JJB531

I'm sorry, but I have to ask... Are EMS jobs that hard to come by nowadays? I only ask because you are always starting topics asking about companies/agencies for employment.

Okay, Master, we've given you three agencies so far... TransCare, Empress, and SeniorCare. You can keep on asking "Who are these agencies" over and over again, and the simple answer is that any agency, any day of the week, will hire the right person if they come along and can benefit the agency. Since you insinuated that I may be out of the loop because I asked if it was that hard to get an EMS job, I'm going to ask you another question.
Because you can't get hired, are you the problem or are the lack of agencies hiring the problem? I ask because it seems like there are plenty of places hiring (we already provided you with 3 places), but none of them want you.
If you can't get hired by a commercial agency, I highly doubt any municipal/hospital based/voluntary system is going to hire you. I don't know your background or how long you have been a medic, but typically the way it works is you get your ALS experience first as a medic working for a commercial provider. After some time working for a commercial provider, these other agencies will consider you for a medic position once you have some experience under your belt. If you can't get a good reference from your one and only EMS agency you were employed by (TransCare), why would any agency hire you without knowing anything about you, your experience as a paramedic, etc.? Like Comical115 said, EMS around here is a small community, and everyone knows everyone, if not directly, then through 1 or 2 degrees of separation.
I'm not trying to pick on you or put you down, but I'm trying to provide you with what may be a harsh reality. Once you make either a bad name or "no-name" for yourself by leaving places on bad terms, not having any ALS field experience, etc. it's going to make it more difficult to find an agency that is willing to hire you.
Since you asked, I am currently employed by Ossining. We just picked up 2 or 3 new per-diem medics, all of whom have extensive experience working in other systems.

Okay, Master, we've given you three agencies so far... TransCare, Empress, and SeniorCare. You can keep on asking "Who are these agencies" over and over again, and the simple answer is that any agency, any day of the week, will hire the right person if they come along and can benefit the agency. Since you insinuated that I may be out of the loop because I asked if it was that hard to get an EMS job, I'm going to ask you another question.
Because you can't get hired, are you the problem or are the lack of agencies hiring the problem? I ask because it seems like there are plenty of places hiring (we already provided you with 3 places), but none of them want you.
If you can't get hired by a commercial agency, I highly doubt any municipal/hospital based/voluntary system is going to hire you. I don't know your background or how long you have been a medic, but typically the way it works is you get your ALS experience first as a medic working for a commercial provider. After some time working for a commercial provider, these other agencies will consider you for a medic position once you have some experience under your belt. If you can't get a good reference from your one and only EMS agency you were employed by (TransCare), why would any agency hire you without knowing anything about you, your experience as a paramedic, etc.? Like Comical115 said, EMS around here is a small community, and everyone knows everyone, if not directly, then through 1 or 2 degrees of separation.
I'm not trying to pick on you or put you down, but I'm trying to provide you with what may be a harsh reality. Once you make either a bad name or "no-name" for yourself by leaving places on bad terms, not having any ALS field experience, etc. it's going to make it more difficult to find an agency that is willing to hire you.
Since you asked, I am currently employed by Ossining. We just picked up 2 or 3 new per-diem medics, all of whom have extensive experience working in other systems.

Just because an agency is hiring doesn't mean that a certain prospective employee and that agency will be a good "fit". The members on this site can provide you the name and phone number of all the managers in charge of recruitment if they wanted to, but I doubt it would help you get hired.
What JJB was trying to do was offer some constructive criticism that might help you get a job. I suggest you re-read his post. A lot of agencies require you to put your time in as an EMT before they hand you the narc kit and throw you on the ALS bus, even if you have past experience as a medic. If you're as desperate for work as you claim, the right attitude and persistence will pay off. Just remember EMS is a small world, even in the tri-state area.

Correct I'm employed, and I'm hardly out of the loop. As INIT pointed out, numerous agencies are recruiting and hiring. You have asked about agencies in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. I find it difficult to believe that in a 3 state search you can't find an EMS agency hiring, especially considering the ever-so-prevalent high turnover rate with most EMS agencies. The agency I work for is a smaller agency in the grand scale and we've picked up several paramedics in the past few months.
Just looking at websites for Empress, SeniorCare, and TransCare, all 3 companies indicate they are hiring paramedics and have online application features you can take advantage of.
Have you been for interviews? Have you been offered employment anywhere and turned it down? Have you had someone in the field who you respect review your resume for you? Maybe he/she can offer some constructive feedback to help make you more of an appealing potential employee by restructuring your resume if you're having a difficult time getting hired.

Correct I'm employed, and I'm hardly out of the loop. As INIT pointed out, numerous agencies are recruiting and hiring. You have asked about agencies in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. I find it difficult to believe that in a 3 state search you can't find an EMS agency hiring, especially considering the ever-so-prevalent high turnover rate with most EMS agencies. The agency I work for is a smaller agency in the grand scale and we've picked up several paramedics in the past few months.
Just looking at websites for Empress, SeniorCare, and TransCare, all 3 companies indicate they are hiring paramedics and have online application features you can take advantage of.
Have you been for interviews? Have you been offered employment anywhere and turned it down? Have you had someone in the field who you respect review your resume for you? Maybe he/she can offer some constructive feedback to help make you more of an appealing potential employee by restructuring your resume if you're having a difficult time getting hired.

