A variation of this is actually an interview question for folks seeking a career in law enforcement. The scenario is along the line of *“you and your partner are transporting an inmate when you come upon the scene of a car accident with apparent injuries. What do you do?” *
What you don’t do is say you’d leave your partner alone with the inmate, or the inmate by himself. You advise dispatch of the accident and remain focused on your assignment. One of the interviewers will try to bust your nuts by being shocked that you wouldn’t help injured people. That’s when you work in how the accident could be a set up for an escape attempt.
The guy in your post would have had his application ripped up!
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some Houston Metro buses pulled over with cops behind them, but I don’t know what they were doing. Could have been there for emergency services for all I know.
I’ve experienced the latter situation, as a passenger. The driver was on an unfamiliar route with a turn that was easy to miss if you didn’t know the line pretty well. I’ve also had the dubious pleasure of bus breakdowns. Never fun when you’ve already been late for work once that week because of a train problem and you get to the bus to find a pool of fluids under it, since a lot of bosses would be skeptical of “bus/train broke down” twice in one week. When I got to work, I told my boss I wasn’t sure she was going to believe me, then explained what had happened. She found it totally believable, which probably says something about public transit in my city.
That’s crazy if you don’t mind me saying so (at least depending upon what the accident looks like - but suppose it was something where your intervention could mean the difference between life and death). It’s not that big a deal if an inmate escapes, you lock up so many for silly things that I’m sure you can find another quite quickly
Once dispatch is advised other units will be along in 7 minutes or less.
If an escaped inmate hurt you or someone you cared about I’d bet you be in the Pit screaming your ignorant head off about it.
Escape isn’t the only concern. A person in custody is my responsibility. While I leave him alone unwatched in the squad he finds a way to hurt himself, or someone else comes along and hurts him and I’m not there to prevent it. Now my ass is really grass.
And if the people in the car wreck burn to death beforehand?
I appreciate that. But I would rather that avoidable death and injury didn’t occur. Which is why I stated it depends on the accident. Adopting a blanket policy either way is foolish.
Ambulances run a very similar policy, if you come upon a car accident while on the way to another high priority call or already have a patient on board, you go past and call it in. The clock has been ticking longer on your current call than the one you just found.
One of our guys in my EMT days was suspended for a week for stopping and assisting at an accident they witnessed while sitting at a traffic light, car broadsided a bus ejecting the 8 months pregnant passenger of the car through the windshield and bounced off the side of the bus, breaking two windows on the bus in the process. Huge mess, I was on the third ambulance to get there (driver of car and several bus passengers were also injured)
No, it isn’t. An established policy on scenarios like this allows things to operate in an effective manner. I find it ironic how folks who have no experience in this field routinely point out how it should be run.
In Mexico, I have been on two buses that were stopped by police. One was a city bus, where the driver ran a left turn signal light. The driver, before exiting the bus to talk to the police, grabbed a 20 peso bill to help with the discussion.
The second time was on a long distance bus. The federal police stopped the bus at midnight and came through with flashlights. They searched a passenger’s backpack then exited.
Once in high school on the the buses (not the one I rode on) got pulled over & ticked for littering. I pretty sure the student (or his parents rather) had to pay the ticket, not the driver, but the entire student body got read the riot act by our principal.
I know a police officer who once managed to stop a train and ticket the engineer for speeding. Yes, it stood up in court. Buses are certainly fair game!
Many many years ago here there was an interesting case. A bus pulled out from a bus stop directly in front of a police car, in heavy traffic. The bus was pulled over and the driver given a ticket. This was greeted by some degree of approval from some members of the populace who felt aggrieved at bus drivers doing this. About three months later the law was changed, and it became an offence not to give way to a bus pulling into traffic from a stop.
This becomes an interesting question, and given I was thinking in this vein from the thread on morals versus ethics, I would be inclined to say that if this scenario ever played out in reality, any officer hiding behind the rule book would be in a very difficult situation. It is never this simple. If someone actually died in the accident, say as a result of serious blood loss, the public would want to ask some serious questions. Whether an officer could reasonably defend a civil suit brought by the relatives would make for interesting times. I’m not sure criminal negligence would not be a possible issue too. The rule book is only a partial defence.
You could come up with other scenarios: You drive past a mugging in progress. You drive past a gang of thugs beating the crap out of someone who is clearly in desperate danger. You drive past someone standing on a bridge clearly intent on suicide. You drive past a house on fire with someone at a window clearly trapped and in imminent danger for their life. You drive past a grassy knoll and see someone with a sniper rifle taking aim at a cavalcade of cars driving past the book repository.
Or more fun. You are driving with a prisoner and partner, and you hit a car and clearly injure people in the other car. Do you call for assistance and remain in your car? What if the other car catches fire and the occupants are clearly trapped? Do you back up, sit in your car, radio for the fire brigade and watch the occupants of the other car die from a safe distance?
Simple question really. No other person in society would be excused from not helping. Indeed in many situations it would be a serious offence not to render assistance. It becomes astounding that a policeman is able to cite a rule book that provides them with a regulatory free pass.
I’m not trying to be be difficult, the simple problem is that life, and ethical decisions are not usefully governed by a rule book. Ethics involves being able to think for yourself. There becomes a point where the only ethical decision involves deliberately breaking the rules. I would be very unhappy if I though the standard police training and attitudes were that the rules always trump reasonable societal ethical standards.
Rules are useful for capturing principles of normal operations. But having enough inteligence to know where the boundary of the rules is, and where ethical behaviour begins is part of being both professional and basically human.
Really? If I see someone in trouble, I’m legally obligated to help them?
ETA: Wikipedia suggests that there isn’t normally a duty unless there’s a special connection between the person in peril and the would-be rescuer. It also says some states have laws that require reporting, but that those are often ignored.
In Glasgow I was on a Bus that must have been running late because he got pulled over for speeding. We all got off and on the next bus to turn up - bet he got fired.
I’m not in the US, so I was making a statement that was really worldwide. I agree, the US typically does not place such requirements on its citizens, but the Wiki cite presented indeed proves exactly the cite of those countries that do make such a requirement. I do find it a little disturbing that there is a cite where the police have “have no duty to protect any citizen not in custody,” which makes somewhat of a mockery of the motto “to serve and protect” of the LAPD. This is clearly a peculiarity of the US law, and many other countries in the world disagree. It is also exactly where ethics and law can diverge. Many people engage in unethical behaviour simply because they can hide behind a law, or lack of law.
Which seems totally sane, and very well worded. There is enough guidance and leeway to allow intelligent and defensable decisions to be made, and yet be clear about the overarching responsibilities.
What is also refreshing - the safety of the prisoner is important, but the risk of escape does not figure in the question of providing assistance to others. The idea that you should avoid providing assistance because it could be a set-up to allow the prisoner to escape simply astounded me. In any ethical society you render assistance and let the idiot run if he is stupid enough.
