Prison Inmate Staffed FD Makes a Water Rescue

[INIT915 1,119]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/04/20/california.inmates.rescue/index.html?hpt=T2

Anyone ever seen anything like this?

A San Quentin officer alerted the prison's inmate-staffed, in-house fire department around 1 a.m. after hearing faint calls for help and seeing a man and a woman in the water near the facility's shoreline, prison spokesman Lt. Sam Robinson said.

Prison staffers and fire department inmates went into the water and grabbed the man, who was without a life jacket, and lifted him over a retaining wall to get him on land, Robinson said. San Rafael Fire Department personnel arrived and helped rescue the woman, who was wearing a life jacket.

[99subi 121]

I'm in total shock with this.Granted they did not commit violent or sexual crimes they still did something wrong to get in there.The fact that they are paramedics is shocking as well.

Edited April 21, 2011 by 99subi

[ny10570 745]

Many paramedics have criminal records. There are also many prisoner staffed fire companies around the country that are at times used for mutual aid by their surrounding communities.

[99subi 121]

Do you think these guys where medics before they got in there or the Prison trained them? I cant see all these people being medics on the outside and then all wound up in the same place. ALso how would they run mutual aid? Do they have apparatus that they drive? This all seems pretty crazy to me....

[texastom791 31]

How would training work for them don't you have to do ride alongs before you get your paramedic ?

Edited April 21, 2011 by texastom791

[Bnechis 3,961]

Do you think these guys where medics before they got in there or the Prison trained them? I cant see all these people being medics on the outside and then all wound up in the same place. ALso how would they run mutual aid? Do they have apparatus that they drive? This all seems pretty crazy to me....

Very common in CA.

CDF uses inmate labor of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to assist with fire suppression and logistics.

CDF crew carrier on International chassis of the Pine Grove Fire Crew, California (California Youth Authority). With trucks like this one agencies carries inmate fire crews from several prisons to the incident areas.

CA Dept of Corrections

ASSEMBLYMAN MARK LENO TO HONOR INMATE FIREFIGHTERS FROM THE CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

More than 2,750 inmate firefighters, housed at one of 38 conservation camps in California, fought side-by-side with other firefighters during the fire season of 2003. CDC provides and supervises these inmates to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. These inmates worked more than 1.7 million hours on hundreds of fires, saving California taxpayers several million dollars on firefighting costs.

[Alpinerunner 61]

Sounds good to me. They are helping the community and learning skills that will help them get a job on the outside, and not wasting away shanking eachother.

[firemoose827 324]

Sounds good to me. They are helping the community and learning skills that will help them get a job on the outside, and not wasting away shanking eachother.

I agree. Sometimes, good people get caught in the middle of bad things, or good people do bad things during desperate times like stealing to provide for a hungry family. Everyone deserves a second chance to prove they are sorry, and regret what they did and repay their debt to society, why not allow them to do so in a productive way? These guys ran out into the water and attempted to save lives by putting their own life on the line...do you think real ruthless criminals would have done the same?

We have a correctional facility that deals with teenaged offenders and they always come out to large brush fires to help with mop-up. They take the less-violent ones that have had some rehab and train them in wildland firefighting, than they come out and assist us hit hot spots and clean up. We have never had an issue with them.