I'm sorry, but I have to ask... Are EMS jobs that hard to come by nowadays? I only ask because you are always starting topics asking about companies/agencies for employment.

Correct I'm employed, and I'm hardly out of the loop. As INIT pointed out, numerous agencies are recruiting and hiring. You have asked about agencies in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. I find it difficult to believe that in a 3 state search you can't find an EMS agency hiring, especially considering the ever-so-prevalent high turnover rate with most EMS agencies. The agency I work for is a smaller agency in the grand scale and we've picked up several paramedics in the past few months.
Just looking at websites for Empress, SeniorCare, and TransCare, all 3 companies indicate they are hiring paramedics and have online application features you can take advantage of.
Have you been for interviews? Have you been offered employment anywhere and turned it down? Have you had someone in the field who you respect review your resume for you? Maybe he/she can offer some constructive feedback to help make you more of an appealing potential employee by restructuring your resume if you're having a difficult time getting hired.

Spartan, a period or a comma won't kill ya
Listen, traditions and the past are not lost. You're too young to be so jaded. Look up, the future's brighter than you think. You know what else they told me when I got on the job? "This is a great job, but it ain't what it used to be". Well, they told my grandfather the same thing in 1951. That's a silly line of crap that doesn't need to be true. This job is great and can continue to be great if we want it to be. We can all make little adjustments without ruining the purity of our jobs and the relationships we have there.

I'm sorry, but I have to ask... Are EMS jobs that hard to come by nowadays? I only ask because you are always starting topics asking about companies/agencies for employment.

I'm sorry, but I have to ask... Are EMS jobs that hard to come by nowadays? I only ask because you are always starting topics asking about companies/agencies for employment.

I'm sorry, but I have to ask... Are EMS jobs that hard to come by nowadays? I only ask because you are always starting topics asking about companies/agencies for employment.

I'm sorry, but I have to ask... Are EMS jobs that hard to come by nowadays? I only ask because you are always starting topics asking about companies/agencies for employment.

One thing that has always bothered me about these situations is that NO ONE in the media or even in the public seems to think about the officers involved. Do they think that it is easy to pull the trigger on another person? What is that officer thinking right now? Events like this stay with you for the rest of your life. How many times will the officer ask himself if he did the right thing?
My thoughts and prayers go out to these officers during this rough time.

Crime cop hit the nail on the head....I wish I could vote-up your post more than once!
Mostly though, I don't get why the City even needed to hold a "press conference" Just because some punk skel running from cops who were attempting to arrest him on an outstanding warrant, turned on the cops with a knife and left the cops with no choice but to respond with deadly force.
Then they totally failed to control the audience who clearly don't give a crap about civility. After the first audience outburst they should have turned off the mic, shut the lights and said "this press conference is over, go home, goodnight".

Crime Cop, you forgot: hire a lawyer (or should that be 'fall into the hands of a lawyer'?) who will insist the victim was sober and the reason three different labs found him to be drunk on multiple different tests was a 'conspiracy'...
Mike

You forgot the family and friends hiring some "reverends" to act as their spokespeople and hold "peace marches"

AS soon as this shooting came out in the news I was sure that the family involved would follow the " skell shot by police " handbook.
These guidelines include :
1. no matter what you thought about the victim, go to the hospital, wait until you see someone with a news camera and then flop on the floor like a fish crying like the victim was your best friend.
2. Make threats toward the police that you will get them for shooting your friend, etc...
3. call for a special prosecutor
4. get t- shirts made with the perps face on it and some catchy slogan like " rest in peace my dude, see you when i get there."
5. no matter how old the perp was, release his communion photo or the picture from his first day of 1st grade to the media and tell them how he was a good person and was ABOUT to get his life back together and go back to school etc... oh i almost forgot, and tell them that he was an aspiring rapper that was about to be signed
6. get a 40 oz. beer box, cut it in half, light candles , put them in the box, put half full 40 oz. beers on the sidewalk around the box for effect.
7. No matter how much of a criminal your family member was, deny it even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
8. when the grand jury returns a decision of No True Bill against the police officers and they are cleared of any wrong doing, repeat flopping on the floor like a fish, then hire some slick attorney that will tell the media that you knew from the begining that you couldn't get a fair and impartial investigation.
9. file a lawsuit against the officers and the city of newburgh.
If I missed any please feel free to add to this list.
This list is obviously an attempt to make a little light of my frustration with the situation. I'm frustrated wih the fact that everything cops do is wrong to society, WE CAN'T WIN. I'm tired of nobody standing up to these families and saying " It was your family membes fault that this happened not the cops, end of story." God Bless my brothers from the Newburgh P.D. They did what they had to do the other night in the face of a deadly threat. The fault for this shooting lies completely with the perp, he shouldn't have committed a crime in the first place, second if he had a warrant ( that he obviously knew about because he ran) then he should have turned himself in. Third, if a team of cops approach you, don't run and fourth, when you are cornered by the cops, don't produce a knife and charge at them. Those are 4 ways this perp could have saved his own life but instead of looking at it rationally, his family would rather blame the cops. I watched that side show that was supposed to be a press conference. Having a public press conference was a mistake, if the chief wanted to give info to the media then you do that, not invite all of liberty street. If he wanted to meet with the family then he should have done it privatly not in a public forum.
Sorry for the long post guys, some things just get to me.

