CSI: Fairview - Intro

Nope, it's not CBS's latest wannabe prime time hit -- it's how I'll (not-so) lovingly refer to many of my coworkers here in the land of dreams and schemes.

Crime Scene Ineptitude (Idiocy? Ignorance? Incompetence? Imbicility?) seemingly runs rampant among my fellow medics and firefighters.  I'd love to be able to say it doesn't, but we all could learn a lot from the cops when it comes to responding to crime scenes.  This topic can easily (and, dare I say SHOULD be...) be addressed in an 8 hour class, so while the scope easily exceeds what I can write about here, I hope to at least increase awareness...

While it's impossible to address all of the possible crimes fire & EMS would respond on, there are a few biggies that are worth addressing briefly.

As a quick overview of my own experience, I started out on this crazy planet as the son of 2 MPs.  I became a law enforcement explorer in high school, and did my EMT training on the grounds of a highly respected police academy.  Our training consisted of significantly more hours of classroom time than the EMT curriculum requires -- roughly 350 hours of didactic time -- and a large part of that training was on thinking tactically.  We did a lot of crime scene awareness exercises, and I feel I know more than the average bear about responding to crime scenes.  My paramedic program didn't acknowledge crime scene operations beyond admonishing the age-old "scene safety" advice, but a decade of practicing what I learned in EMT school has paid off handsomely.

Despite my 10 years of experience and training, though, I AM NOT a cop, and have never worked in law enforcement.  Most of this stuff makes sense if you think about it, and, if put into practice, will greatly improve the working relationship you share with allied agencies.

In the following days (weeks?) I hope to address some of these common incident types and the mistakes we make.

Stay tuned!