This question is sparked by a discussion on another board. Do ambulances get robbed in poor neighborhoods? I’m looking for statistics, or published news stories. I keep seeing anecdotes, but no evidence. A story that I have seen versions of: Ambulance responds to call in poor urban neighborhood, EMTs or Paramedics are attacked by a group of men that made a fake call for help, said men demand opiates (usually oxy and morphine).
It sounds stupid. Ambulance aren’t mobile pharmacies. I doubt they even carry opiates, and even if they did, one dose? two? Junkies know where to find junk.
The idea seems to stem from the impression that poor people and especially poor urban people of color, are like monsters. Attacking everything in arms reach, constantly looking for targets.
I’ve had trouble searching, because ambulances are frequently in stories about other crimes. I have seen instances of ambulances being stolen, but usually from hospitals.
So, rare, small cities, and at least one was an opportunistic burglary of an unattended ambulance. Not exactly the Return of the Living Dead scenario that has been proposed.
The only use I could imagine for opiates (other than recreation) is pain relief. not sure how urgent that is if the patient will be in the hospital in a few minutes, given the risk of abuse (not just robberies, but pilfering by staff). Plus the EMT may no be qualified to prescribe this sort of medication. My understanding is that nowadays such medications are strictly controlled and any prescriptions tracked. (Including profiling doctors to see they are not prescribing abnormally large amount of drugs).
Do ambulances even have opiates or similarly useful drugs on board? (Of course, that doesn’t mean some junkie would grasp that, but the rarity of such robberies suggests that they don’t have anything worth stealing.)
It does happen, even over here - this was last August:
Sad on two counts: The stuff they stole has little or no value to them (although maybe they could get a laugh from the Entonox) and it shows the sorry state of local journalism these days.
Some of our more qualified paramedics do carry the ‘good’ stuff like Morphine and Fentanyl, but it would be carried with them in their packs as they deal with the emergency.
By first glance I thought this thread would be about EMT’s robbing patients. Someone dying on the way to a hospital and showing up with an empty wallet isn’t unheard of, in fact I’d think it to be more common than the ambulance being robbed.
An EMT bag was stolen from an ambulance when I lived in my old town. AFAIK, it was never recovered, nor were the perps caught.
IIRC, they contained two doses each of morphine, and either fentanyl or meperidine, usually in Carpuject form. (It’s a prefilled syringe that can be screwed into a plunger.) They also had naloxone, along with some other non-narcotic meds, along with syringes and bandages. It was basically a tackle box in a canvas bag.
That house they just carted the patient away from might not be such a bad one to burglarize, either.
That’s how it works here. They have a med pack with all sorts of drugs but it isn’t kept on the truck. Most of the drugs carried by paramedics aren’t of interest to a drug seeker (Epi pens, loads of cardiac and stroke meds, O2, asthma treatments, emergency diabetic episode meds) but some might be (opiates, tranquilizers/sedatives, muscle relaxers).
I watched Nightwatch for a while. It’s similar to LivePD/Cops, but the cameras are following EMTs (mostly, they do ride with fire and police too).
Many of those ambulances do carry IV narcotics (as well as benzos). I was surprised. I know people are in pain, but it’s only a few minutes to the hospital and/or I thought the docs at the hospital would have a harder time diagnosing someone that’s not in (as much) pain.
That depends. In Pensyltucky, it can be blocks to a hospital in the city or the better part of an hour in more remote parts of the state. Even within a given county, the end nearest to a city can be urban/suburban while the other end can be quite rural.
Our ambulance had multiple ‘jump bags’, one BLS (for EMTs, or basic calls for the paramedics) & one ALS, or for the medics only. There are no meds in the BLS bag & limited meds in the ALS bag. They are stored in a number-tag controlled pouch - If you fill it up & put tag #123456 on the zippers, I only need to confirm that that tag is there when I do my rig check. As long as that tag is on there, no one sees the meds inside because we know that you put them in there & sealed that up & logged it. There are additional quantities kept in the ambulance itself, in a locked compartment that only the medics have a key for. Again, these are behind a one-time use control numbered tag. Same with the supply closet back at the station. If we use, say, morphine on a call in needs to be restocked once we’re back in quarters. Our station actually has electronic key fobs into that area so we know what medic accessed the ‘drug locker’ in case anything is missing & not signed out properly.
If we call a helicopter for transport, they have additional meds that we aren’t licensed to carry. They can push anesthesia-like sedatives like Propofol to knock someone out. An unruly patient is much more dangerous in a helicopter than an ambulance, especially one where the driving area is separated from the patient area.
As for field diagnosis, there are certain things that we can diagnose in the field, like major (femur, hip) fracture. No need to keep the patient in pain any longer than necessary, especially if they’re going to be moved & driven over a bumpy ride to the hospital.
There are many places where it’s not just a few minutes to the hospital. Where I work we get plenty of patients where transport from the original scene is >30 minutes. Say you’re in a car wreck and have a broken femur. How long would you say is too long to wait for pain medication? And we get transfers from small critical access hospitals that are a good 2 hour drive away.
The specifics vary between hospital systems but an Advanced Life Support ambulance is likely to carry opiates and benzos and may also carry other sedatives like propofol or ketamine.
The last time I called EMTs to my house for a medical emergency, the police arrived first, made sure the scene was secure, then called in the ambulance that was waiting around the corner.
Mr. White got shotgunned by an addict who would record ‘Mickey’ as a perky cheerleader 5 years later. An argument over it (the ambulance robbery, not the ‘Mickey’ song) caused a fight between J.R. Ewing, Dick Butkus, the anti-X-Men senator Kelly, and a real-life serial rapist. I’m not kidding.
