On the other hand...........uncharged
Posted on 05/07/2006 5:19:26 AM PDT by Mr. Brightside
Father Faces Felony Charges For Rushing To Injured Daughter's Side
POSTED: 12:22 pm EDT May 4, 2006 UPDATED: 6:27 pm EDT May 4, 2006
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. -- A panicked father who pushed past rescue workers to get to his injured daughter at the scene of a car crash now faces felony charges.
Karl Swanson of Holiday, Fla., told the St. Petersburg Times he got a call from his daughter's cell phone late Tuesday: "Listen," the caller said, "your daughter's been in a terrible accident. She's in critical condition. It doesn't look good."
Florida Highway Patrol troopers said the 48-year-old anesthesiologist drove into the accident scene, narrowly missing an emergency helicopter, then pushed past a trooper and a paramedic to get to his 18-year-old daughter's side.
Swanson was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer and battery on an emergency medical care provider. He is free on $10,000 bond.
"Basically, he made a very serious and stressful situation worse," Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Larry Coggins said. "When people just relax for a second and listen to reason, we always let them see their loved one."
Swanson's daughter, 18-year-old Krystyna, remains in serious condition at a hospital. On Wednesday, he defended his response to the crash.
"They told me my daughter was dying," he said Wednesday. "They told me to go there. So that's what I did."
They didn't tell you to almost crash your car into the an emergency helicopter that was to take your daughter to the hospital
Unless he actually forcefully hurt someone give him a break.
I'd flip out too.
That's their story.
Who knows what the true story is.
On the other hand...........uncharged
I'm going to give him a pass on this. Who knows how any of us would react to a phone call like that.
I'm not sure calling a parent to the scene of an accident is the wisest move.
So, let me get this straight, after the father is told that his daughter is dying at a crash scene, he's supposed to relax, take a deep breath, meditate to achieve a higher consciousness, and then ask the cops' permission to see his dying daughter?
"When people just relax for a second and listen to reason, we always let them see their loved one."............ I do not blame the guy one bit. He is the girls father, they should have never tried to keep him from entering the accident scene. Nobody needs to LET me see my loved one, including cops or paramedics.
Just try getting between me and my hurt child and see what happens.
This is more adroitly posted by AP than usual. One can't tell whether AP is (1) glad a father is going to be charged with a felony (2) laughing at someone who rushed to the aid of their child or (3) glad that terrorist tactics have made officials so wary they fight off a man (clearly an American of long descent) by instinct, perhaps even causing him to panic, when he was only deeply afraid for his daughter.
Most people don't actually have any experience dealing with trauma, we just have a concentrated dose piled on us daily by the press, so I would expect this father would not have known what the correct protocols were, nor that they had probably been significantly tightened. That he was agitated probably only panicked the rescue workers. And AP gets to add to our malaise and unhappiness.
Win-win for the drive-by media once again. *sigh*
If you don't want a paniced parent on the scene, don't call the guy and tell him, "it doesn't look good".
Too bad his name isn't Patrick Kennedy.
What is your purpose in posting this?
That's going to be one really short deliberation by the jury.
The civil rights trial brought by the father against the police will be slighty longer and much more expensive.
The DA is an idiot.
tsmith?
Is your 1st name Travis and do you live in the D.C. area?
Just checking if you are my nephew?
He probably just pushed past the officer, if he even saw him. NO ONE stands between me and my children. NO ONE. Funny, I didn't see Cynthia McKinney with a $10,000 bail for hitting an officer.
Government agents are always right.
Those who defend government agents are always right about government agents always being right.
Those who don't defend government agents are wrong.
agreed
And yet our people in Congress can punch officers and not face a charge.
I don't know of a parent here who wouldn't have done the same.
He let me go.
I don't know what happened, but battery can be simple touching, particularly of a police person. Case probably will not go to trial.
The father is an anesthesiologist and probably had more medical training than the paramedics. "even if I put my loved one in more danger." Just who makes that call, the cops? What realy happened here is the guy questioned"authority figures" so they charge him with a felony just to "teach him a leson". How dare he question their authority.
Nor will you.
Laws are only to keep the pesants in line and to protect the Royalty from them.
They are not indended to interfere with the activities of the Royalty as demonestrated by the Mc Kinney and Kennedy incidents.
What's your purpose in asking that question?
Nope...it's Tami and I live in CT.
He should also be charged with the more serious offense of allowing his daughter to be named "Krystyna."
This is what he looks like in real life. This is what he looks like in his ad offering plastic surgery in Clearwater, Florida. 
This guy must hate his kid because he did everything he could to try to kill her.
