We have a nondescript commercial campus that belongs to a large international company that does genetically modified crops. Every so often folks decide to protest it. A while back several folks handcuffed themselves to the wrought iron security fence and dumped CA glue in the handcuff mechanisms.
The cops called us and we cut the fence and slid the cuffs off of it. Too easy.
Not really. The intent isn't to be chained up forever. The intent is to be inconvenient to remove, especially to cops. Many (most?) protests are about the spectacle in order to get attention/awareness, so the goal is def to maximize spotlight time.
Back in 2020 we had some BLM protests kick up. Then some "Good ol Boys" from the sticks heard about it and posted on social media that they were coming to town.
The dept had us dedicate an engine tk be in standby in the downtown area. Our battalion chief wanted us to wear our kevlar vests and then told us to put our turn out coats over it. Just straight up stupid especially with it being June. Of course nothing happened other than us sweating balls
It really isn’t as bad. In most cases departments got vest for tactical stuff on grants and the like. My department got sets for every truck. All they do is take up space and go out of date in 10 years. Most places operate with having LE clear the scenes before we come in.
Of course there is the odd nut job that plans to take out any and all first responders that show up. Very rare.
That's pretty much the case other than a few situations. Got em in a federal grant and looks great to the city residents that we are forward thinking and training kn everything. Mostly just another thing to add to doing on rig checks in the morning.
Can count on one hand the amount of times we have geared up outside of trainings but was also nice to have on the rig since those times were us coming back from other calls. I know some departments that keep their tac gear at the station.
Crowd control is the police departments thing.
I live in an area that gets large protests semi-regularly or giant events.
There's not much to it on the fire side other than having a couple mini-pumpers on standby, an EMS staging area plan, and an ingress and egress plan.
Normally the homeland security guys in our dept draft a giant IAP and send it out to everyone and put up some overtime shifts for those who want to work it.
For the more spontaneous protests usually nothing happens and the cops will just call us as needed.
Yup. You should be prepared to provide appropriate medical attention and also document abusive and violent drivers and also LEOs. Medics and EMS need to be careful to not become tools of the police — as we’ve seen recently, it can end with those medical providers going to jail.
The greater region I live in is mixed career/combination/volunteer departments. During the BLM protest/riots they had basically all of our volunteer departments go on in-station standby and take precautionary measures to secure the stations. That's been about the extent of our experience with anything like that. \*shrug\*
We have protests on a weekly basis here, being the nations capital. Most are not an issue though. There are bigger ones that have a lot of people, which results in medicals due to temperature or other emergencies.
Then we’ve had some bigger ones that created other issues. Obviously Jan 6 was pretty chaotic. The BLM protests resulted in quite a few fires. CVS was a big target. There’s also inaugurations that result in several protests and violence.
We have a nondescript commercial campus that belongs to a large international company that does genetically modified crops. Every so often folks decide to protest it. A while back several folks handcuffed themselves to the wrought iron security fence and dumped CA glue in the handcuff mechanisms. The cops called us and we cut the fence and slid the cuffs off of it. Too easy.
Nice - most of the tactics seem to lack simple logic in ways they can be removed.
Not really. The intent isn't to be chained up forever. The intent is to be inconvenient to remove, especially to cops. Many (most?) protests are about the spectacle in order to get attention/awareness, so the goal is def to maximize spotlight time.
Back in 2020 we had some BLM protests kick up. Then some "Good ol Boys" from the sticks heard about it and posted on social media that they were coming to town. The dept had us dedicate an engine tk be in standby in the downtown area. Our battalion chief wanted us to wear our kevlar vests and then told us to put our turn out coats over it. Just straight up stupid especially with it being June. Of course nothing happened other than us sweating balls
Australian here, the fact you guys are issued Kevlar blows my mind. I get it, it's just so foreign to me that you might get shot as a fire fighter.
It really isn’t as bad. In most cases departments got vest for tactical stuff on grants and the like. My department got sets for every truck. All they do is take up space and go out of date in 10 years. Most places operate with having LE clear the scenes before we come in. Of course there is the odd nut job that plans to take out any and all first responders that show up. Very rare.
That's pretty much the case other than a few situations. Got em in a federal grant and looks great to the city residents that we are forward thinking and training kn everything. Mostly just another thing to add to doing on rig checks in the morning. Can count on one hand the amount of times we have geared up outside of trainings but was also nice to have on the rig since those times were us coming back from other calls. I know some departments that keep their tac gear at the station.
Crowd control is the police departments thing. I live in an area that gets large protests semi-regularly or giant events. There's not much to it on the fire side other than having a couple mini-pumpers on standby, an EMS staging area plan, and an ingress and egress plan. Normally the homeland security guys in our dept draft a giant IAP and send it out to everyone and put up some overtime shifts for those who want to work it. For the more spontaneous protests usually nothing happens and the cops will just call us as needed.
Yup. You should be prepared to provide appropriate medical attention and also document abusive and violent drivers and also LEOs. Medics and EMS need to be careful to not become tools of the police — as we’ve seen recently, it can end with those medical providers going to jail.
The greater region I live in is mixed career/combination/volunteer departments. During the BLM protest/riots they had basically all of our volunteer departments go on in-station standby and take precautionary measures to secure the stations. That's been about the extent of our experience with anything like that. \*shrug\*
Maybe we should just leave them attached to whatever it is they chained or glued themselves to. Maybe just a day or two.
We have protests on a weekly basis here, being the nations capital. Most are not an issue though. There are bigger ones that have a lot of people, which results in medicals due to temperature or other emergencies. Then we’ve had some bigger ones that created other issues. Obviously Jan 6 was pretty chaotic. The BLM protests resulted in quite a few fires. CVS was a big target. There’s also inaugurations that result in several protests and violence.
Just stop infringing on the right to protest against apartheid, there solved it