Originally published at: Arizona cops calmly watch man drown in lake | Boing Boing
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The police did nothing wrong. Even morons need to take accountability for their own actions.
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FTFY.
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I was reading the comments over at Daily Kos, which emphasize that one should not jump into water to rescue a drowning person if one does not have specialized training or a flotation device. On account of how people tend to die in the process.
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I was a lifeguard when I was younger, and um yeah. If that cop jumps in with that gear, he’s going straight to the bottom. But it seems like every first responder, be they EMTs, Police, or Fire, could get 10 hours of Emergency Water Safety procedure training every 5 years, and a throwable flotation device need not take up that much room in a squad car’s trunk.
This comes back to the vast gulf between what most people ASSUME cops are trained to do, and what they are ACTUALLY trained to do.
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Tempe Town Lake was created by a 7 gate dam. My understanding is that this incident took place near the dam (which would explain the pylon) and that the drowning victim was caught in the whirlpool of one of the gates. I do not know what other options the cops had to help him, but going into the water near a dam gate was not one of them.
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There are other options, like throwing a line, calling for someone who is qualified, etc.
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At the very least you can try to get something for them to reach or GET HELP
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WTF does the man’s sartorial choices have to do with anything? (because most homeless don’t get much of a choice about clothing)
Fucking hell.
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I would not have jumped in after him either, he did this to himself. But I also would have summoned the proper emergency people.
He learned, albeit late, one of the fundamental laws of the universe: If you do something stupid, there is often no road back from it.
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