Rochester’s mayor was “flabbergasted” by the footage, which shows EMTs calling police on a man they say “jumped” at them “demanding oxygen” before refusing to “let go” of them in an “unacceptable” fashion.
The mayor of Rochester, NY is calling for an investigation into an incident which has left him “deeply concerned.”
On November 30, EMTs responded to a man “experiencing a medical crisis,” before they called police on him and had him removed from their ambulance. He then collapsed on the sidewalk nearby … and died more than two weeks later.
In video from the scene released by Major Malik D. Evans on Thursday, cops are seen responding to the ambulance. An EMT tells the responding officer, “I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but he will not get out of our truck. And he’s gotta go.”
According to the Mayor’s office, cops responded to an assault call.
“Sir, it’s a wrap, looks like they want you out,” the cop tells the man, who has not been identified. He tells the officer he couldn’t breathe, before one of the EMTs interjects.
“We tried to help, honey, but the way you got in here and the way you lunged at us is no way of somebody asking for help,” she tells him. “Honey, you told us you had pain from drinking water and then you came in and you jumped at me, demanding oxygen and you would not let go of me.”
Another EMT can also be heard telling cops, “He grabbed my partner’s wrists.”
“I was freaking out. You’d freak out too if you can’t breathe,” the man says, defending himself. The officer, however, tells him, “I hear you. I’d probably try to control myself a little bit better. I’m not gonna grab on anybody.”
When asked if someone will take him to the hospital, one of the EMT says, “Honey, we tried to take you but that was unacceptable. There was no reason for that. There was no issue.”
The man — who appears to still have breathing issues — then exits the ambulance and walks over to a bench on the sidewalk to wait for another ambulance. Blue light camera footage from the area then shows him fall to the ground, where he lays unresponsive for more than two minutes before anyone takes notice. It’s even longer before EMTs come over from the original ambulance, which still hadn’t left the scene.
The video stops as they begin to treat the man.
During a press conference on Thursday, Mayor Evans said he was “flabbergasted” to only just learn about the incident this week, a month and a half after it had occurred.
“We learned of this incident from the individual’s family members. I know many of these members, they are active in the community. Who shared he had passed away from this health emergency that he had called to get help to address,” claimed the mayor. “This incident is very concerning to me and my colleagues up here.”
He said the man died from his health issue just before Christmas, adding he was “not pleased that I was learning about this just now.”
“I want to understand why they chose to call the police, I want to understand why personnel required someone in distress to be removed from an ambulance instead of taken directly to the hospital. We must get to the bottom of this,” he also urged.
Evans then said new processes and safeguards are needed to “ensure this does not ever happen again,” before saying EMTs must provide the “same care and compassion they would provide their own loved ones” to everyone else.
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“I spoke to the family today and all they want is answers. They’re not asking for anything unreasonable. They just know that their brother, that their father, that their cousin called for ambulance services and they got a call he was dead,” he continued. “They have not gotten any information yet. They’ve gotten zero information on what happened here. We want to make sure the family gets answers, as it relates to this information.”
While Evans said the video doesn’t show the man “doing anything in the least that is threatening,” he added that he couldn’t comment on what EMTs were saying happened before police arrived.
The mayor has also called for AMR — the city’s ambulance service provider — to investigate what happened. Per the city, Rochester Police Chief David Smith has also called for an immediate internal investigation of the incident by RPD’s Professional Standards Section.
The city also said AMR has “committed to working to determine the reasons this incident occurred, address the gaps in the care that was provided to this patient, and fix whatever led to this unacceptable situation.”
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