding from articles I've read that the Council on Islamic Relations (CAIR) is miffed because some items hint that we were attacked by radical Muslims on 9/11.....when everyone knows that it was actually Norwegian fishermen.

I disagree. The most "danger" in a job does not necessarily extrapolate to the most injuries and deaths. Sky diving is more "dangerous" than driving a cab, but due to the precautions sky divers take, cab drivers have more injuries and deaths. On another site, someone cited statistics showing that murders of police officer had dropped. He extrapolated that to mean that the job had become less dangerous. I can attest that the job of police officer is far MORE dangerous than it's ever been, but new training and "officer safety" procedures have allowed more officers to face that danger and avoid being killed. I can think of at least four occasions when, but for my using those procedures, I would most likely have been shot. So, the job of firefighter is as dangerous as ever. But new procedures and safety equipment have gone a long way to mitigate that danger. Is it as "dangerous" as crabbing? I don't know how you could accurately measure that.