After seeing the way that emergency medical personnel in Staten Island responded to Eric Garner’s lifeless body, some people began to blame the Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) crew for the death of Mr. Garner. All over the internet and on the news many people wondered out loud “Why didn’t they do CPR?” “What took them so long to get there?” “If they [the EMT’s who arrived on scene] did more maybe Eric Garner would have lived!”
As an EMT who works 911 calls in NYC I too was shocked by what i saw on video. However, I am not here to either throw these young EMTs under the bus or play Monday morning quarterback. Would I have done things differently? Yes, absolutely. Any good EMT watching the video knows exactly what they did and did not do right. Will those EMTs work as emergency first responders
again? No I don’t see that happening at all.
However, like I said I am not here to dissect their patient care, that is being handled by investigators with the NYC Fire Department and the hospital the EMTs worked for. I am writing to bring some additional food for thought to the table and to make sure we stay focused on the real criminals who ended this man’s life.
As an EMT in one of the most oppressed areas of NYC, on an almost daily basis I am called to treat a patient who has run into the NYPD, and ended up needing emergency medical care. Whether it’s a gun shot wound, a baton to the body or a fist to the face, emergency medical workers of NYC are constantly saving the lives of people who encounter the daily reality of police brutality. While we must work closely with the police we understand that the police care about the arrest and the charge and not about the physical well being of the “perp” or “suspect.” As the highest medical authority on the scene of an incident any EMT could tell you stories about how they had to bark at a police officer for not doing what is medically best for the patient. I say this because despite what the Eric Garner video shows the public should know the vast majority of us are battling against the NYPD’s devaluation of human life just as much as any activist or revolutionary on the street.
Second, we should note that those EMTs and paramedics who arrived on scene to help Eric Garner work for Richmond University Medical Center, a private, for-profit hospital (aka a business). What many New Yorkers are not aware of is that many of the EMTs responding to our 911 calls are coming not from the NYC Fire Department but from private hospitals that pay their workers as little as possible and provide virtually no health benefits.
I have yet to meet a single EMT on the job more than four years who has not suffered a serious injury while providing emergency patient care. EMT work is a very physically taxing and dangerous profession and yet so many of those we call on to help us in our worst moments are forced to worry about their own physical well being before that of their patient. Unlike NYC public EMTs employed by the Fire Department, these private EMTs can not fall back on quality “Line of Duty Injury” benefits so they are forced to think more about their own personal well being even if it means sacrificing patient care. Once again capitalism and the quest for more profits puts peoples lives at risk. Furthermore since these private EMT workers do not have a union they are constantly either forced into working very long shifts, or, because of how little they make are always working overtime shifts to make ends meet.
To top it all off any EMT who has worked in the “privates” (as they are known to us) can tell you of all the outrageous (and illegal) cost cutting unwritten policies that these EMT’s are forced to comply with despite the negative effects it may have on patient care. (This is a whole other article!) Of course they will only tell it to you in hushed tones because without a union they are retaliated against for speaking out against their bosses.
So sisters and brothers looking for justice let us be clear. The NYPD killed Eric Garner. He died for the crime of allegedly selling cigarettes. He died by virtue of an illegal choke hold applied by undercover NYPD detectives. Bill De Blasio and Police Commissioner Bratton say that the NYPD has changed from the Bloomberg era. However, the sickening video of Eric Garner’s last few moments alive show that the NYPD’s “new” approach to policing, is really just Bratton’s old “broken windows theory.” The video of Eric Garner pleading to be left alone by the police illustrates that this “new” NYPD will treat minor “annoyances” or “quality of life” issues as crimes punishable by up to even death. Justice for Eric Garner means stopping once and for all the criminalization of the poor, the young and the Black and Brown. It also means making sure our healthcare workers are not at the mercy of for-profit business disguising themselves as hospitals. For that to happen we need a strong and militant political movement.