You are assuming facts not in evidence. He didn't necessarily "almost crash into" a helicopter, that's just what the pissed off cop said, and there's no evidence that the helicopter in question was there to evac his daughter.
I drove an ambulance for a living in the NYC area in the 70s. There are a lot of "professional" cops and "emergency workers" who are way less about being professional and way more about being "in charge." We called them "Napoleons." It sounds to me like this is the case here. Yeah the father was out of line but I bet the cop was all about "I'm in charge here! You do what I say!"
In NY in the 70s the brand new good Samaritan law said that the senior medical person on the scene of a medical emergency has authority over all other personnel there, police, fire, ambulance, etc.. The father in question is listed as an anesthesiologist, which is an MD. In NY, at least under the law at the time I worked there, he could have told them to go take a flying leap and been within his rights. In fact he could have had them arrested for interfering with him.
I had just such a confrontation with a "town clown" cop in the town where I grew up. In addition to working the professional ambulance I also was one of the crew chiefs for the local volunteer ambulance. We got a call about a woman down in the small grocery store in "the village" section of town. We were there within 5 minutes and I started to assess the patient. She was out cold and I couldn't revive her, though her vitals were fine. The only cop on the scene told me to grab her legs and we'd drag her outside to get her out of the way. I refused and told him I was in charge of the patient and to stay out of my way. I had EMT training and I knew that he had failed his last advanced lifesaving course because I'd helped to teach it. I also knew about an incident at a local horse riding competition where he and some other local cops had moved a teen aged girl after she was injured (but conscious) without securing her neck, which was broken, and she died. This was before the ambulance arrived on scene. I wasn't on that crew and it all got hushed up, but it really pissed me off.
The cop in this incident freaked after I "refused to follow his orders" and was going to arrest me. I stood up (I'm bigger than he is) and quietly, nose to nose, cited chapter and verse of the NY State law that said if he interfered with me I'd have him arrested and charged and make sure that he was prosecuted (which I could do in both that town and county as I had the connections). He stormed off and we took care of the patient (she'd had a reaction to medication and we needed to get her to the hospital before they could diagnose and properly treat her, but she ended up being fine).
Two hours later I got a call from the town chief of police ready to read me the riot act because of the story his officer had told him. I calmly explained the real situation to him and he ended up agreeing that I had done the only thing I could (particularly after I reminded him of the horse riding incident). The cop didn't get fired, but he was taken off of regular patrol for 6 months and put on traffic.
Napoleons are almost as bad as over eager volunteers. We said they had "voly fever." It's frightening when you have a Napoleon with voly fever. It's even worse when you get them on a Friday night, worse still if it's a Friday when the welfare checks come out and worst of all when that night is a full moon. I usually scheduled time off when all of those came together.
FL Highway patrol officers tend to have a VERY PISS POOR attitude.
I am very sorry but in this case the cops are dead wrong. Some rectum with badge fever would have kept a father from his daughter's last moments.
"Can I see my daughter? They said she was fading fast."
"Now hold your horses, son, we got procedures around here. And it sounds like somebody's Momma didn't teach him to use the Magic Word. Do you know the Magic Word?"
Then I guess we should be thankful the incident didn't occur in Durham, NC.
temporary insanity.
I would not trust that if the FL Highway partol said it.
FL highway patrol is notorious for being egomaniac control freaks (they resent the fact they are called glorified speeding ticket patrol)
The FL highway patrol "exagerates".
*Exactly...
That was very well put. This is the flip side of the phenomenon of the unprinted headline: "Man shoots & kills home invader.
If they print THAT headline, it will be followed by the addendum that the man was elderly, or disturbed an Alzheimer's patient etc. This is why there has to be a banglist. MSM won't touch it with a 10' pole. -Or that the "intruder" may have simply wandered into the wrong house by "mistake".
What is your purpose in posting this?
Question authority.. There is no one more dangerous than a fanatic who knows he is right.
Because it is not an interesting issue. Rather, it is an exercise in rabble rousing in which you have succeeded.
don't count on that.
The prosecutors in FL tend to be hacks who pander to the police. It takes a BLATENT RECORDED scandal for them to turn on a cop and then it makes the one cop a sacrificial scapegoat.
The FL prosecutors will charge and then plea it out as an intimidation face saver.
Sadly good cops of the EXCEPTION not the rule.
"When people just relax for a second and listen to reason, we always let them see their loved one." ??????????!!!!!
That is exactly what is wrong with America at the moment. Unbelievable psychotic control freaks throwing their weight around. That father did the right thing, what every loving parent would do.
He'd be ok, if only he'd have thought to say, "I was going to VOTE!"
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