Cross-Training All Public Safety Article

[DWC295 70]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sunnyvale-20130101,0,7082580,full.story

Interesting story. I think this sounds like a good idea but does it really work?

[Bnechis 3,961]

There have been a number of studies that show it only works in very specific types of communities. Remote communites in the middle of kansas, nevada, etc. where they can not call mutual aid (for fd or pd) because of distance. Also in gated "retirement" communities. These locations have minimal police needs (since they control access) and minimal fire needs (sprinklers and uniformity makes for a simpler fd ops) the primary need is EMS. Also the need for special training (swat, youth, anti-crime, tech rescue, hazmat, etc.) is greatly reduced.

The communities that are not remote that have tried it fall into 2 catagories;

1) Those that drop it after they find it costs much more (as the unions will negotiate for the increased skill sets), tremendous turnover occures (costing increased funds), training hours drop to levels that in many cases are below legally mandated hours (i.e. in NYS you would need to take a cross trained LEO off police duties for at least 100/yr to do fire training, plus EMS and increased hazmat training).

2) Those that have kept it and praised how wonderful it is like Kalamazoo MI. (but looking carefully at their stats find, crime rates sky rocket and fire losses also go up). For a similar population Kalamazoo has 4x more crime than NR and more annual homicides than Westchester, but a population of New Rochelle. THe good note is they were able to reduce the number of firefighters and cops with this program.

[Bnechis 3,961]

The primary group that praises this concept is the International City Managers Association (ICMA). This is a group that has said that NFPA 1710's staffing has no basis and is unnessesary. But the NFPA 1710 committee notes that part of the company staffing came from the ICMA handbook on fire service administration (which says 5 on engines and 6 on ladders).

They also promote response time as the only critical measure of fire service. During one study they attempted in Westchester they claimed that a hypothetical Fire Dept. with an average response time of 3min 45sec with a maximum of 3 fire fighters responding was clearly providing a better service than a dept. with a response time of 4min, but a minimum of 20 FF's.

[AFS1970 504]

I am glad it works well for the communities that use it, but there are a couple of things to remember.

First of all if your only motivation is to save money, then response times, crime rates, fire loss do not matter. I would be interested to see what insurance rates are for these towns.

Way back when this would have been easier, but I am a firm believer that allied professions progress away from eash other in a sort of V patern. The more they progress, the further apart they get. In puyblic safety this generally is due to increased duties and specialized training. Look at all the jobs that have been "civilianized" over the years, how do they compare to the way those jobs were in the years before they were changed TO SAVE MONEY?

Can a police officer be an EMT, sure, as long as you decide not to handle police calls at the same time as EMS calls. Maybe your call volume allows that, maybe it doesn't. In CT police officers require a minimum of 40 hours refresher training every 3 years, EMT's require 24 hours. Sop departments need to realize that they will be paying to tripple their EMS hour and increase the police hours by roughly half. That does not even bring in firefighter training. Just in my city career firefighters are mandated to take a 12 week program, I think the state academy is longer than that now. So this would require taking all 260 or so police officers off the road for 12 weeks. Police training is somewhere above 50o hours, I think around 540. SO that is about 13 weeks. It seems to me that just based on training , consolidation like this would not be cost effective, even with manpower reductions. If it pays for itself, it probably takes a few years to do so.

[antiquefirelt 994]

The reality is that the more narrow your scope of work the better you'll be at the specific duties you're assigned. Every time we add duties or roles, we reduce the amount of time spent on the previous specific one. Sure there are plenty of good firefighter paramedics, though this is likely more to do with the individual than the department or system. One can hardly argue that the a guy that rides a truck and is assigned primarily as the OVM won't be better at it than a guy that rotates through all the positions, just based on the ability to develop experience. Those that do both fire and EMS now must split their time, duties and subsequently experiences, thus result in a wider range of lesser experience in each discipline. Adding another wholly different discipline will only yet again water down personnel experience. So while it can be done, and is done, it is not done without some negative results. In our department where every career person is an advanced EMT or paramedic as well as a firefighter I can easily see the results of this. If our personnel as a whole we as good at their firefighting duties as they are their EMS ones, we'd be great, but when 75-80% of your responses are EMS, you develop a significant amount of experience but miss out on a number of fire related calls, reducing your experience bank. While there are specific exceptions to this, like anything, they're fewer and further between. Toss in a family life and some outside commitments and it's damn near impossible.

[JM15 386]

"Jack of many trades, expert at none" is a saying that comes to mind here.

[firedude 985]

Sunnyvale, CA has been doing this for a few years.

He's an EMT, a Firefighter, and a Police Officer. Sunnyvale, CA Style. by Department of Photography, on Flickr

NOT my photo, common shared through flickr