Nomination For A Hero Badge

What don’t the police understand about volunteers?

Maybe it is a time and place thing. I worked for police departments that had jack shit for resources. I accepted help from whoever was willing. Sometimes these people didn’t know they were volunteers until I shanghaied them. It was a rare occasion when people didn’t step up, once asked.

I can’t count the number of times I worked car wrecks on the Interstate. As traffic crept by, almost invariably a semi-truck would pause at the scene. The driver would offer road flares and then be on his way. 

Traffic accidents attract looky-loos. Chances are the bystanders are not equipped to perform surgery, investigate the circumstances of the wreck or clear the wreckage from the roadway. They can hold a flashlight or serve as an IV stand while the paramedics work. They can hold the dumb end of a tape measure to aid in the investigation. Most are willing, if somebody would just give them directions.

Sometimes volunteers have specialized equipment and skills that they will put at law enforcement disposal. The area where I worked had rivers, a lake and a particularly dangerous underwater cave called Jacob’s Well. None of the local agencies, fire or police, were equipped to conduct waterborne body recoveries. 

The responsibility for investigating drownings fell on the Game Warden. We cobbled together a core of SCUBA trained police officers, highway patrol and the game warden to conduct body and evidence recovery. The brains and main support for the group came from Don Dibble. He owned the local dive shop and learned diving the hard way, via the US Navy.

When we were called out, Dibble provided thousands of dollars of equipment and his expertise at no charge. That commitment almost cost him his life and certainly cost him a lot of money.

I was working an evening shift and heading to a call. Dibble and I passed each other heading in opposite directions. We waved, but I couldn’t stop. Don had been in Florida for most of the year and I didn’t realize he was back in town. About ten, that night, the game warden called me on the radio. He was responding to Jacob’s Well for a lost diver. He wanted me to alert Dibble. Don hadn’t been back in town long enough to reestablish telephone service. 

I found myself knocking on his door saying, “We have a diver down in the well.” No hi, how are you, good to see you back.”

Don’s reply, “I’ll get my keys to the shop.”

An hour later, I made the first dive into Jacob’s Well. It turns out it wasn’t one diver but two. The recovery operation wasn’t. We didn’t find either body. The commercial dive company hired by the family was no more successful than we were. About a year later, I recovered the skull, some ribs and a leg bone. It would be over twenty years before the remains of the second diver were found. 

During our recovery efforts, I urged Dibble to suspend the operation. The search indicated that the missing divers had penetrated further into the cave than was safe for recovery divers. Don made a final dive to confirm my judgment. He became trapped by a gravel slide in a tight passage, ran out of air and heaved himself free at the last moment. He grabbed a spare SCUBA tank on his way to the surface. 

He swallowed air, into his stomach. The air expanded as he headed to the surface and he ruptured his stomach. According to the doctors that treated him, they had never heard of such an injury. 

It’s not just a wild west thing, where the sheriff recruits a posse. During 9-11 boat owners set up a ferry service to travel back and forth cross the Hudson. Initially, nobody told them to do that. They probably didn’t have a clear idea of what they could do. They just knew they had to do something. They jumped in their boats and headed for Manhattan. The ensuing boat lift evacuated 500,000 people in 9 hours. Here is a video that explains the event.

There is a point to be made from this video that is easy to miss. The Coast Guard wasn’t the first on the scene. They got there pretty quickly. The commander saw the magnitude of the problem and he saw boats responding. He got on the radio and put out a call to all boats monitoring to respond. He also told them to forget rated capacity and life jackets. He told them take what you safely can. That decision was on him. A good bureaucrat would have checked captain’s tickets, life jackets, and conducted safety inspections.

The cops that I respect had a common meme, “Improvise, Adapt and Overcome. It isn’t an original thought. It is a recognition that no manual is ever going to anticipate every eventuality. It requires a degree of faith that the people who are called upon in a crisis will make do with what they have to achieve a desired result. It may not be a perfect outcome.

Fault finders may have a field day playing Monday morning quarterback. Chances are though, if the people actually involved looked to their left and right, the Monday morning quarterbacks weren’t there.

The problem in modern policing is that the attitude; improvise, adapt and overcome is an anathema to a bureaucrat. Bureaucrats like policy and plans and organization. They grow up in a culture where following the plan is a measure of success. It doesn’t matter that the plan doesn’t, or can’t work. Process is all. When one deviates from the plan, then responsibility falls on the guy that deviates from the plan.

It is that attitude that causes Sheriff’s deputies on a beach to turn away a boat loaded with supplies. The plan said no boats shall land. These same deputies then stood idly by while surfers paddled out, to off load supplies. The orders said boats, didn’t say nothing about surfboards. What a bunch of ball-less wimps.

During Katrina relief efforts, FEMA would not allow volunteers to participate until they had taken and passed a two hour course on sexual harassment. 

Being a volunteer isn’t about showing up in a t-shirt with a nifty logo. It’s about recognizing a problem,  stepping up, and saying, “I’m here, where do you need me?” 

Risk management is just another name for institutionally sanctioned cowardice.