Posted on 11/17/2007 11:16:35 AM PST by llevrok
Published: Saturday, November 17, 2007 WINDSOR, Ont. -- An ambulance rushing a heart attack victim to Detroit from a Windsor hospital ill-equipped to perform life-saving surgery was stopped for secondary inspection Monday by U.S. Customs, despite the fact it carried a man fighting for his life.
Rick Laporte, 49 -- who twice had been brought back to life with defibrillators -- was being rushed across the border when a U.S. border guard ignored protocol at the Detroit portion of the tunnel and forced the ambulance -- with siren and lights flashing -- to pull over.
"If I'm that person in the booth, and there is an ambulance coming with a critically injured person, I'm not stopping the damn thing," said Kat Lauzon, Laporte's girlfriend. "I'm irate. I can't figure it out. He could have died, and I would have blamed that person for murder."
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Printer friendly Font:****U.S. Customs officers at the secondary inspection site told the ambulance driver to go inside the office to produce identification, said a frustrated Larry Amlin, of Windsor Essex EMS.
Other guards told the paramedic crew to open the back doors of the ambulance, then asked Laporte to verbally confirm his identify, said Lauzon. She learned afterward of the incident from Laporte, who survived his life-saving emergency angioplasty surgery at Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital.
Laporte, a Canadian Auto Workers Union executive, remained in the cardiac care unit yesterday in serious condition.
"This was a life-saving procedure," Lauzon said yesterday, still furious. "What if it was one of their mothers in the ambulance? Would they pull it in? No damn way."
"This was not normal circumstances," she added. "How many drug dealers do you know that get a police escort in the back of an ambulance to go across the border? What is their damn reason for pulling it in?"
Chief Ron Smith of U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Detroit could not be reached yesterday.
Amlin said the ambulance, according to well-established protocol, received a police escort to the tunnel entrance with several intersections blocked off to help speed the trip. Tunnel traffic was shut down and, after the ambulance arrived at the border crossing, a tunnel company pickup truck with flashing lights, led it to a designated U.S. Customs lane where it was supposed to be waved through.
"We have a system set up. We are to be pre-cleared and no problems," Amlin said.
Last weekend a Quebec fire truck responding to an emergency request for assistance in upstate New York was delayed at the U.S. border despite having lights and sirens activated.
"Current policies and procedures must be immediately reviewed to ensure that first responders on both sides of the border can continue to save lives," said Bennie Thompson, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, in Washington yesterday.
Sad really.
Second incident this week. First a Fire truck now an ambulance. As attacks by this type of vehicle are right out of Hamas and Hezbollah’s play book could it be that we have received a threat about this?
Canadian hospitals are so bad that they've got a system set up to use the U.S. hospitals for E.R.?
Paging michael moore!
Oh, yeah, it is the US border patrols fault that Canada can’t take care of their own medical problems./SAR One of the easiest ways to get by security would be to roll up in an emergency vehicle. How is the guard supposed to know who is really inside unless he checks? I bet he was following protocol.
It does look like the police escort would take care of the security question? I mean, the terrorists would have to have gained control of a police car or two. Not impossible, but not likely. It does sound like the customs guy didn’t follow protocol.
But, granting that much, I have heard so often from Canadian relatives and having lived in Canada as a graduate student 30 years ago about how utterly superior their medical system (and everything “cultural”)is to ours that I’d think they’d be ashamed to make a big deal out of this. If Canadians can’t maintain one hospital in a city the size of Windsor that can handle this sort of medical emergency, then they are the ones who have the problem, not the US Customs.
So stop whining, Canucks, suck it up and finish the job Harper’s begun.
‘Kat Lauzon, Laporte’s girlfriend. “I’m irate. I can’t figure it out. He could have died, and I would have blamed that person for murder.” ‘
Next time, Kat, the union ‘executive’s girlfriend, can blame Hillary for her boyfriend’s death...
These problematic issues will soon end with Hillary care (Socialized Medicine)...then the USA will no longer be the ‘goto’ location for free healthcare for illegal immigrants....”union ‘executive’” or not. (to paraphrase a great statesman) There’s too much lifesavin’ goin’ on heah! Tho’ to be honest, betcha Hellary includes an out for union ‘executives’ from CAW (and perhaps canadian teamsters, too)!
Oh, and the MSM would have us believe ambulances stream North to get some of that magnificent Canadian health care. Then again, why take an ambulance with lights and sirens if the wait is measured in months?
I immagine many communities near the border in Canada are suburbs of a larger US city, and vice versa. There needs to be a way to get emergency vehicles quickly through the border to protect lives and property.
When they went socialist on medicine they had to close many hospitals because they lost many, many doctors due to the pay difference between private medicine and socilaized medicine, on top of that they refused to allow any private care at all even if the people could afford it. They have brought this problem onto themselves but wish to make the US into the bad guys when it is all their own doing. No sympathy here, nor will I feel any for idiot Americans if they get caught up in the Hillary care scam.
Sorry, but that’s not your decision to make. There are well-established agreements between the US and Canada (and local authorities within each country) regarding emergency vehicles crossing the border in certain circumstances.
In this case, it appears that everyone followed protocol (there was a police escort, lanes were shut down, etc) except for the one border agent who stopped the ambulance. It was that one agent who broke protocol, not everyone else, and for that, he should be sanctioned.
As I said, if Canada would fix there idiotic medical system and allow private practice, which I believe their Supreme Court has ruled they must, then they could stop comming to us for medical treatment and this wouldn't be a problem, would it? In the meantime the US has the obligation to protect their citizens from terrorists and one of the terrorists chosen methods is using emergency vehicles.
As for the agent being sanctioned I vote we give him a medal instead as this could very well have been a terrorists attack. How was he to know? Do you advocate our people blindly follow whatever idiotic rules are laid down? These "agreements" were made before 9/11 and should be drastically revised. Maybe something suspcious caught the agents eye. I would much rather have him err this way then to let an ambulance loaded with terrorists and munitions pass across our borders.
Yes, you are correct that, “there are ways they could make sure the emergency vehicles were passed through without being stopped.” And there are procedures in place to do just that. In fact, it appears that the procedures were followed in this case. There was communication between the hospital/EMS service in Canada and authorities in the US, pursuant to the border agreement. The ambulance did not approach the border by itself, but rather had a police escort. And roads had been closed/diverted so that the ambulance could get to and through the border quickly.
The issue in this case is that, despite the proper measures that had been taken, the agent decided not to follow established procedure, but rather to pull over the ambulance and (at least according to one report) briefly question the patient, who had been revived twice and was on the way to having emergency heart surgery.
Of course the agent’s most important job is to protect the country from terrorism. But that does not mean that “they could have been terrorists!!” justifies any and all actions the agent took. There were no indications that this ambulance had any chance of being hostile (given the communications across the border and the police escort).
Ok, I will concede that they had no indications that this was a terrorist attempt. However, did they have any idications that it was not a terrorist attempt? I still have no problem with this agent stopping this vehicle. Color me a patriot,
Everything about this incident was in conformity with established procedure, and everything about this incident indicated that the ambulance was friendly, not hostile.
There is a fine line between patriotism and paranoia. For the agent in this case to look at the facts, and think there was a possibility of terrorism, crosses that line. Terrorism cannot, and must not, be a legitimate justification for every decision, right or wrong, made by any law enforcement/border enforcement agent.
what about the fire engine trying to come over the boarder to help fight a fire on the US side? I’m not saying throw the boarder wide open to emergency vehicles, but there should be a way to figure out which are legit and allow them to have a quicker trip, just like is done at toll boothes and on regular roads.
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