helicopper

Politicians are not always the impediment to progress. I've watched first hand as emergency services providers lobbied quite loudly against things that were the defacto standard of care in the interest of keeping things the way they always were. We are quite often our own worst enemy!

Clearly in a community where the FD only goes out once or twice per week there isn't much need for in-house staffing (whether paid or volunteer). If the volume is that low, is it safe to say that the population (and attendant traffic issues) is also very low and it is a mostly rural/agriculture type community? This program is best suited toward those departments with high volume and low membership so they can "guarantee" a timely initial response with appropriate staffing. Think of those departments that go out 3-4 times a day and rely on mutual aid for a room and contents fire. That's the kind of department that would benefit from this. This grant is acknowledging that a properly staffed initial response is the best form of delivery in the fire service and is striving toward that as its goal. Nowhere in anything that I've read in the grant guidance does it suggest anything about whether or not a response from home to the FD is unsafe. Don't know where you're getting that from.

If they're not required to certify as firefighters how are they called "firefighter"? What's their civil service job title and what do they do for the fire district?

Yes. I've witnessed this with FD personnel, PD personnel, and even EMS personnel. I'm sure you have too.

These are all system problems and if we had a real EMS "SYSTEM" in New York we'd be able to correct each problem. Where are the medical directors? Where are the agency managers? Where are the providers who are supposed to be advocates for their patients? The 9-1-1 system in Westchester County has been flawed since it's inception but it has only gotten worse since the shift from land-line phones to cellular phones. The system in Westchester County never evolved to keep up with the changes in technology or the societal changes. Some counties have done a remarkable job considering their financial limitations and they have better systems than our "highest taxed county in the nation". EMD is the standard yet we stll have agencies not providing it and actually fighting against changing to it.

As others have also noted in this thread, It is part of your responsibility to insure that the matter is adjudicated. Assuming that the matter is resolved is taking a chance as was learned by one of our member's first hand. Fortunately, it was realized by him and not by a cop on the road or he may have been bailing his wife out or picking her up from a PD somewhere. You don't have to call the court every day and you don't have to be a CPA but if you mail a check to a court to resolve a judicial matter, that is the check I'd make sure cleared. I'd also be damn sure I got a receipt from the court to insure that there were no screw-ups in the future. Courts sometimes go so far as to issue receipts even when a ticket is dismissed so the defendant has proof should there be a problem down the road. The bottom line is that drivers and registrants of vehicles in NYS bear substantial responsibility and that responsibilty includes insuring that tickets are handled and nothing is left outstanding.

So you want squads of police going around to drag people from their homes for traffic offenses and courts to be open day and night to adjudicate these cases? This is more invasive and more expensive than suspensions. Driving is not a right in New York. It's a privilege that can be suspended or revoked for violations of the Vehicle and Traffic Law as established by the State Legislature and is subject to the rules and regulations of the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles. This is not my opinion, it's the law in NY. I appreciate your opinion that the UK system is better but as a "user" of the US system for more than 20 years, I have to say our system works.

Which county?

So you believe that the better solution is to issue arrest warrants and incarcerate someone for failing to answer a traffic ticket? That means if I stopped you on a Friday night for speeding and you had forgotten to answer a ticket you'd spend the weekend in jail so you could see a judge on Monday morning. I don't think that's a better solution. Our system works perfectly well too. Of course there are abuses of the system (those with dozens of unanswered tickets) but generally they get arrested when we finally catch up with them. Failure to pay a fine results in a suspension of a license or registration until that penalty is paid. Why isn't that appropriate? Why should you continue to enjoy the privilege of driving when you don't comply with the court's order?

Not stupid at all. Traffic offenses would be dismissed if the defendant dies as the individual is responsible for them. Parking tickets would be dismissed (in most cases) if the registered owner of the vehicle dies.

Tomorrow's article... All city employees who ate the free lunch buffet investigated for ethics violations. [/cynicism]

Sounds like someone ought to get it fixed!

http://www.securitymanagement.com/news/new-york-citys-ring-steel-gets-wider-006294

Earlier thread on LPR's

RIP, Pretzel. You will be missed! Dan, my condolences to you and your family.

