Rescuers stood by while man drowned in Alameda
On Memorial Day at Alameda's Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach, police officers and firefighters stood by as Raymond Zack, 53, stood in the water, apparently intent on suicide, until he drowned. They would not go into the water after him, they explained, because a 2009 department policy prohibited water rescues in this island community. An unidentified woman finally swam out and brought his body to shore...
Bet they saved themselves a ton of paperwork.
...Weaver noted that a 2009 policy - revoked this week - prohibited firefighters from participating in water rescues. The policy was implemented after budget cuts ended water-rescue training. OK, I counter, but surely some first responders had been trained before 2009. Weaver's answer: Yes, but they lacked the right equipment.
Weaver assured me that the firefighters who were on the scene feel horrible about what happened. "Every one of our members who was on that scene wishes that the policy would have allowed them to do something at some point," he explained.
Any firefighter who broke with policy could have landed in a world of bureaucratic payback. That's the problem. No government worker in America gets fired for following the rules...
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