20y2

Actually, less liability then you might think. Courts have generally held that no "contract" exists between the public and emergency services for their action or inaction.

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.

Wow, where to start...............
1st) who are the morons, the students or the FD who keep responding (or roll over and ignor it) without resolving the problem? We had a similar problem in one of our dorms at CNR, with AFA from smoke detectors, we forced them to change to rate of rise detectors near the microwaves and have not had a false call in over 10 years.
2nd) Whats the chance that it could be a fire? I hope no students are trapped. All bets are off. Re-tone? How long is the delay? Without lights and siren I've arived on your scenes well ahead of the 1st engine on a "cops reporting heavy fire" and I was driving from another community (in your flycar). Now you think the times will be acceptable, when most members will ignor the tones and go back to sleep. Your unofficial duty crew responds to the house, gets the rig and responds to the call (and they are in slow motion because we all know this will be another popcorn call). Once on the scene, if they find a serious fire and request a retone for a working fire, the rest of the members will start to head toward the scene. Honestly, what kind of delays are we talking? I know that that 1st rig took a minimum of 8 minutes to get there from the alarm time(and thats being generious). 2nd due will take how long?
3rd) Both OFPC & USFA have many documents on the problems of campus fire protection and also many case studies of 100's or 1,000's of false alarms prior to a multi fatal fire in campus housing.
I remember watching Boston FD pulling up infront of the Dorm across from mine, at least twice every night. The took it serious, full response, in gear, ready to work, after 3 months of this they rolled in one night and fire was venting from 12 windows across the top floor lounge. It was an automatic alarm (started near the micro-wave. They were suprised to see it burning, but there was no delay.
Yes its tiring, but ignoring it is unprofessional and will come back to bite the dept.
So is EMS more important than fire? Ok so nights were covered, but I always had to wait forever during the day
Clueless, have you ever explained to the community who services are provided? Maybe they bought the whole concept that career and volunteer are the same?

Its that time of the year again, time to leave your district with little or no coverage to make people in another district( sometimes far enough away to be in a different area code/county/state) think that you have a full fledged state of the art firefighting force. Little do they know that what they see is usually all you have, and as for for coverage back home there may as well be a few cows wandering around the empty bays in your firehouse. Don't jump on me right away, I have seen things like this go on in a few different departments. My question to all of you who are so eager to share parade dates and shine each others brass is; when you go out of district, what apparatus do you take, who do you take, what rigs do you leave behind, who stays in the district, and what percentage of your those people who stay behind are interior firefighters? Just curious.

The Mount Vernon Police Department, Mount Vernon Police Association and City of Mount Vernon are holding a blood drive in honor of Aksel Jarosz, the 11 month old son of two Mount Vernon Police Officers. Aksel was recently diagnosed with leukemia and is currently being treated at Westchester Medical Center. The blood drive will be held at the Elk's Lodge, located at 88 West Lincoln Avenue, Mount Vernon, NY from 12 PM to 8:30 PM on Monday, January 3, 2011. Please help a family in Blue out in their time of need. To schedule a time to donate please call or text 914-355-9110 or email RockOnAksel@gmail.com

Actually, with the exception of the SOR vehicle's existence YES, the rest are all 'factpinions'. The existence of a relationship with the city/FD/PD is NOT a guarantee of future performance and in fact can be a negative because exceptions to agreements/rules/contracts are now pretty much expected or allowed (thats an opinion on my part). We can go back an forth with things that Company A has or does versus Company B has or does but at the end of the day, guess what? EMS IS A BUSINESS. There are no allegiances amongst companies, amongst municipalities, amongst workers. If Empress wants to make sure that they keep a contract, they have to make sure that they provide a service that is SO good that no one else can 1.) offer or 2.) actually provide. Does Empress do that for Yonkers, maybe, guess we'll find that out over the next few months. Did Empress do that for Mount Vernon? I'm gonna have to say no since Mount Vernon walked away from a 15 year relationship. As for the ins and outs of how or why that happened? I don't know the behind the door dealings but I do know that this is what can happen in ANY commercial provider agreement, any company is one handshake away from a 'contract', that's the nature of commercial EMS. To expect anything otherwise is laughable.