First Aid Training

This Wednesday the Young Women and Young Men attending the Madisonville Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints will hold a combined meeting where they will have training on basic First Aid.  This kind of activity will be beneficial since one never knows when such training might be needed.

I was reminded that while working for the Houston Police Department, all officers were required to complete at least eight hours of First Aid training each year as mandated by the State of Texas.  Night shift officers would be asked to show up during the day for this training and receive overtime pay.  This later was changed to where the training was done on night shift at the Police Academy.

There had been a scandal of sorts in the late 1980’s where an officer from the Northeast Substation had been accused of stealing money from those he’d arrested for being drunk.  This was an embarrassment for every police officer as the Houston Chronicle had fun printing a couple of articles painting the entire Department as if it were common practice for officers to steal money from prisoners.

Internal Affairs figured out which officer was involved, set up a situation where he’d be the one to arrest an individual carrying marked bills and let the incident play out.  Sure enough, upon finishing the booking of the prisoner, the officer was found to be in possession of the marked money. 

Hopefully that’s the last time he was permitted to wear the uniform; but what has this got to do with First Aid training?

Upon showing up at the Police Academy building over by the airport, there were about 2 officers from each substation seated around a large conference table.  The First Aid instructor was from Social Services; but not a police officer, and he decided to find out how much each of us knew without having been given training, at least not as yet.

He pointed to one officer, having looked at his name tag, and asked, “Officer So and So, you’re on patrol and come upon a man bleeding severely, his having fallen through a plate glass window.  What’s the first thing you should do?”   That officer gave a reasonable response, and so it went as the instructor made it around the table.

Pointing in my direction he asked, “Officer Stern, while on patrol you come across a man lying face down in the ditch.  What’s the first thing you should do?”

Without hesitating my response was, “Well, if you’re from the Northeast Substation the first thing you do is go through his wallet looking for money.”  A round of muffled laughter broke out around the conference table, that is, all except from the two officers from the Northeast Substation who didn’t think it was funny at all.