This is not the statute of limitations and your cutting and pasting only a portion of the section causes it to be taken out of context. The full subsection is below and is a limitation on the conviction in absentia of a defendant who fails to appear in court. This time limit prevents a court, such as Greenburgh, from convicting everyone from those 100,000 backlogged tickets in absentia and imposing a fine and penalty. A statute of limitations is a limit on the filing of charges and for petty offenses that is one year from the date of occurrence to the time the summons or complaint is issued/served/filed. Adjudication by the court is subject to the limits of the Criminal Procedure Law. Yes, suspensions do get defendants back into court. Your wife learned that her license was suspended (albeit some time later) and returned to the court. The responsibility to insure that a matter is closed rests with the defendant. I'm certainly not picking on your wife but with the check not having cleared and no receipt or correspondence from the court an argument can be made that she should have followed up with the court. The resolution that you describe places a tremendous burden and workload on the courts at an expense to all of us. Yes, Scarsdale Court dropped the ball and should have cashed your check and/or followed-up but they are not solely responsible. The system may not be perfect but it is not to blame. On the subject of them sending a letter, did you move between the time of the summons and the time you figured this mess out? If Scarsdale and DMV both sent letters that you didn't receive there must be a logical reason. Here in the US, the defendant is given an option of appearing in person or submitting a plea by mail. If your wife was traveling in Watertown and got the ticket you probably wouldn't want a requirement for her to return to court to dispose of it. Did she receive a receipt? Did she get a bank statement showing that the check was cashed? Why is this completely somone else's fault? Again, not picking on your wife (this is probably a discussion best had with a hypothetical defendant ) but an argument can certainly be made that she should have followed up.

MIke, I can understand your sentiment but the whole rationale for suspending licenses and/or registrations is because of non-appearances in court. When a defendant fails to appear, the court's only recourse is suspension (or the issuance of a warrant). Sadly, as with almost any other process, there are occasionally errors. I'm reasonably sure that some of those 100,000 tickets were written by yours truly and I sincerely doubt I'm going to remember many of them. Some, however, left a lasting impression and those I will gladly prosecute even now.

IF the call is a cardiac arrest. What percentage of all calls is that? How does the cop (or FF) with an AED benefit the APE or stroke patient? We can't base our system standards on a single call type. We need to be proactive and meet legitimate response time standards for ALL calls.

Here is the actual policy from the Westchester REMSCO website. If you watch the January 27, 2011 webcast of their meeting, you can hear the discussion and background on this policy and the evolution of QI/QC programs. The relevant discourse starts around the 39:00 minute mark (approximately). LInk to WREMSCO webcasts REMSCO Policy-11-02-EMS System Resource Utilization-8-Feb-2011.pdf

You're right - turn around time is the time to clear a call and be available again. Turnout time is the time it takes to put down the TV remote, put your shoes back on, move to the ambulance, and get moving. That your ageny does that in 26.7 seconds shows that you're meeting the national standard, not Westchester's watered down version.

Wrong. The fourth due engine still has to turnout in 1 minute.

You're sitting there with full crews and can't get out the door in three minutes? This is not a response time requirement, it's a turnout time requirement. It means that the ambulance has to be on the road within three minutes. Unless you roll over and hit the snooze button when the call comes in if you're staffed in-house you can make that. You're spewing statistics that have absolutely no bearing on the discussion. Every call in NYC already meets the one minute turnout requirement (unless there's a backlog and that's a different discussion) because the ambulances are staffed and on the road 24/7. Westchester is considering the adoption of a a three minute turnout requirement. I think that should be met or agencies should change to pizza delivery where you have 30 minutes.

What is not reasonable is that we think the application of standards to volunteers is well intentioned and not absolutely essential. Turnout time is a part of overall response times and we never consider that when assessing how well our EMS systems deliver their service. We just let them tell us that their response times are 4 minutes (or whatever) but that's driving time and may actually be 19 minutes if it took them 15 minutes to get the ambulance on the road. In the meantime one of their constituents is waiting, perhaps deteriorating and that is what is not reasonable. It is 2011 and we have to stop doing things the way we did in 1981. Rostered, in-house crews are one possible solution and I'm sure there are many more. It is absolutely appropriate for the REMAC and REMSCO to adopt (and enforce) such a standard. If an agency can't meet the standard it's time for them to start thinking about how to better provide service.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/04/22/florida.suspect.dead/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

Another question is how many of these agencies that have had marine units are operating them this summer? Given the economy and budget demands, I've heard that a lot of them may be cut back or eliminated. I think they were all facing mothballs if the state subsidy for marine patrols didn't get put back into the budget.