Actually, overall the Law Enforcement tactics for a patrol response to an active shooter incident are quite similiar, with some minor tweaks here and there (without getting into specifics), so that's not really part of the problem. After Columbine, the Law Enforcement community established a standard for response to these incidents that most (if not all) local departments follow.
The problem is the lack of integration with other emergency service sectors (EMS and Fire), lack of a uniform, across the board training standard for EMS, lack of a uniform EMS response standard to these incidents, and a general lack of general interest from the EMS community as a whole to "step up to the plate" to advance their capabilities at such incidents.

Actually, overall the Law Enforcement tactics for a patrol response to an active shooter incident are quite similiar, with some minor tweaks here and there (without getting into specifics), so that's not really part of the problem. After Columbine, the Law Enforcement community established a standard for response to these incidents that most (if not all) local departments follow.
The problem is the lack of integration with other emergency service sectors (EMS and Fire), lack of a uniform, across the board training standard for EMS, lack of a uniform EMS response standard to these incidents, and a general lack of general interest from the EMS community as a whole to "step up to the plate" to advance their capabilities at such incidents.

Actually, overall the Law Enforcement tactics for a patrol response to an active shooter incident are quite similiar, with some minor tweaks here and there (without getting into specifics), so that's not really part of the problem. After Columbine, the Law Enforcement community established a standard for response to these incidents that most (if not all) local departments follow.
The problem is the lack of integration with other emergency service sectors (EMS and Fire), lack of a uniform, across the board training standard for EMS, lack of a uniform EMS response standard to these incidents, and a general lack of general interest from the EMS community as a whole to "step up to the plate" to advance their capabilities at such incidents.

I'm going to slightly disagree with you about the Fire Based EMS systems, and only for one reason (unless you are talking about dual role providers in a fire based system). As firefighters, a part of the training is to recognize and mitigate hazards. As Police Officers, a part of the training is to recognize and mitigate hazards. Mitigating hazards is a routine part of the job functions of these two groups. EMS providers, not dual role providers, whether volunteer, career, fire based, hospital based, commercial, etc are trained to recognize hazards and then call someone else to mitigate them. Scene safety is drilled into their heads from day one of EMT training, and there is a reliance on someone else to mitigate problems they encounter. If the initial training provided them with the knowledge and their agencies provided them with the tools to mitigate hazards, you may seen a new-found sense of confidence among EMS personnel to more effectively calculate risk and mitigate hazards. Now other parts of the country, EMS providers are far more proactive and have the necessary training and tools to mitigate certain hazards on their own. Around here, very very few systems that are modeled that way exist.

Personally, I think the only thing (especially around here) that makes the integration of EMS into these scenarios difficult is the overall lack of interest/enthusiasm from the EMS community to take the time to attend training sessions and expand on their responsibilities as EMS providers. BNechis has already pointed out this issue in this thread; and what he says is 100% true.
Whether it's a school or a supermarket, your EMS tactics really are not going to change much.
It goes back to the line of thinking, "oh that can't happen here"; "we'll never use that training"; "that's not my job"; and so on.

Because these are rapidly evolving, dynamic incidents, the scene is not technically 100% safe until a thorough and methodical search by law enforcement has been conducted and they can say with 100% certainty the scene is secure. Look at the average size of any school, and think about how long one of these searches can take. Issues arise related to multiple shooters, sleepers or shooters who disguise themselves as a "friendly", Improvised Explosive Devices, conflicting information, etc. to say that just because the shooting has stopped, the scene is 100% safe and secure.
Awareness courses are an excellent start, but as I mentioned in my previous post, in addition to just taking a class, EMS needs to be involved in thorough and on-going training with other local response agencies (Police and Fire) and needs to take an active role in designing written response guidelines and pre-plans for the schools and/or larger business/corporate buildings within their jurisdictions.
For the sake of Operational Security, the discussion of Law Enforcement tactics is not appropriate for a public forum other then the information that has already been made public knowledge that Law Enforcement is not waiting and is relying on the first arriving officers on scene (patrol and school resource officers) to rapidly deploy to the sound of gunfire and stop the immediate threat.

Personally, I think the only thing (especially around here) that makes the integration of EMS into these scenarios difficult is the overall lack of interest/enthusiasm from the EMS community to take the time to attend training sessions and expand on their responsibilities as EMS providers. BNechis has already pointed out this issue in this thread; and what he says is 100% true.
Whether it's a school or a supermarket, your EMS tactics really are not going to change much.
It goes back to the line of thinking, "oh that can't happen here"; "we'll never use that training"; "that's not my job"; and so on.