Avoiding the Fish Wrappers

I once had a Sergeant of mine give me some advice after a challenging call for service; he said, “don’t watch the news or read the paper for the next few days. The arm chair quarterbacks will be coming out of the woodwork as they know better than us”. I heeded that advice and it helped me throughout my time as an Auxiliary Member and a Paramedic. However that only worked until the development of social media and our instantaneous lives.

You see, ‘back then’, if the reporters missed their deadline your incident didn’t make it until the next reporting cycle. And, you only had to avoid the fish wrappers and the 6 O’clock news if you wanted to miss the negative points of view. Often if the general public wanted to vent they had to take the time to write a letter and mail it to the local paper. The only other challenge was dodging the voicing of opinions in public places such as the local barber shop or pub. Of course there has always been those friends and family, that are not on the job, that are always wanting to know the gory details and coming up with their ideas on how it should have been done.

But today those that have opinions on how things should always be have a wide-open forum 24/7. Our society thrives on receiving the latest information (whether it is correct or not) immediately. This affords people the uncontrolled opportunity to instantly respond with their, often visceral, opinions. Let’s not forget that opinions are made based on personal beliefs and biases and rarely based on experience in the matter at hand.

The negative impact on those that respond to calls for service has changed dramatically today. Often, before the responders are even clear of the scene people have already jumped onto social media and began expressing their beliefs. All too often criticisms and complaints are voiced as responders are on scene addressing the issue.

Being tried in the media is not new, however now that every person with a cellphone and a data package is a “reporter” the information is released without professional thought or vetting. People take a version of an incident, often seconds and from one angle, and base their beliefs on what took place. Add comments to the video from the person recording it and you have the perfect bias foundation. If you put four people on four corners and have them all witness an incident simultaneously, they will each come up with their version; based on their angle of view, biases, personal experiences, what they’ve seen in the movies, emotions and preconceptions.

Responders today will clear a call for service and they will be instantly inundated with a plethora of criticisms, on the traditional Media, Memes, podcasts, Instagram videos, Tweets, Facebook Posts etc. It is almost impossible for those that are involved in the response to avoid the negativity. Add the usual white noise blabber from the 25 year old plus Trolls that still live in their parent’s basement and you have a continuous bombardment of “just shoot the gun out of his hand” crap.

I appreciate that we often hear from the families and friends of victims; but these points of view are marred in emotion and pain. Not to take away from their suffering, they are often not in the best frame of mind to be calling out the actions of others.

Trust me when I say that responders are more critical of their decisions and harder on themselves than anyone else. We continuously question ourselves after an incident and wonder what else we could have done. Responders have seconds to make high stress decisions that impact the future of others; those armchair quarterbacks have years to dissect their actions.  I still have “reruns” of incidents that I wonder what-if?

To those holding the line and keeping us safe every day and night, thank you. Try to disconnect from any and all media when you are involved in an incident. Don’t second guess yourself or allow the uneducated points of view of the masses to call into question your actions. You made a decision based on training, policies and procedures, experience and the event that you were presented with. The critics base their opinions on Netflix. Head on a swivel and be safe out there…and look after you when you get home.